1971 жылы құрылған американдық құқық қорғау ұйымы

American civil rights NGO, founded 1971

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white supremacist groups, for its classification of hate groups and other extremist organizations, and for promoting tolerance education programs. In 1980, 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. Since the 2000s, the SPLC's classification and listings of hate groups (organizations that "attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics") and anti government extremists are widely relied upon by academic and media sources. The SPLC's listings have also been criticized by those who argue that some of the SPLC's listings are overbroad, politically motivated, or unwarranted. The organization has also been accused of an overindulgent use of funds, leading some employees to call its headquarters "Poverty Palace".

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. Some civil libertarians said that SPLC's tactics chill free speech and set legal precedents that could be applied against activist groups which are not hate groups. 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 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. In 2008, the SPLC and Dees were featured on National Geographics Inside American Terror explaining their litigation strategy against the Ku Klux Klan. which resulted in a permanent injunction in 2013 blocking multiple provisions of the law. In 2013 "Teaching Tolerance" was cited as "of the most widely read periodicals dedicated to diversity and social justice in education". In 2016, the SPLC's "ranks swelled" and its "endowment surged" after President Donald Trump was elected, resulting in the hiring of 200 new employees. In March 2019 founder Morris Dees was fired, and in April Karen Baynes Dunning was named as interim president and CEO. The SPLC had "long been dogged by accusations of internal discrimination against minority employees, particularly in the area of promotions." In 2018, The SPLC filed suits related to the conditions of incarceration for adults and juveniles.

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. Cohen said, "Whatever problems exist at the SPLC happened on my watch, so I take responsibility for them."

In early February 2020, Margaret Huang, who was formerly the Chief Executive at Amnesty International USA, was named as president and CEO of the SPLC. Huang replaced Karen Baynes Dunning, a former juvenile court judge, who had served as interim president and CEO since April 2019, after founder Morris Dees was fired in March 2019. The SPLC had 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 related to Dees' firing. The Los Angeles Times reported that by 2017, the SPLC's financial resources "nearly totaled half a billion dollars in assets". For 2018, its endowment was approximately $471 million per its annual report and SPLC spent 49% of its revenue on programs. According to the Montgomery Advertiser, the SPLC had received "significant financial support" with revenues almost "$122 million and total assets of $492.3 million", as of September 30, 2018. Prior to his departure in 2019, Dees' "role at the Center was focused on 'donor relations' and "expanding the Center's financial resources". The missing point was due to SPLC failing to post a "Donor Privacy Policy" on its website. which is given to organizations that voluntarily share their financials and "highlight their commitment to inclusivity to gain funders' trust and support." SPLC previously earned GuideStar's Platinum Seal of Transparency, but did not retain it. In 2023, CharityWatch initially gave SPLC a grade of B based on its 2021 financials. CharityWatch, however, downgrades all charities that "hoard" donations, which per CharityWatch's definition occurs whenever "a charity's available assets in reserve exceeds three years' worth its annual budget." In particular, CharityWatch automatically "downgrades to an F rating any charity holding available assets in reserve equal to 5 years or more of its annual budget."

In July 1983, the SPLC headquarters was firebombed, destroying the building and records. In February 1985, Klansmen Joe M. Garner and Roy T. Downs Jr., along with Klan sympathizer Charles Bailey, pleaded guilty 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, Morris 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 headquarters. In May 1998, three white supremacists were arrested for allegedly planning a nationwide campaign of assassinations and bombings targeting Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, the Anti Defamation League in New York, an undisclosed federal judge in Illinois and a black radio show host in Missouri.

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.

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 the U. S. Supreme Court affirmed, was that fifteen black legislators were elected in 1974.

In 1979, the Klan began a summer of attacks against civil rights groups, beginning in Alabama. In Decatur, Alabama, Klan members clashed with a group of civil rights marchers. There were a hundred Klan members carrying "bats, ax handles and guns". A black woman, Bernice Brown, was shot and other marchers were violently attacked. In Brown v. Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, filed in 1980 in the USDC Northern District of Alabama, the SPLC sued the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan on behalf of plaintiffs, Brown and other black marchers. The civil suit was settled in 1990 and "required Klansmen to pay damages, perform community service, and refrain from white supremacist activity." as a "catastrophe" for the Klan, as the SPLC's newly established Klanwatch, which became a "powerful weapon" that "tracked and litigated" the Klan. As a result of the SPLC, the FBI reopen their case against the Klan, and "nine Klansmen were eventually convicted of criminal charges" related to the Decatur confrontation of 1979. 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.

