Southern Poverty Law Center tars parental rights advocates as ‘hate groups’

Parents opposed to the spread of critical race theory and gender ideology in public schools have landed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map.”

The far-left center added nearly 500 “hate groups” to its notorious “hate map” in 2022 by expanding the definition to include “antigovernment” organizations, which evidently means parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty, in the newly released report on “hate and extremism.”

“Schools are a primary target for locally driven extremist mobilization, according to the report, with 12 anti-student inclusion groups leading a movement to gain power through school boards to attack public education, ban books, and remove any curriculum that contains discussions of race, discrimination, and LGBTQ+ identities,” said the SPLC in its press release.

The annual report issued Tuesday counted 1,225 “hate and antigovernment extremist groups” in 2022, an increase of 67% from 2021, when the group labeled 733 organizations as “hate groups.”

The jump may be attributed in large part to the addition of organizations like Parents Defending Education, Parents Involved in Education, Parents’ Rights in Education, and Moms for Liberty, which are now identified as SPLC as part of the “antigovernment movement.”

“One group at the forefront of this mobilization is Moms for Liberty, a Florida-based group that the SPLC has designated as an anti-government extremist group in 2022,” said the center.

The SPLC long has been known for attacking mainstream conservative organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and Family Research Council by lumping them on its “hate map” with neo-Nazis and the KKK.

But this is the first year the SPLC has targeted the parental rights movement.

Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, who started the group during the pandemic to counter teachers’ unions pushing school lockdowns, threw the “hate” label back at the SPLC.

“Name-calling parents who want to be a part of their child’s education as ‘hate groups’ or ‘bigoted’ just further exposes what this battle is all about: Who fundamentally gets to decide what is taught to our kids in school – parents or government employees?” they said.

“We believe that parental rights do not stop at the classroom door and no amount of hate from groups like this is going to stop that,” they added.

Parents Rights’ in Education tweeted: “We @rightsparents take it as a badge of honor to make the ’hate’ list of such a vile/evil/hate-filled organization as SPLC.”

“We will not stop, we will not be silenced. Stop messing with our kids,” said the group on Twitter.

Not impressed with the decision to tar parental rights groups with the “hate” label was Sen. J.D. Vance, Ohio Republican.

“The SPLC is a garbage organization now dedicated to harassing groups that advocate for parents,” Mr. Vance tweeted. “In the future, their pronouncements must be met with scorn.”

The SPLC is a garbage organization now dedicated to harassing groups that advocate for parents. In the future, their pronouncements must be met with scorn. https://t.co/L4DUAfD0UZ

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) June 6, 2023

In the past few years, the SPLC has seen its credibility drop over its left-wing bias; its aggressive fundraising; its palatial office in Montgomery, Alabama, known as the “Poverty Palace”; and the 2019 firing of co-founder Morris Dees amid allegations of sexual harassment and sex- and race-based discrimination.

In April, a federal judge refused to dismiss a defamation case against the center filed by groups opposed to illegal immigration that were tagged as “hate groups.”

Even so, the Biden administration has used the center as an authoritative resource.

The White House partnered with the group in its anti-Semitism strategy unveiled last month, and the FBI’s Richmond office cited the SPLC in its much-decried leaked report on “radical-traditionalist Catholics.”

Tyler O’Neil, author of the “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” noted that the center’s report makes no mention of the issues now roiling public schools, such as bringing in books with sexually graphic content in the name of LGBTQ inclusion.

“It does not mention how many on the Left champion the idea that children should be able to identify with a gender opposite their biological sex, hide that identity from their parents, and even obtain life-altering drugs without parental consent,” he said in the Daily Signal. “Instead, it acts as though the parental rights movement emerged in a vacuum, or worse, is motivated by hatred.”

A 2022 Grinnell College poll found two-thirds of Americans believe public schools are on the “wrong track,” spurring the rise of the parents’ rights movement.

“Empowering parents continues to be our mission today and that has fueled our organization’s growth – like wildfire to now 45 states in the country,” said the Moms for Liberty co-founders.

• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.