 | |
| Founded | August 1971 |
|---|---|
| Founders |
|
| Type |
|
| 63-0598743 (EIN) | |
| Focus | |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 32°22′36″N 86°18′12″WCoordinates: 32°22′36″N 86°18′12″W |
Area served
| United States |
| Product |
|
Key people
| Bryan Fair (Board Chairman) |
Revenue
| $136.3 million (2018 FY) |
| Endowment | $471.0 million (2018 FY) |
Employees
| 254 |
| Website | SPLCenter.org |
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its successful legal cases against white supremacist groups, its classification of hate groups and other extremist organizations, and for promoting tolerance education programs.
The SPLC was founded by Morris Dees, Joseph J. Levin Jr., and Julian Bond in 1971 as a civil rights law firm in Montgomery, Alabama. Bond served as president of the board between 1971 and 1979.
In 1979, the SPLC began a litigation strategy of filing civil suits for monetary damages on behalf of the victims of violence from the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, with all damages recovered given to the victims or donated to other organizations. The SPLC also became involved in other civil rights causes, including cases to challenge what it sees as institutional racial segregation and discrimination, inhumane and unconstitutional conditions in prisons and detention centers, discrimination based on sexual orientation, mistreatment of illegal immigrants, and the unconstitutional mixing of church and state. The SPLC has provided information about hate groups to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law enforcement agencies.
Since the 2000s, the SPLC's classification and listings of hate groups (organizations it has assessed either "attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics") and extremists have often been described as authoritative and are widely accepted and cited in academic and media coverage of such groups and related issues. The SPLC's listings have also been the subject of criticism from others, who argue that some of the SPLC's listings are overbroad, politically motivated, or unwarranted.
In 2019, founder Morris Dees was dismissed, which was followed by the resignation of president Richard Cohen. An outside consultant, Tina Tchen, was brought in to review workplace practices, particularly relating to accusations of racial and sexual harassment.
History
The SPLC headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama.
The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded by civil rights lawyers Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin Jr. in August 1971 as a law firm originally focused on issues such as fighting poverty, racial discrimination and the death penalty in the United States. Dees asked civil rights leader Julian Bond to serve as president, a largely honorary position; he resigned in 1979 but remained on the board of directors until his death in 2015. In 1979, Dees and the SPLC began filing civil lawsuits against Ku Klux Klan
chapters and similar organizations for monetary damages on behalf of
their victims. The favorable verdicts from these suits served to
bankrupt the KKK and other targeted organizations. In 1981, the Center began its Klanwatch project to monitor the activities of the KKK. That project, now called Hatewatch, was later expanded to include seven other types of hate organizations.
In 1986, the entire legal staff of the SPLC, excluding Dees,
resigned as the organization shifted from traditional civil rights work
toward fighting right-wing extremism. In 1989, the Center unveiled its Civil Rights Memorial, which was designed by Maya Lin. In 1995, the Montgomery Advertiser
won a Pulitzer Prize recognition for work that probed management
self-interest, questionable practices, and employee racial
discrimination allegations in the SPLC. The Center's "Teaching Tolerance" project was initiated in 1991 and in 2013 was cited as "of the most widely read periodicals dedicated to diversity and social justice in education". In 2008, the SPLC and Dees were featured on National Geographic's Inside American Terror explaining their litigation strategy against the Ku Klux Klan.
Criminal attacks and plots against the SPLC
In July 1983, the SPLC headquarters was firebombed, destroying the building and records.
As a result of the arson, Klansmen Joe M. Garner and Roy T. Downs Jr.,
along with Klan sympathizer Charles Bailey, pleaded guilty in February
1985 to conspiring to intimidate, oppress and threaten members of black
organizations represented by SPLC. The SPLC built a new headquarters building from 1999 to 2001.
In 1984, Dees became an assassination target of The Order, a revolutionary white supremacist group.
By 2007, according to Dees, more than 30 people had been jailed in
connection with plots to kill him or to blow up SPLC offices.
