The SPLC list of hate groups is an annual catalog, published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, of U.S. organizations the group says “attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” It appears each year in the SPLC’s “Year in Hate and Extremism” report and is widely used by journalists, corporations, and giving platforms because the FBI does not maintain its own public tally of domestic hate groups. Being on it carries real financial consequences, there is no formal appeals process, and the SPLC itself is now under federal indictment in a case that could reshape the list’s future.
What the List Is
The SPLC publishes the list annually as part of its “Year in Hate and Extremism” report. The most recent edition, covering 2025 and released in June 2026, counted 1,263 active hate and antigovernment extremist groups across the country, down 8 percent from 1,371 the year before. The SPLC did not read the drop as progress. It described a shift “from extreme to establishment,” arguing that extremist agendas were being adopted by government officials and written into legislation, which reduced the need for separate advocacy organizations.
The 2025 report flagged a continued rise in white Christian nationalist rhetoric, the use of school boards and state legislatures to pursue book bans and rollbacks of diversity initiatives, and the growing influence of online “manosphere” figures promoting male supremacist ideology. In Florida, the SPLC documented 331 “hate-flyering” incidents in 2025, a 92 percent increase over the prior year.
How Groups Get Classified
The SPLC employs a team of investigators who monitor online publications, social media, and real-world activity year-round to identify organizations, verify they exist, and confirm they are still active. Groups are sorted into categories that include neo-Nazi, white nationalist, Ku Klux Klan, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, and black separatist, among others. The organization tracks “antigovernment” extremist groups separately from hate groups, though both appear in the annual tally.
The “hate group” label is an opinion, not a legal finding. Federal courts have described it as “entirely subjective” and not a statement of fact. That matters for what comes next.
What a Listing Costs an Organization
Congressional testimony in June 2026 described the SPLC’s “Hate Map” as a de facto blacklist for major financial and technology companies. Organizations on the list have reported being cut off from charitable giving platforms, payment processing, web hosting, and corporate workplace giving programs run by companies such as Amazon, Google, Apple, and Fidelity Charitable. According to that testimony, an “SPLC hit” can block an account application or transaction with an effect comparable to a government sanctions listing.
Much of that reach runs through a 2018 initiative called “Change the Terms,” which produced model policies for tech and financial companies on hate-related content. Those policies included “trusted flagger” provisions giving the SPLC expedited access to report organizations for removal from platforms. Corporate giving platforms including Benevity and Groundswell integrated SPLC data to screen nonprofits, which in practice prevents employees at participating companies from donating to or receiving employer matches for listed groups.
The Center for Immigration Studies, for example, reported losing at least $10,000 in donations after Amazon removed it from the AmazonSmile charitable program following its SPLC designation.
Whether a Listed Group Can Challenge the Designation
There is no formal appeals process at the SPLC. The route listed organizations have tried is litigation, and the record is thin.
The Center for Immigration Studies filed a civil RICO suit in January 2019 against SPLC officials Richard Cohen and Heidi Beirich, arguing the “hate group” label amounted to wire fraud and a conspiracy to destroy the organization. A federal judge in Washington dismissed the case, finding CIS had failed to allege a viable RICO claim and was attempting to “shoehorn a defamation claim into the RICO framework.” The D.C. Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court declined to take the case.
Coral Ridge Ministries, a Florida ministry doing business as D. James Kennedy Ministries, sued the SPLC, Amazon, and GuideStar in 2017 over its designation as an “anti-LGBT hate group,” alleging defamation, religious discrimination, and trademark violations. A magistrate recommended dismissal on all counts. Liberty Counsel sued GuideStar over its use of SPLC data and lost in the Fourth Circuit, which ruled the claim was not actionable under the Lanham Act. GuideStar did subsequently remove SPLC “hate group” flags from its public-facing charity profiles, though it reportedly retained the underlying data.
The core legal problem is the one the courts have identified: because the “hate group” label is treated as opinion rather than factual assertion, it is generally not actionable as defamation.
