The Internal Revenue Service denies tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code to racially discriminatory private schools, and has established guidelines and procedures for determining whether a particular school is in fact racially nondiscriminatory.

As a consequence, those private schools deemed by the IRS to be racially discriminatory are not eligible to receive tax deductible charitable contributions.

The plaintiffs sued the IRS and W. Wayne Allen was granted permission to intervene as the defendant in his official capacity as the chairman of the board of Briarcrest Christian School, a segregation academy founded in 1973 in response to the desegregation of Memphis city schools.

[1] Respondents also alleged that many racially segregated private schools (segregation academies) were created or expanded in respondents' communities at the time the public schools were undergoing desegregation, and had received tax exemptions despite the IRS policy and guidelines; and that these unlawful tax exemptions harmed respondents in that they constituted tangible financial aid for racially segregated educational institutions, and encouraged the organization and expansion of institutions that provided segregated educational opportunities for white students avoiding attendance in the public schools.

Standing doctrine embraces... the general prohibition on a litigant's raising another person's legal rights, the rule barring adjudication of generalized grievances more appropriately addressed in the representative branches, and the requirement that a plaintiff's complaint fall within the zone of interests protected by the law invoked.