In 1995, four men were indicted for planning to blow up the SPLC.
In May 1998, three white supremacists were arrested for allegedly
planning a nationwide campaign of assassinations and bombings targeting
"Morris Dees, an undisclosed federal judge in Illinois, a black radio
show host in Missouri, Dees's Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama,
the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, and the Anti-Defamation League in New York."
Leadership upheaval amid harassment allegations
In March 2019, the SPLC fired founder Morris Dees for undisclosed
reasons and removed his bio from its website. In a statement regarding
the firing, the SPLC announced it would be bringing in an "outside
organization to conduct a comprehensive assessment of our internal
climate and workplace practices."
Following the dismissal, a letter signed by two dozen SPLC
employees was sent to management, expressing concern that "allegations
of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism
threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity
along with it."
One former employee wrote that the "unchecked power of lavishly
compensated white men at the top" of the SPLC contributed to a culture
which made black and female employees the targets of harassment. The SPLC appointed Tina Tchen, a former chief of staff for former first-lady Michelle Obama, to review and investigate any issues with the organization's workplace environment.
A week later, President Richard Cohen and legal director Rhonda
Brownstein announced their resignations amid the internal upheaval. The
associate legal director quit, alleging concerns regarding workplace
culture. Cohen said, "Whatever problems exist at the SPLC happened on my watch, so I take responsibility for them."
Notable cases
The Southern Poverty Law Center has initiated a number of civil cases
seeking injunctive relief and monetary awards on behalf of its clients.
The SPLC has said it does not accept any portion of monetary judgments.
Dees and the SPLC "have been credited with devising innovative legal
ways to cripple hate groups, including seizing their assets."
However, this has led to criticism from some civil libertarians, who
contend that the SPLC's tactics chill free speech and set legal
precedents that could be applied against activist groups which are not
hate groups. The SPLC has also filed suits related to the conditions of incarceration for adults and juveniles.
Alabama legislature
An early SPLC case was Sims v. Amos (consolidated with Nixon v. Brewer) in which the U.S. District Court for the Middle of Alabama
ordered the state legislature to reapportion its election system. The
result of the decision, which was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court,
was that 15 black legislators were elected in 1974.
Vietnamese fishermen
In 1981, the SPLC took Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam's Klan-associated militia, the Texas Emergency Reserve (TER), to court to stop racial harassment and intimidation of Vietnamese shrimpers in and around Galveston Bay. The Klan's actions against approximately 100 Vietnamese shrimpers in the area included a cross burning, sniper fire aimed at them, and arsonists burning their boats.
In May 1981, U.S. District Court judge Gabrielle McDonald
issued a preliminary injunction against the Klan, requiring them to
cease intimidating, threatening, or harassing the Vietnamese. McDonald eventually found the TER and Beam liable for tortious interference, violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act,
and of various civil rights statutes and thus permanently enjoined them
against violence, threatening behavior, and other harassment of the
Vietnamese shrimpers. The SPLC also uncovered an obscure Texas law "that forbade private armies in that state." McDonald found that Beam's organization violated it and hence ordered the TER to close its military training camp.
White Patriot Party
In 1982, armed members of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
terrorized Bobby Person, a black prison guard, and members of his
family. They harassed and threatened others, including a white woman who
had befriended blacks. In 1984, Person became the lead plaintiff in Person v. Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a lawsuit brought by the SPLC in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
The harassment and threats continued during litigation and the court
issued an order prohibiting any person from interfering with others
inside the courthouse. In January 1985, the court issued a consent order that prohibited the group's "Grand Dragon", Frazier Glenn Miller Jr.,
and his followers from operating a paramilitary organization, holding
parades in black neighborhoods, and from harassing, threatening or
harming any black person or white persons who associated with black
persons. Subsequently, the court dismissed the plaintiffs' claim for
damages.
Within a year, the court found Miller and his followers, now calling themselves the White Patriot Party, in criminal contempt
for violating the consent order. Miller was sentenced to six months in
prison followed by a three-year probationary period, during which he was
banned from associating with members of any racist group such as the
White Patriot Party. Miller refused to obey the terms of his probation.