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.

In 1987, Dees and Michael Figures 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. 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.

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 2007, Metzger still makes payments to Seraw's family.

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. 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."

In September 2000, the SPLC won a $6.3 million judgment against the Aryan Nations via an Idaho jury who awarded punitive and compensatory damages to a woman and her son who were attacked by Aryan Nations guards. Bullets struck their car several times, causing the car to crash. An Aryan Nations member held the Keenans at gunpoint.

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.

In 2003, the 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, a vigilante paramilitary group and several of its associates, seeking damages for assault and illegal detention of two illegal immigrants caught near the U. S. Mexico border. In April 2005, SPLC obtained judgments totaling $1 million against Casey James Nethercott, who was then Ranch Rescue's leader and the owner of an Arizona ranch, Camp Thunderbird, Joe Sutton, who owned the Hebbronville ranch on which two illegal immigrants has been caught trespassing on March 18, 2003, and Jack Foote, the founder of Ranch Rescue. Sutton, who had recruited Ranch Rescue to patrol the U. S. Mexico border region near his Hebbronville ranch,

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.

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 (2 m) and weighing ) was beaten and kicked by the Klansmen (one of whom was 6 feet (2 m) and ). As a result, the victim received "two cracked ribs, a broken left forearm, multiple cuts and bruises and jaw injuries requiring extensive dental repair."

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.

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 ." 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.

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. In July 2019, a judge issued a $14 million dollar default judgment against Anglin, who is in hiding and has refused to appear in court.

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:

blockquote |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. 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. 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 false 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. On September 19, 2019, the lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Myron H. Thompson, who ruled that the "SPLC's labeling of the group as [a hate group] is protected by the First Amendment." In March 2018, several journalists, including Max Blumenthal, were mentioned in an article by Alexander Reid Ross which the SPLC retracted after receiving complaints from those journalists that the article falsely portrayed them as "white supremacists, fascists, anti Semites, and engaging in a conspiracy with the Putin regime to promote such views"; the Center's letter explaining its retraction of the article apologizing to Blumenthal and the other journalists who believed they had been falsely portrayed. The SPLC was criticized for taking down this article and was accused of caving in to pressure. The article argued that the dissemination of conspiracy theories around such issues as the Syrian Civil War (about the White Helmets and child refugees) were intended to co opt leftist anti imperialism in the service of a fascist agenda. Subsequently, the SPLC retracted two other articles written by Alexander Reid Ross on the topic of Russian campaigns to influence Western public opinion. 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. 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." The lawsuit was dismissed in September 2019 for failure to state a claim; Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the CIS could not show any violations of the RICO statute. In February 2019, several months after resigning as chairman of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes filed a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Alabama over the SPLC's designation of the Proud Boys as a "general hate" group. The SPLC took the lawsuit "as a compliment" and an indication that "we're doing our job." On its website, SPLC said that "McInnes plays a duplicitous rhetorical game: rejecting white nationalism and, in particular, the term 'alt right' while espousing some of its central tenets" and that the group's "rank and file [members] and leaders regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known for anti Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric. Proud Boys have appeared alongside other hate groups at extremist gatherings like the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville." The day after filing the suit, McInnes announced that he had been re hired by the Canadian far right media group The Rebel Media. The SPLC filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in July 2019.

In 1990, the SPLC began to publish an "annual census of hate groups operating within the United States".

Over the years the classifications and listings of hate groups expanded to reflect current social phenomena. By the 2000s, the term "hate groups" included organizations it has assessed either "attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics". Groups that have been included as "hate groups" by the SPLC who reject that labelling include, for example, self described men's rights groups A Voice for Men and Return of Kings, which the SPLC had described as "male supremacist", according to a 2018 Washington Post article. The SPLC's identification and listings of hate groups and extremists has been the subject of controversy. The authors of the 2009 book The White Separatist Movement in the United States, sociologists Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L. Shanks Meile, who used the findings of the SPLC and other watchdog groups, said that the SPLC chose its causes with funding and donations in mind. Concerns have been raised that people and groups designated as "hate groups" by the SPLC were being targeted by protests or violence that prevent them from speaking. The SPLC stands 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". Mark Potok of Southern Poverty Law Center responded that 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 late founder had stated his belief that the United States should remain 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 for alleged "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 employees and smear Chick fil A sandwiches on the victims' faces. 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 stopped Corkins from shooting anyone else. 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."