One settlement is the exception that gets cited. In June 2018, the SPLC paid $3.375 million to British political activist Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam Foundation after labeling them “anti-Muslim extremists” in a 2016 publication. SPLC President Richard Cohen acknowledged the organization was “simply wrong” to have included Nawaz, who had been praised by United Nations-affiliated human rights advocates for his counter-extremism work.
Why the List Is Contested
Sustained criticism of the list has come from conservative and faith-based organizations that object to being categorized alongside neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. The Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Center for Immigration Studies, and Focus on the Family are among the groups that have publicly pushed back, arguing the SPLC applies an overly broad and politically motivated definition of “hate” that sweeps in mainstream policy disagreements on immigration, religious liberty, and sexuality.
Critics point to several episodes they say damage the list’s credibility. The Nawaz settlement is the most frequently cited. In 2015, the SPLC publicly apologized for including former presidential candidate Ben Carson in its “Extremist File.” Former SPLC employee Bob Moser publicly described the organization as a “highly profitable scam.” Mark Potok, a former editor of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report, once said the organization’s “aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them,” a quote critics have used as evidence of an adversarial rather than analytical mission.
Internal problems added to the scrutiny. In March 2019, co-founder Morris Dees was fired after a staff revolt over allegations of racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and sexual harassment. Richard Cohen resigned shortly afterward, and the organization brought in outside reviewers to assess its workplace.
Opponents also point to the 2012 shooting at the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C. headquarters by Floyd Lee Corkins II, who later said he had found the FRC on the SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups. FRC president Tony Perkins argued that while Corkins was “solely responsible” for the attack, the SPLC bore responsibility for “creating an environment that led to” it. The SPLC called the accusation “outrageous.”
The SPLC’s Changed Standing With the Federal Government
For decades the SPLC had a working relationship with federal law enforcement, including a 2007 partnership with the FBI and Department of Justice on the Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative. That relationship has been severed. In 2023 the FBI retracted a memo that had relied on SPLC data after determining it did not meet the agency’s standards. In 2025, FBI Director Kash Patel formally ended the agency’s ties with the SPLC, calling the organization “unfit for any FBI partnership” and describing its hate map as a tool “used to defame mainstream Americans.” In December 2025, House Republicans held a hearing titled “Partisan and Profitable: The SPLC’s Influence on Federal Civil Rights Policy.”
The 2026 Federal Indictment
On April 21, 2026, a federal grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama indicted the SPLC on 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The case is United States v. Southern Poverty Law Center, Inc., No. 2:26-cr-00139.
Prosecutors allege the SPLC paid more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to at least nine informants, referred to internally as “field sources” or “the Fs,” who were embedded within extremist organizations including the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Party of America, the National Socialist Movement, the National Alliance, and an Aryan Nations-affiliated motorcycle club. The indictment alleges the SPLC used fictitious business names to open bank accounts through which it funneled approximately $4.1 million in tax-exempt donor funds between 2010 and 2023, and that it did not disclose the informant program to donors.
One informant, identified as “F-37,” received more than $270,000 from the SPLC over eight years. According to prosecutors, F-37 was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, attended the rally at the SPLC’s direction, helped coordinate transportation for other attendees, and made “racist postings under SPLC supervision.” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche alleged the SPLC was “not dismantling these groups” but “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose.”
A superseding indictment was filed on June 2, 2026. It added no new charges or defendants but revised the bank fraud counts to remove the word “misleading” and reference only “false” statements, aligning with Supreme Court precedent.
The SPLC pleaded not guilty on May 7, 2026, with interim CEO Bryan Fair entering the plea on behalf of the organization. A tentative trial date is set for October 5, 2026. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell has called the charges based on “inaccurate facts, and inapplicable law” and has moved to dismiss on grounds of “vindictive prosecution.” Fair has defended the former informant program as legitimate intelligence-gathering that monitored threats of violence and shared findings with law enforcement, saying “there is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”
Independent Sector, a national nonprofit membership organization, warned that the prosecution imposes a “chilling effect on advocacy-based and charitable organizations.” For now, the list continues to be published, continues to be used by giving platforms and payment processors, and continues to carry no formal process for a listed organization to appeal.