He made underground "declarations of war" against Jews and the federal
government before being arrested again. Found guilty of weapons
violations, he went to federal prison for three years.
United Klans of America
In 1987, SPLC won a case against the United Klans of America for the lynching of Michael Donald, a black teenager in Mobile, Alabama.
The SPLC used an unprecedented legal strategy of holding an
organization responsible for the crimes of individual members to help
produce a $7 million judgment for the victim's mother. The verdict forced United Klans of America into bankruptcy. Its national headquarters was sold for approximately $52,000 to help satisfy the judgment. In 1987, five members of a Klan offshoot, the White Patriot Party, were indicted for stealing military weaponry and plotting to kill Dees. The SPLC has since successfully used this precedent to force numerous Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups into bankruptcy.
The Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery
White Aryan Resistance
On November 13, 1988, in Portland, Oregon, three white supremacist members of East Side White Pride and White Aryan Resistance (WAR) fatally assaulted Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian man who came to the United States to attend college. In October 1990, the SPLC won a civil case on behalf of Seraw's family against WAR's operator Tom Metzger and his son, John, for a total of $12.5 million. The Metzgers declared bankruptcy, and WAR went out of business. The cost of work for the trial was absorbed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as well as the SPLC. As of August 2007, Metzger still makes payments to Seraw's family.
Church of the Creator
In May 1991, Harold Mansfield, a black U.S. Navy war veteran, was murdered by George Loeb, a member of the neo-Nazi "Church of the Creator" (now called the Creativity Movement). SPLC represented the victim's family in a civil case and won a judgment of $1 million from the church in March 1994. The church transferred ownership to William Pierce, head of the National Alliance, to avoid paying money to Mansfield's heirs. The SPLC filed suit against Pierce for his role in the fraudulent scheme and won an $85,000 judgment against him in 1995. The amount was upheld on appeal and the money was collected prior to Pierce's death in 2002.
Christian Knights of the KKK
The SPLC won a $37.8 million verdict on behalf of Macedonia Baptist Church, a 100-year-old black church in Manning, South Carolina,
against two Ku Klux Klan chapters and five Klansmen (Christian Knights
of the Ku Klux Klan and Invisible Empire, Inc.) in July 1998. The money was awarded stemming from arson convictions; these Klan units burned down the historic black church in 1995.
Morris Dees told the press, "If we put the Christian Knights out of
business, what's that worth? We don't look at what we can collect. It's
what the jury thinks this egregious conduct is worth that matters, along
with the message it sends." According to The Washington Post the amount is the "largest-ever civil award for damages in a hate crime case."
Aryan Nations
In September 2000, the SPLC won a $6.3 million judgment against the Aryan Nations
(AN) from an Idaho jury who awarded punitive and compensatory damages
to a woman and her son who were attacked by Aryan Nations guards. The lawsuit stemmed from the July 1998 attack when security guards at the Aryan Nations compound near Hayden Lake in northern Idaho, shot at Victoria Keenan and her son. Bullets struck their car several times, causing the car to crash. An Aryan Nations member held the Keenans at gunpoint. As a result of the judgment, Richard Butler turned over the 20-acre (81,000 m2) compound to the Keenans, who sold the property to a philanthropist. He donated the land to North Idaho College, which designated the area as a "peace park".
Ten Commandments monument
In 2002, the SPLC and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit (Glassroth v. Moore) against Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore for placing a display of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building.
Moore, who had final authority over what decorations were to be placed
in the Alabama State Judicial Building's Rotunda, had installed a
5,280 pound (2,400 kg) granite
block, three feet wide by three feet deep by four feet tall, of the Ten
Commandments late at night without the knowledge of any other court
justice. After defying several court rulings, Moore was eventually
removed from the court and the Supreme Court justices had the monument
removed from the building.
Ranch Rescue
On March 18, 2003, two illegal immigrants from El Salvador,
Edwin Alfredo Mancía Gonzáles and Fátima del Socorro Leiva Medina, were
trespassing through a Texas ranch owned by Joseph Sutton. They were
accosted by vigilantes known as Ranch Rescue, who were recruited by Sutton to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border region nearby.
Mancía, Leiva, and the SPLC alleged that members of Ranch Rescue held
the two migrants at gunpoint, threatened them with death, and otherwise
terrorized them; they also alleged that Mancía was struck on the back of
the head with a handgun and that a Rottweiler dog was allowed to attack him.
Mancía and Leiva also stated that the vigilantes gave them water,
cookies and a blanket before letting them go after about an hour.
Later that year, SPLC, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and local attorneys filed a civil suit, Leiva v. Ranch Rescue, in Jim Hogg County, Texas,
against Ranch Rescue and several of its associates, seeking damages for
assault and illegal detention. In April 2005, SPLC obtained judgments
totaling $1 million against Ranch Rescue member Casey James Nethercott
and Ranch Rescue's leader, Torre John Foote. Those awards came six
months after a $350,000 judgment in the same case and coincided with a
$100,000 out-of-court settlement with Sutton. Nethercott's 70-acre
(280,000 m2) Arizona property, which was Ranch Rescue's
headquarters, was seized to pay the judgment. Nethercott was also
charged by Texas prosecutors of pistol-whipping
Mancía (which Nethercott denied). A jury deadlocked on the
pistol-whipping charge but convicted Nethercott of being a felon in
possession of a firearm (as he had a prior assault conviction in
California). SPLC staff worked with Texas prosecutors to obtain Nethercott's conviction.
Billy Ray Johnson
The SPLC brought a civil suit on behalf of Billy Ray Johnson, a
black, mentally disabled man, who was severely beaten by four white
males in Texas and left bleeding in a ditch, suffering permanent
injuries. In 2007, Johnson was awarded $9 million in damages by a Linden, Texas jury. At a criminal trial, the four men were convicted of assault and received sentences of 30 to 60 days in county jail.
Imperial Klans of America
In November 2008, the SPLC's case against the Imperial Klans of America (IKA), the nation's second-largest Klan organization, went to trial in Meade County, Kentucky.
The SPLC had filed suit for damages in July 2007 on behalf of Jordan
Gruver and his mother against the IKA in Kentucky. In July 2006, five
Klan members went to the Meade County Fairgrounds in Brandenburg, Kentucky,
"to hand out business cards and flyers advertising a 'white-only' IKA
function". Two members of the Klan started calling Gruver, a 16-year-old
boy of Panamanian descent, a "spic".
Subsequently, the boy, (5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m) and weighing 150
pounds (68 kg)) was beaten and kicked by the Klansmen (one of whom was
6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m) and 300 pounds (140 kg)). As a result, the
victim received "two cracked ribs, a broken left forearm, multiple cuts
and bruises and jaw injuries requiring extensive dental repair."
In a related criminal case in February 2007, Jarred Hensley and
Andrew Watkins were sentenced to three years in prison for beating
Gruver. On November 14, 2008, an all-white jury
of seven men and seven women awarded $1.5 million in compensatory
damages and $1 million in punitive damages to the plaintiff against Ron
Edwards, Imperial Wizard of the group, and Jarred Hensley, who
participated in the attack.
Mississippi correctional institutions
Together with the ACLU National Prison Project, the SPLC filed a class-action suit in November 2010 against the owner/operators of the private Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Leake County, Mississippi, and the Mississippi Department of Corrections
(MDC). They charged that conditions, including under-staffing and
neglect of medical care, produced numerous and repeated abuses of
youthful prisoners, high rates of violence and injury, and that one
prisoner suffered brain damage because of inmate-on-inmate attacks. A federal civil rights investigation was undertaken by the United States Department of Justice. In settling the suit, Mississippi ended its contract with GEO Group
in 2012. Additionally, under the court decree, the MDC moved the
youthful offenders to state-run units. In 2012, Mississippi opened a new
youthful offender unit at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County. The state also agreed to not subject youthful offenders to solitary confinement and a court monitor conducted regular reviews of conditions at the facility.
