MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A federal judge has denied the Southern Poverty Law Center’s request to dismiss a Justice Department indictment, ruling that the Montgomery-based civil rights organization did not meet the high legal burden required to show it was prosecuted in retaliation for its speech and criticism of the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks, in a 36-page order issued Friday, also rejected the SPLC’s request to obtain discovery into the Justice Department’s prosecutorial decision-making. The organization had argued that the 11-count indictment was the product of a politically motivated campaign against an institution long targeted by conservative critics.
“The SPLC has failed to offer some evidence tending to show animus on the part of the prosecutors involved in bringing this case and that such animus resulted in the prosecution,” Marks wrote. “Because it cannot satisfy that standard, it necessarily fails to satisfy the higher standard that would entitle it to dismissal of the indictment.”
The ruling does not address the merits of the criminal allegations or establish whether the SPLC committed wrongdoing. The organization has pleaded not guilty, and a jury trial remains set to begin Oct. 5 in Montgomery.
A federal grand jury indicted the SPLC in April on 11 counts of wire fraud, making false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The Justice Department alleges the nonprofit secretly used more than $3 million in donated funds between 2014 and 2023 to pay people associated with extremist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations and neo-Nazi groups, while misleading donors about how their contributions would be used.
The government alleges that the SPLC used bank accounts tied to fictitious entities to obscure the payments. The indictment includes two civil forfeiture actions seeking to recover alleged proceeds from the purported scheme. The allegations remain unproven in court.
The SPLC’s motion contended that the prosecution followed political pressure from opponents of its “Hate Map,” the organization’s project identifying groups it describes as extremist or hate groups. Its lawyers pointed to public comments by President Donald Trump and other administration officials, as well as a letter that conservative organizations sent to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller asking the administration to scrutinize the SPLC.
The organization argued that the FBI’s basis for opening a full investigation closely mirrored language in the letter to Miller and raised questions about whether the investigation had an independent factual basis. The SPLC did not allege that Miller directly instructed the Justice Department to pursue charges.
Marks found that the timing and political context cited by the SPLC were insufficient to establish that prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Middle District of Alabama acted with retaliatory intent or were directed by a superior who did.
“The court has little trouble concluding that the SPLC offers insufficient objective evidence that Mr. Davidson or any other prosecutor in the Middle District of Alabama was vindictively motivated to indict the SPLC for the exercise of its First Amendment rights,” Marks wrote, referring to then-Acting U.S. Attorney Kevin Davidson.
Marks also rejected the government’s narrower argument that a vindictive-prosecution claim can arise only from retaliation for a defendant’s exercise of procedural litigation rights. But she concluded that the SPLC had not shown the evidence necessary to warrant either dismissal or discovery into the government’s motives.
“Two things can be true at once: critics are not constitutionally immunized solely because they speak frequently and prosecutorial decisions may be second guessed—if they evince some evidence of animus,” Marks wrote.
The case has drawn unusual attention because the SPLC, founded in 1971 and headquartered in Montgomery, has spent decades tracking white supremacist and other extremist organizations while litigating civil rights cases. The group has also been a persistent target of conservative activists and organizations that dispute its classifications and accuse it of partisan bias.
At the time the indictment was announced, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the SPLC of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” FBI Director Kash Patel alleged the organization deceived donors and paid leaders of extremist organizations. Those statements reflected the government’s allegations, which the SPLC denies and which have not been tested at trial.
The trial is scheduled before Marks in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.