Leftist Group Dodges Accountability for ‘Hate Group’ Accusation After Judge Blocks Discovery
10th January 2026
A federal judge dismissed a conservative nonprofit’s defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center Wednesday, reversing a previous judge’s theory of the case.
Critics say the SPLC routinely smears mainstream conservative and Christian groups by placing them on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. D.A. King, founder of the Dustin Inman Society, sued the center for defamation after it branded his Georgia-based organization—which opposes illegal immigration—an “anti-immigrant hate group.”
Judge W. Keith Watkins of the Middle District of Alabama allowed the defamation case to move forward in 2023, but Judge Corey L. Maze of the Northern District of Alabama later took the case.
After discovery—the legal process of acquiring documents to prove a case—Maze ruled Wednesday that most of King’s claims fell outside the statute of limitations, and that King further failed to prove the center acted with “actual malice” in re-publishing the “hate group” accusation. King died last year, but his estate is a plaintiff in the case.
Harry Mihet, chief litigation counsel for Liberty Counsel and one of King’s attorneys, told The Daily Signal that Judge Maze took the wrong approach to the case.
“I think the first judge who looked at this issue got it exactly right and the court currently got it exactly wrong,” Mihet told The Daily Signal in a phone call Thursday.
“The first judge looked at this in careful detail and nothing’s changed since. Whether something is time barred is a matter of law, so that should not have been affected by the facts in discovery.”