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1 1 (March 26, 2026)

handle is hein.crs/govetxo0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Updates on Litigation over the IRS-ICE Information-Sharing Agreement March 26, 2026 On February 24, 2026, the U.S. Court ofAppeals for the D.C. Circuit (D.C. Circuit) affirmed the denial of a preliminary injunction that would have placed restrictions on information sharing pursuant to an agreement between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The agreement at issue establishes procedures between the two agencies to share information for the enforcement of criminal immigration laws. A previous Legal Sidebar discussed the background of the information-sharing agreement, the legal questions at issue in the case (Centro de Trabajadores Unidos v. Bessent), and the parties' arguments before the appeals court. While the decision from the D.C. Circuit was pending in Centro, the U.S. District Courts for the District of Columbia and the District of Massachusetts each granted injunctions against information sharing pursuant to the agreement. This Legal Sidebar discusses the reasoning of the D.C. Circuit's decision in Centro and legal questions that remain. It discusses the two separate cases in the U.S. District Courts and the injunctions granted in them. It focuses on the D.C. Circuit's and the district courts' decisions about the permissibility of the disclosures under the Internal Revenue Code (I.R.C.). Finally, it discusses congressional reactions to the court cases and subsequent developments related to the information-sharing agreement, including the IRS's admission that it had disclosed information based on incomplete and insufficient address information. D.C. Circuit's Decision in Centro The D.C. Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a preliminary injunction to restrain IRS information sharing. As a threshold matter, the court found sufficient associational standing by at least one of the organizational plaintiffs to allow the case to proceed. Turning to the preliminary injunction factors, the court held that the plaintiff organizations are unlikely to succeed on the merits. The court found that the information-sharing agreement is not a reviewable final agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) because it merely clarifies existing statutory duties and does not create binding legal duties. On the substantive arguments regarding whether disclosures contemplated by the agreement violated the law, the court held that the I.R.C. likely permits the disclosure of tax return information as contemplated by the information-sharing agreement between IRS and ICE. Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB11413 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress