A federal judge has allowed a lawsuit holding the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) accountable over its defamatory “hate group” designation to proceed.
On March 31, Senior U.S. District Judge William Keith Watkins ruled in favor of D.A. King, the president and founder of the Dustin Inman Society (DIS). The SPLC filed a lawsuit to dismiss King’s June 2022 complaint, which accused the civil rights group of smearing DIS as an “anti-immigrant hate group” despite lack of evidence. The Alabama-based SPLC was also accused of twisting the words of King and a DIS board member out of context.
Watkins’ decision has allowed the lawsuit to proceed to the discovery phase, in which both parties can demand documents from each other to bolster their respective arguments. Prior to King’s complaint, many of the lawsuits seeking to hold the SPLC accountable for its “hate group” designation – which the civil rights group has weaponized against mainstream conservative and Christian organizations – have failed.
Established in 2005, the DIS takes its name from 16-year-old Dustin Inman, who was killed in a car crash caused by Mexican illegal alien Gonzalo Harrell-Gonzalez back in 2000. It calls for more stringent border security, full implementation of immigration laws and an end to illegal immigration, the latter having seen an uptick during the Biden administration.
King expounded on his lawsuit in an emailed statement: “After telling the Associated Press (AP) in 2011 that we were not a ‘hate group,’ the SPLC changed their mind and made us an ‘anti-immigrant hate group’ within days of their registering as active lobbyists against pro-enforcement, immigration-related legislation here in the Georgia Capitol.”
He cited remarks by the SPLC’s Heidi Beirich, former director of its Intelligence Project, who initially described King as “nativist.” She told AP that time: “His tactics have generally not been to get up in the face of actual immigrants and threaten them. Because he is fighting … through the political process, that is not something we can quibble with, whether we like the law or not.”
Legal immigration now defined as “hate” by the SPLC
King lamented that the SPLC’s goal to paint the DIS as “extremists” and to “marginalize [the society] in the eyes of state lawmakers and the media” was “largely successful.” He is seeking a trial alongside compensatory and punitive damages from the SPLC. Moreover, King is also seeking a permanent injunction ordering the civil rights group to remove its accusations, issue a public retraction and publicly apologize to the DIS.
According to the Daily Signal, “while the SPLC brands [the DIS as] an ‘anti-immigrant hate group,’ it does not point to any specific evidence that King or the society ‘maligned an entire class of people.'” It added that the DIS board of advisors actually consists of individuals with “a variety of racial and immigrant backgrounds.”
Three Black women – communications director Inger Eberhart, Everette Robinson and Catherine Davis – are on the DIS advisory board. Three board members are also legal immigrants from Europe: Mary Grabar from Slovenia, Maria Litland from Austria and Sabine Durden-Coulter from Germany. Incidentally, Durden-Coulter’s son died in a car crash caused by a separate illegal alien in 2012.
Moreover, King’s lawsuit accused the SPLC of twisting his remarks during a 2007 meeting of the Georgia Republican Club out of context. The civil rights group quoted the DIS founder’s warning that certain illegal immigrants are in the U.S. not to mow people’s lawns, but to “blow up buildings and kill children.” King sent a link to the original report, which revealed that the remarks pertained to illegal aliens “from countries with known ties to terrorism.”
King sent the SPLC a demand letter in February 2020, ordering it to retract the “hate group” accusation against the DIS. However, the June 2022 lawsuit said the SPLC did not comply with this demand and instead continued to repeat the “verifiably false fabrication and accusation.”
“We want to not only defend our own reputation, but maybe make the SPLC think twice before they smear other honest pro-enforcement Americans,” said King. The SPLC did not respond to the Daily Signal‘s request for comment.
Watch Alex Newman explain how the SPLC serves as a Deep State tool against Christians and conservatives below.
(Article by Ramon Tomey republished from Citizens.news)