Also with the ACLU Prison Project, the SPLC filed a class-action suit in May 2013 against Management and Training Corporation (MTC), the for-profit operator of the private East Mississippi Correctional Facility, and the MDC.
Management and Training Corporation had been awarded a contract for
this and two other facilities in Mississippi in 2012 following the
removal of GEO Group. The suit charged failure of MTC to make needed
improvements, and to maintain proper conditions and treatment for this
special needs population of prisoners. In 2015 the court granted the plaintiffs' motion for class certification.
Polk County Florida Sheriff
In 2012, the SPLC initiated a class action federal lawsuit against the Polk County, Florida sheriff, Grady Judd, alleging that seven juveniles confined by the sheriff were suffering in improper conditions. U.S. District Court Judge Steven D. Merryday found in favor of Judd, who said the SPLC's allegations "were not supported by the facts or court precedence [sic]."
The judge wrote that "the conditions of juvenile detention at (Central
County Jail) are not consistent with (Southern Poverty's) dark, grim,
and condemning portrayal."
While the county sheriff's department did not recover an estimated $1
million in attorney's fees defending the case, Judge Merryday did award
$103,000 in court costs to Polk County.
Andrew Anglin and The Daily Stormer
In April 2017, the SPLC filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Tanya
Gersh, accusing Andrew Anglin, publisher of the white supremacist
website The Daily Stormer, of instigating an anti-Semitic harassment campaign against Gersh, a Whitefish, Montana, real estate agent.
Projects
Tolerance.org
Closeup of the Civil Rights Memorial
SPLC's projects include the website Tolerance.org, which provides
news on tolerance issues, education for children, guidebooks for
activists, and resources for parents and teachers. The website received Webby Awards in 2002 and 2004 for Best Activism. Another product of Tolerance.org is the "10 Ways To Fight Hate on Campus: A Response Guide for College Activists" booklet.
Documentaries
The SPLC also produces documentary films. Two have won Academy Awards for Documentary Short Subject: A Time for Justice (1994) and Mighty Times: The Children's March (2004).
In 2017 the SPLC began developing a 6-part series with Black Box
Management to document "the normalization of far-right extremism in the
age of Donald Trump."
Cooperation with law enforcement
The SPLC cooperates with, and offers training to, law enforcement
agencies, focusing "on the history, background, leaders, and activities
of far-right extremists in the United States".
The FBI has partnered with the SPLC and many other organizations "to
establish rapport, share information, address concerns, and cooperate in
solving problems" related to hate crimes.
Tracking of hate groups and extremists
Hate group and extremist designations
The SPLC is the organization most widely associated with tracking hate groups in the United States. It maintains lists of hate groups,
which it defines as groups that "have beliefs or practices that attack
or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable
characteristics". It says that hate group activities may include
speeches, marches, rallies, meetings, publishing, leafleting, and
criminal acts such as violence. (Not all groups so listed by the SPLC
engage in criminal activity.) The process for determining which groups
are included involves "talking through" cases that are not clear-cut.
In 2018, the SPLC added a number of self-described men's rights groups to their list of hate groups, including A Voice for Men and Return of Kings, describing them as "male supremacist"; the organizations rejected the SPLC's label.
Intelligence Report
Since 1981, the SPLC's Intelligence Project has published a quarterly Intelligence Report that monitors what the SPLC considers radical right hate groups and extremists in the United States. The Intelligence Report
provides information regarding organizational efforts and tactics of
these groups and persons, and has been cited by scholars, including Rory M. McVeigh and David Mark Chalmers, as a reliable and comprehensive source on U.S. right-wing extremism and hate groups. In 2013 the SPLC donated the Intelligence Project's documentation to the library of Duke University. The SPLC also publishes HateWatch Weekly, a newsletter that follows racism and extremism, and the Hatewatch blog, whose subtitle is "Keeping an Eye on the Radical Right".
