When I was a kid in Washington, D.C., an older couple lived across the street from my family. They were very nice, very pleasant. The husband had worked for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) before retiring. More than a decade later, after my family moved to Houston, my eleventh-grade U.S. history class was talking about the Civil Rights Era and the organizations that were involved. I was surprised to hear the ACLU mentioned because, at that point in time, the mid-'80s, nothing good came from it.
Because of the class discussion, I asked my mother about our long-ago neighbor: “Why did Mr. Fremont work for the ACLU?” My teenage mind could not fathom the lovely, pleasant man I remembered with the present-day ACLU. My mother replied, “He worked for the ACLU when they did some good.” That blew my mind.
The ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) were based on the same idea: to provide legal help for those being harassed by the federal government. The ACLU has been in existence far longer, founded in 1920, but like the SPLC, while it did some good in the beginning of its existence, that has faded from memory. Instead of being known for supporting unpopular free speech, it is now known as a progressive advocacy organization; the more progressive, the better. There is one big difference between the two organizations: The ACLU hasn’t been indicted on fraud charges; the SPLC has.
The SPLC is facing an eleven-count indictment of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Its former Chief Financial Officer, Heidi Beirich, was arrested separately and charged with the same things. Beirich is listed as Employee-2. She is also alleged to have had a romantic relationship with one of the infiltrators of a neo-Nazi group. They shared a house and bank accounts. She funneled over 1.2 million dollars to her lover.
Beirich ran the Intelligence Project, a project that was supposed to track hate groups in the U.S. That is not what happened. Instead, Beirich oversaw payments of donors’ money to the hate groups that the SPLC was supposed to be destroying. According to the indictment, Beirich opened false accounts at banks in order to funnel the donated money to people within the hate groups. In several instances, the money was directed to an Imperial Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan. Between 2007 and 2023, the organization directed more than $4 million in donated funds to extremist groups such as the KKK, Unite the Right, and the National Socialist Movement.
What happened? How did an organization founded on fighting for civil rights switch to supporting those groups that denied people their civil rights?
Founded in August 1971, the Southern Poverty Law Center was created by two civil rights lawyers, Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levine, Jr., as a legal clinic focused on fighting poverty, racial discrimination, and the use of the death penalty in the U.S. In 1979, Dees and the SPLC started filing civil lawsuits against hate groups, such as the KKK, seeking monetary damages on behalf of their victims. The civil lawsuits proved to be successful and bankrupted the KKK. Some civil libertarians complained and stated that the lawsuits set legal precedents that could be used against activist groups that aren’t hate groups.
The libertarians were correct. However, the SPLC was also the first legal organization to win multiple lawsuits against the KKK. Without money, the KKK could not be as terrifying as it had been in the past. Keep the KKK being bankrupted in mind. I’ll come back to it in a bit.
The Hate Map/Hatewatch on the SPLC website started out as the Klanwatch project in 1981, long before the Internet existed. A quick look at the Hate Map on the SPLC website will show the “hate” groups' names in each state. For the Houston area, the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panthers are listed. Okay, this writer agrees with that. However, looking around the state, other groups such as Moms for Liberty in Bexar County (pronounced bear) are also listed. Why?
On the SPLC website, there are multiple categories of hate groups, including Constitutional Sheriff, General Hate, Hate Music, Neo-Confederate, and Radical Traditional Catholicism. Some of the groups this writer has never heard of, and some she has, such as Sovereign Citizen (Sovereign Citizens are some seriously scary people).
In 1986, the entire legal staff resigned, except for Dees, as the SPLC shifted from traditional civil rights work to fighting against so-called right-wing extremism. That is where this writer believes that the organization started to go in a direction never thought of by its founders.
Dees was still the head of the SPLC. In 1995, the Montgomery Advertiser won Pulitzer recognition for exposing SPLC management self-interest, questionable practices, and employee racial discrimination. Yes, racial discrimination at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In 2016, due to President Trump's election, the SPLC hired more than 200 employees, and its endowment surged. In 2019, the SPLC fired Dees. It gave no reason, but two dozen SPLC employees signed and sent a letter to the management documenting allegations of misconduct, sexual harassment, and racism. A quote from a former employee starts to bring events into perspective. The former employee stated, “unchecked power of lavishly compensated white men at the top of the SPLC contributed to a culture which made black and female employees the targets of harassment.” This was March 2019.
Between March 2019 and July 2025, the SPLC went through four CEOs. The newest CEO is Ryan P. Haygood. He started in August 2026. He certainly picked a time to be the head of the SPLC, didn’t he?
In July 2024, the SPLC laid off 25% of its workforce. In September 2024, it laid off 92% of the remaining workers, while at the same time funneling millions of dollars to hate groups. Remember how the SPLC bankrupted the KKK in the early 1980s? By 2007, money flowed to the KKK and other hate groups simply to keep them around. It appears that in order to keep the money flowing to the SPLC, hate groups had to be kept active.
This astonishing turn of events is 180 degrees from what the SPLC started out as in 1971. The organization's pivot from protecting civil rights to targeting right-wing extremism was the catalyst that started the downward decline.
Has the SPLC done some good in its past? Absolutely. Is it doing any good now? If the indictments are to be believed, no. The organization is not and hasn’t been doing any good for quite some time. Apparently, those at the top figured they could coast on the SPLC’s reputation and not get caught. Unfortunately for them, time ran out. In the end, what ended the SPLC was simple. Greed. What will happen to the organization now? No one knows. And that’s an absolute shame.
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