Editorial — A privacy violation: State attorney general must determine who leaked list of donors | Editorials

Financial information from tax-exempt groups is a matter of public record. They all must file a Form 990 with the IRS.

But the portion of a tax return listing the organization’s donors is confidential information, and releasing it is illegal. In the 2021 case of Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California’s blanket request for all charities to disclose their lists of donors violated the First Amendment.

The state attorney general’s office is entrusted with sensitive information such as tax returns from nonprofit groups. It is allowed to collect this information so that staff members may do…