Chess Tutors is a PMA

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We are a Private Membership Association: Over the past several decades and due to favorable rulings, opinions and interpretations by the Supreme Court, the law of the land has highlighted our constitutional right to conduct business in the private domain versus the public domain.

In the public domain our statutory business operates under the jurisdiction of the state or federal regulatory agencies designed to protect the public.  In the private domain of a private membership association PMA, you may operate outside the normal public jurisdiction and your association rights could only be restricted if “justified by clear public interest, threatened not doubtfully or remotely, but by clear and present danger”. Thomas, 323 U.S. at 531.

The right of association is part of the “bundle of rights protected by the First Amendment and related to “the right of privacy implicit in the First Amendment.”

“The right of association has become a part of the bundle of rights protected by the First Amendment, and the need for a pervasive right of privacy against government intrusion has been recognized, though not always given the recognition it deserves. Unpopular groups like popular ones are protected. Unpopular groups if forced to disclose their membership lists may suffer reprisals or other forms of public hostility. But whether a group is popular or unpopular, the right of privacy implicit in the First Amendment creates an area into which the Government may not enter.” Gibson, 372 U.S. at 569-70 (citations and footnote omitted).

See generally NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449 (1958). The Court held that, “the immunity from state scrutiny of membership lists which the Association claims on behalf of its members is here so related to the right of the members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in so doing as to come within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id. at 466. Justice Harlan opined that, “It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the ‘liberty’ assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces the freedom of speech.”

Hence, any donations or transactions will not be provided an EIN # — all donations and transactions that you engage in with Chess Tutors are considered private. Simular to how one might hire a friend to baby sit their child, or how one may hire a person to clean up their backyard or car or tutor a neighbors child, all business conducted with Chess Tutors are of a private nature. Should you need information to give to your tax person ask them how you should proceed accordingly.