MONTGOMERY, Ala. (Legal Newsline) – The Southern Poverty Law Center is defending its decision to place a border control advocacy group on a list of hate groups.
Sued by Donald King and The Dustin Inman Society over the designation, the SPLC on June 13 filed a motion to dismiss. It notes King and DIS already tried their claims for defamation in a separate case that was dismissed in March.
Rather than file an amended complaint in that case, DIS and King chose to file the new case against SPLC.
“SPLC’s statement that DIS is an anti-immigrant hate group is not susceptible to empirical proof, because quantums of hate and tolerance are not measured on a numerically verifiable scale, and is therefore an expression of subjective opinion protected under the First Amendment,” the motion says.
“(E)ven if such a characterization could be deemed subject to objective proof and therefore potentially provable as false, the designation still would not be actionable under the First Amendment or state law because it is a conclusion based on disclosed facts.”
SPLC also did not act with “actual malice,” an issue plaintiffs must prove in defamation cases, the group says. The first lawsuit was tossed because SPLC failed to show it, and SPLC chose not to amend.
This litigation, however, is not written on a blank slate,” the motion says. “The doctrine of collateral estoppel bars Plaintiffs from re-litigating issues that were decided in the prior lawsuit, including actual malice allegations made and argued in that lawsuit.”
SPLC publishes a list of hate groups on an annual basis and changed its tune on DIS, which was founded in 2005, in 2018.
"What did change is that on March 1, 2018, Defendant SPLC registered lobbyists to work against a pro-enforcement bill pending in the Georgia General Assembly," the suit says. Georgia is DIS's home state.
"While Defendant SPLC goes on to state that it does not place this classification on individuals, the published reports focus almost exclusively on allegations regarding Plaintiff King to support the designation as an 'anti-immigrant hate group,'" the suit adds.
"In none of the defamatory material published by Defendant SPLC does it allege that Plaintiff King or Plaintiff DIS maligned an entire class of people or at any time fit any part of the Defendant SPLC's own definition of 'anti-immigrant hate group.'"
Statements made by King and DIS were taken out of context, the suit says.