$200B in Damages: Conservative Group Gears Up to Sue in Response After SPLC Tried to ‘Bankrupt Us’ With ‘Frivolous Lawsuit’
7th April 2025
A conservative Christian law firm is gearing up to countersue the Southern Poverty Law Center after the left-leaning firm attempted to bankrupt it with a “frivolous lawsuit” that demanded $200 billion in damages.
The SPLC represented a woman who dragged Liberty Counsel through nine years of legal purgatory, all based on a lie. The SPLC did not originally represent the woman, but joined the case after she sued Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian law firm the SPLC has branded an “anti-LGBTQ hate group.”
“The Southern Poverty Law Center saw Liberty Counsel’s name and that’s when they started salivating, thinking they could come after Liberty Counsel and bankrupt us,” Mat Staver, the Christian firm’s founder and chairman, told The Daily Signal in an interview Friday.
Yet the entire case fell apart when the Vermont woman who sued Liberty Counsel, Janet Jenkins, admitted under oath that the very basis for including the law firm in the suit was a lie, Staver said.
Judge William K. Sessions III, a Bill Clinton appointee, granted Liberty Counsel’s motion on March 31. Sessions ruled that Jenkins’ case against Liberty Counsel had no merit. This came, however, after 9 years of legal proceedings involving 186,000 documents, over 500 pages of legal writing, over 5,000 exhibits, and 25 depositions, Staver said.