Two articles published in Intelligence Report have won "Green Eyeshade Excellence in Journalism" awards from the Society of Professional Journalists.
"Communing with the Council", written by Heidi Beirich and Bob Moser,
took third place for Investigative Journalism in the Magazine Division
in 2004, and "Southern Gothic", by David Holthouse and Casey Sanchez, took second place for Feature Reporting in the Magazine Division in 2007.
Since 2001, the SPLC has released an annual issue of the Intelligence Project called Year in Hate, later renamed Year in Hate and Extremism,
in which it presents statistics on the numbers of hate groups in
America. The current format of the report covers racial hate groups,
nativist hate groups, and other right-wing extremist groups such as groups within the Patriot Movement. Jesse Walker, writing in Reason.com,
criticized the 2016 report, questioning whether the count was reliable,
as it focused on the number of groups rather than the number of people
in those groups or the size of the groups. Walker gives the example that
the 2016 report itself concedes an increase in the number of KKK groups
could be due to two large groups falling apart, leading to members
creating smaller local groups.
Assessment
In their study of the white separatist movement in the United States,
sociologists Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile referred to
the SPLC's Klanwatch Intelligence Reports in saying "we relied
on the SPLC and ADL for general information, but we have noted
differences between the way events have been reported and what we saw at
rallies. For instance, events were sometimes portrayed in Klanwatch Intelligence Reports as more militant and dangerous with higher turnouts than we observed."
In 2013, J.M. Berger wrote in Foreign Policy
that media organizations should be more cautious when citing the SPLC
and ADL, arguing that they are "not objective purveyors of data".
Controversies regarding hate group and extremist designations
The SPLC's identification and listings of hate groups and extremists
has been the subject of controversy. Critics of the SPLC say that it
chooses its causes with funding and donations in mind, and argue
that people and groups designated as 'hate groups' are often targeted
by protests that prevent them from speaking. The SPLC sometimes responds
by reviewing its actions and removing people (for example, Ben Carson and Maajid Nawaz) from its hate listings; however, it has stood behind the vast majority of its listings. In 2018, David A. Graham wrote in The Atlantic
that while criticism of the SPLC had long existed, the sources of such
criticism have expanded recently to include "sympathetic observers and
fellow researchers on hate groups" concerned about the organization
"mixing its research and activist strains."
Analyst of political fringe movements Laird Wilcox has said the SPLC had taken an incautious approach to assigning the labels "hate group" and "extremist".
Mark Potok of Southern Poverty Law Center said Wilcox "had an ax to
grind for a great many years" and engaged in name calling against others
doing anti-racist work.
In 2009, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) argued that allies of America's Voice and Media Matters
had used the SPLC designation of FAIR as a hate group to "engage in
unsubstantiated, invidious name-calling, smearing millions of people in
this movement." FAIR and its leadership have been criticized by the SPLC as being sympathetic to, or overtly supportive of, white supremacist and identitarian ideologies, as the group's founder has stated his goal as ensuring that the United States remains a majority-white country.
In 2010, a group of Republican politicians and conservative
organizations criticized the SPLC in full-page advertisements in two
Washington, D. C., newspapers for what they described as "character assassination" because the SPLC had listed the Family Research Council (FRC) as a hate group due to its "defaming of gays and lesbians".
In August 2012, a gunman entered the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council with the intent to kill its staff members and stuff Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their mouths.
The gunman, Floyd Lee Corkins, stated that he chose FRC as a target
because it was listed as an anti-gay group on the SPLC's website.
A security guard was wounded but successfully stopped Corkins from
shooting anyone. In the wake of the shooting, the SPLC was again
criticized for listing FRC as an anti-gay hate group, including by
liberal columnist Dana Milbank,
while others defended the categorization. The SPLC defended its listing
of anti-gay hate groups, stating that the groups were selected not
because of their religious views, but on their "propagation of known
falsehoods about LGBT people... that have been thoroughly discredited by
scientific authorities."
