The Southern Poverty Law Center spurred violence, witnesses tell House

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s, or SPLC’s, decision to classify many conservative and Christian organizations as hate groups led to increased violence against and suppression of right-wing perspectives, Family Research Council Tony Perkins said Wednesday. His statements came during a House Judiciary Committee hearing examining the SPLC’s actions against mainstream conservatives, along with allegations that the nonprofit law center paid $3 million to members of white supremacist organizations. Perkins, whose nonprofit public policy organization lobbies for conservative and evangelical causes, was one of four witnesses testifying at the hearing.

Perkins said the SPLC’s 2010 decision to place Family Research Council on its list of hate groups, which includes neo-Nazis, had serious consequences for his organization. Two years later, an armed man entered the Family Research Council building in Washington, D.C., and seriously wounded the building manager before being disarmed. The shooter carried 50 rounds of ammunition and admitted he planned to kill as many employees as possible, according to Perkins. The shooter chose Perkins’ organization as a target after seeing it on the SPLC list, Perkins said. The attack cost Family Research Council roughly $6 million for security measures, he said.

The SPLC also began lobbying financial organizations in 2018 to debank conservatives included on its list of hate groups, Perkins said. The campaign caused Truist Financial/BB&T, Fidelity Investments, GuideStar, Mobile Cause, and other tech companies to deny services to Family Research Council, he said. Other conservative groups also faced similar hindrances, he said.

Perkins also argued that SPLC influence led to the 2017 shooting of then-House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and the 2025 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

What did the other witnesses say at the hearing?

• Tyler O’Neil, an investigative reporter for The Daily Signal who has published several books related to the SPLC, said he believed the organization inflated its counts of hate groups and intentionally dispersed inflammatory rhetoric to rake in more funding.

• Former Vanderbilt University and Princeton University professor Dr. Carol Swain said the SPLC publicly labeled her an apologist for white supremacists, despite the fact that she is black, after she criticized the organization for targeting mainstream conservatives. She lost professional opportunities due to the ensuing reputational damage, she said.

• Maya Wiley, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, was the only witness to speak in favor of the SPLC. She framed the Justice Department’s allegations against the organization as part of a coordinated attack on civil rights by the Trump administration. The indictment was preposterous and illegitimate, she said. Wiley argued that the SPLC was paying members of white supremacist organizations through its confidential informant program in order to stop hate crimes from happening.

Dig deeper: Read Christina Grube’s report for more details on the Justice Department’s indictment of the SPLC.