D.A. King, founder and president of the Dustin Inman Society, brought a uniquely strong case against the SPLC. King didn't just argue that the SPLC was lying by branding his organization, which supports the enforcement of immigration law and has legal immigrants on its board, an "Anti-immigrant hate group" that "Focuses on vilifying all immigrants." King argued that the SPLC had reason to doubt the claim that the Dustin Inman Society is an "Anti-immigrant hate group" because the SPLC itself had explicitly stated that it did not consider his organization an "Anti-immigrant hate group" years before it later did so.
In 2011, Heidi Beirich, then-director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, told The Associated Press that the SPLC did not consider the society a "Hate group." In 2019 the SPLC published its 2018 version of the "Hate map," and it included the Dustin Inman Society.
In another interesting twist, most of the quotes the SPLC uses as evidence to brand the society a "Hate group" date to before 2011.
In our interview, he noted, "It's the SPLC versus the SPLC." Many defamation suits against the SPLC fail due to the quirks of Supreme Court jurisprudence on defamation law.
King is far from alone in facing the SPLC's "Hate group" accusation.
In 2019, amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal that led the SPLC to fire its co-founder, a former employee came forward to call the organization's "Hate" accusations a "Highly profitable scam." In 2012, a terrorist with a gun used the "Hate map" to target a Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C. Although the SPLC condemned the attack, it kept the gunman's target on its "Hate map." The FBI used the SPLC's "Hate group" list to target "Radical-traditional Catholics" in an infamous memo earlier this year.
According to the SPLC's logic, the entire Roman Catholic Church arguably should be listed as a "Hate group," because the SPLC cited the Catechism of the Catholic Church in branding the small pro-family nonprofit the Ruth Institute a "Hate group." Yet President Joe Biden-a self-described devout Catholic-and his team have hosted SPLC leaders and staff at the White House at least 11 times since Jan. 20, 2021, and Biden nominated an SPLC attorney, Nancy Abudu, to a federal judgeship.
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