The Southern Poverty Law Center has been sued by the Trump administration, an action that has unleashed a slew of non-sequiturs.

But first, a brief introduction. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit, was founded in 1971 by Morris Dees to counter anti-black racism. The center spent a significant segment of its early years calling out and bankrupting the Ku Klux Klan. This was an important, worthy and creative effort.

It was a time when hate was racial. Blacks were hated or discriminated against, and it was important to defeat that mentality and its accompanying discriminatory practices at the voting booth, in public accommodations, churches and elsewhere.

Definitions of hate have shifted since then. Based on its success against the Klan, the center established itself as the arbiter of who is, and is not, a hater or a hate group, and the effort extended far beyond race, though it certainly still included the battle against racial discrimination. The center fought and continues to fight white supremacists.

The nonprofit learned how to raise very big money. The assets of the Southern Poverty Law Center now stand at $787 million (that is not a typo). According to the Wall Street Journal, the SPLC in 2017 could have maintained its spending level for more than six years without raising another penny.

Now, the Trump administration is suing the SPLC for defrauding contributors by paying informants to infiltrate racist groups without disclosing the expenditures.

Over the decades, the SPLC changed in ways that earned it critics on both the left and the right.

On the left, an editor of Nation magazine says the SPLC engaged in scare tactics — exaggerating threats from white supremacists and promiscuously labeled a wide swath of groups “hate groups” in order to boost fundraising. This charge of scare tactics comes not from the political right, with which white supremacists are typically associated, but from the political left, otherwise allies of the SPLC’s positions.

On the political right, various Christian groups say that the center calls them hate groups simply because it doesn’t like their religious position, which opposes same-sex marriage, or their political positions. What the center deems a hate group should be deemed a partisan group with a different political viewpoint, say the critics on the right.

Now, for the non-sequiturs.

It is said that the Trump administration’s suit against the SPLC is political. That is likely true, but that does not equate to a defense of the SPLC’s methods. In response to the suit, the SPLC fiercely defends its use of paid informants, but if this were defensible and beneficial to law enforcement, the SPLC wouldn’t have dropped them (long before the Trump suit). It is a non-sequitur to say that because Trump is wrong, SPLC is right.

It is said that the SPLC needs funds to operate and that it is normal nonprofit practice to seek funds from the public. This is true, but it should not equate to a defense of the SPLC’s fundraising practices. It is wrong for a nonprofit to sit on hundreds of millions of dollars, while still soliciting funds from the public. Charity Watch, a nonprofit group, gives the center an “F.” It is a non-sequitur to say that because it is right for nonprofits to raise funds, the SPLC’s fundraising practices are right.

It is said that the center in its stigmatization of groups on the political right is just another a partisan group, not a hate watchdog, and in fact turns the SPLC into a hate group itself. This seems true, but it should not equate to: (a) a condemnation of other the work the SPLC does, such as highlighting the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017; or (b) a blanket appreciation of its partisan opponents, some of which are vile organizations. I prefer not to name them or their practices because to do so is to sink public discourse into the cesspool.

Perhaps the most surprising non-sequitur is the SPLC’s founder and nearly 50-year leader, Morris Dees. He engaged, as the SPLC euphemizes it, in inappropriate behavior with female staff. An organization that sets itself up as a moral arbiter of who is hateful undermines its credibility when its founder and leader’s morals get him fired by the very organization he founded, which it did in 2019.

The bottom line is this: What constituted hate in 1971 was clear. It was racial. Today, opposition to all kinds of non-racial behavior choices constitutes, to some, hate; to others, not.

I am reminded of a proverbial discussion between the husband and wife sitting in one of those big old American cars, which had a single, wide front seat with room for three people. The wife is hugging the door, as far from her husband as possible. She says to him:

“I used to sit in the middle of the seat right next to you. What happened to us?”

The husband, sitting in the driver’s seat, says:

“Honey, I haven’t moved.”

© IJN 2026