In October 2014, the SPLC added Ben Carson
to its extremist watch list, citing his association with groups it
considers extreme, and his "linking of gays with pedophiles".
Following criticism, the SPLC concluded its profile of Carson did not
meet its standards, removed his listing, and apologized to him in
February 2015.
In October 2016, the SPLC published its "Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists", which listed the British activist Maajid Nawaz and a nonprofit group he founded, the Quilliam Foundation. Nawaz, who identifies as a "liberal, reform Muslim", denounced the listing as a "smear", saying that the SPLC listing had made him a target of jihadists. In June 2018, the SPLC issued an apology, stating:
Given our understanding of the views of Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam, it was our opinion at the time that the Field Guide was published that their inclusion was warranted. But after getting a deeper understanding of their views and after hearing from others for whom we have great respect, we realize that we were simply wrong to have included Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam in the Field Guide in the first place.
Along with the apology, the SPLC paid US$3.375 million to Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation in a settlement.
Nawaz said about the settlement that Quilliam "will continue to combat
extremists by defying Muslim stereotypes, calling out fundamentalism in
our own communities, and speaking out against anti-Muslim hate." The SPLC ultimately removed the Field Guide from its website.
In August 2017, a defamation lawsuit was filed against the SPLC by the D. James Kennedy Ministries for describing it as an "active hate group" because of their views on LGBT rights.
The SPLC lists D. James Kennedy Ministries and its predecessor, Truth
in Action, as anti-LGBT hate groups because of what the SPLC describes
as the group's history of spreading homophobic propaganda, including D.
James Kennedy's statement that "homosexuals prey on adolescent boys",
and false claims about the transmission of AIDS.
On February 21, 2018, a federal magistrate judge recommended that the
suit be dismissed with prejudice, concluding that D. James Kennedy
Ministries could not show that it had been libeled.
In 2019, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) sued the SPLC for designating the CIS as a hate group, claiming it constituted fraud under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The SPLC defended its decision and said the group "richly deserved" the designation. Cornell law professor William A. Jacobson,
a longtime critic of the SPLC, criticized the listing of the CIS as
"pos[ing] a danger of being exploited as an excuse to silence speech and
to skew political debate."
Finances
The SPLC's activities, including litigation, are supported by
fundraising efforts, and it does not accept any fees or share in legal
judgments awarded to clients it represents in court. Starting in 1974,
the SPLC set aside money for its endowment
stating that it was "convinced that the day [would] come when
non-profit groups [would] no longer be able to rely on support through
mail because of posting and printing costs". For 2018, its endowment was approximately $471 million per its annual report and SPLC spent 49% of its revenue on programs.
In 1994 the Montgomery Advertiser
published an eight-part critical report on the SPLC, saying that it
exaggerated the threat posed by the Klan and similar groups in order to
raise money, discriminated against black employees, and used misleading
fundraising tactics.
From 1984 to 1994, the SPLC raised about $62 million in contributions
and spent about $21 million on programs, according to the newspaper.
The SPLC dismissed the series as a "hatchet job". SPLC's co-founder Joe Levin stated: "The Advertiser's
lack of interest in the center's programs and its obsessive interest in
the center's financial affairs and Mr. Dees' personal life makes it
obvious to me that the Advertiser simply wants to smear the center and Mr. Dees." The series was nominated for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism. Despite an SPLC campaign against the nomination, the series was one of three finalists.
Starting in the 1990s Ken Silverstein writing in Harper's Magazine,
and others were critical of the SPLC's fundraising appeals and
finances, with Silverstein saying the group is "essentially a fraud"
that uses hyperbole and overstates the prevalence of hate groups to
raise large amounts of money.
Based on 2016 figures, Charity Navigator
rated the SPLC three out of four stars – 79.7 on financial health
matters, 97.0 on accountability and transparency, and 85.5 (out of 100)
overall; and GuideStar gives the SPLC a Gold-level rating as of 2017.
