Thirteen non-profit organizations dropped out of the Combined Federal Campaign, which lets government employees donate to charity directly through payroll deduction, after the Office of Personnel Management adopted requirements that the organizations in the campaign check employees and expenditures against federal watch lists. Those requirements have now been dropped, and the non-profits which dropped out of the program are rejoining.

“This is a major victory for non-profit organizations that refused to be subjected to vague government requirements forcing us to become law enforcement officers for the federal government,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “We feel vindicated. List checking is not and has not been required by law.”

“We knew that those watch-lists are created by the government with secret information that is notoriously unreliable, and we refused to violate the privacy of our clients and employees. But now that the federal government has dropped the list-checking requirements, EFF will join the CFC again. We hope that our members will support us and the new policy by donating to EFF through the CFC,” said EFF media coordinator Rebecca Jeschke.

The Office of Personnel Management published final regulations this week in the Federal Register. The new regulations drop the list-checking requirement, stating, “Under the final rule, effective for 2006 and subsequent campaigns, OPM does not mandate that applicants check the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List or the Terrorist Exclusion List (TEL).”

Twenty-four organizations had joined a coalition to oppose the requirement, and the ACLU had filed a lawsuit challenging the policy under the First And Fifth Amendments.