ORWELLIAN: Conservative Group Targeted by Michigan AG’s ‘Hate Crimes Unit’ Gets Day in Court After 4-Year Delay

A Judeo-Christian law firm will finally get its day in court after Michigan’s Democrat attorney general targeted it when launching a “Hate Crimes Unit” in 2019.

Attorney General Dana Nessel and then-Michigan Department of Civil Rights Executive Director Agustin Arbulu announced the Hate Crimes Unit in 2019, which would “fight against hate crimes and the many hate groups … in our state.” The announcement referenced the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which brands mainstream conservative and Christian groups “hate groups,” putting them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.

The law firm American Freedom Law Center, which the SPLC brands an “anti-Muslim hate group” for its claims that traditional Islam supports jihad, filed a lawsuit challenging what the law firm called the state’s “Orwellian” violation of its First Amendment rights, and after initial proceedings, the case has been delayed since 2021.

“The U.S. Constitution does not permit the Michigan attorney general and the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to weaponize their government offices to target political opponents,” American Freedom Law Center Co-Founder and Senior Counsel Robert Muise told The Daily Signal on Friday. He stood by earlier comments calling the Hate Crimes Unit Orwellian.

In 2019, when he filed the lawsuit, Muise summarized Nessel’s policy this way: “‘We’re going to keep files on you.’ It’s Orwellian. It’s Big Brother. It’s the thought police.”

American Freedom Law Center’s Lawsuit Delayed

The American Freedom Law Center brought three claims against Nessel and Arbulu: violation of free speech rights under the First Amendment, violation of expressive association rights under the First Amendment, and violation of equal protection as guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment. (James White, the current director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, has replaced Arbulu as the defendant representing the department.)

The case proceeded in 2019, leading to depositions and discovery until both the center and the defendants filed dueling motions for “summary judgment”—asking the court to resolve the case in their favor—in January 2021.

The case remained in limbo for four years, delayed in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, until March.

“On March 3, 2025, I filed a notice with the court, as I have done several other times, informing the court that our motion for summary judgment has been pending for four years and is ripe for a decision,” Muise told The Daily Signal. “In response, the court finally granted a hearing, which is scheduled for June 2.”

“As we demonstrated in our court filings, the defendants’ official endorsement of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups constitutes a concrete and particular reputational injury to my organization, the American Freedom Law Center, which is one of the many conservative groups wrongly targeted by the largely discredited SPLC,” the attorney said. “It is our hope that the court will grant our motion and stop this government attack of individuals and organizations based on their political and religious views.”

“This type of lawfare, which is engaged in by the Left, has to stop,” Muise added.

The SPLC ‘Hate’ Accusation

As I wrote in my book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy in the 1980s and publishes a “hate map” that plots mainstream conservative and Christian groups alongside Klan chapters. The SPLC claims this map reveals the “infrastructure of white supremacy.”

The map includes parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty, groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform that want immigration laws enforced, religious freedom law firms like Alliance Defending Freedom, and conservative Christian think tanks like the Family Research Council. Last year, the SPLC added an LGBTQ group, Gays Against Groomers, to its list of “anti-LGBTQ hate groups,” the same classification it uses to describe the Family Research Council.

The SPLC has faced a torrent of criticism for these classifications. It has publicly apologized to former Housing and Urban Development Secretary and celebrated neurosurgeon Ben Carson after branding him an extremist for his views on marriage. It has paid $3 million to a Muslim reformer it branded an “anti-Islamic extremist.” In 2019, amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal, a former employee called the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam” that allowed the SPLC to scare donors into ponying up cash by exaggerating hate.

In 2007, SPLC spokesman Mark Potok said his organization aims to “destroy” the groups on the “hate map.”

“Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate groups. I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, completely destroy them,” Potok declared in Michigan that year.

In 2012, a terrorist targeted the Family Research Council’s office in Washington, D.C., planning to shoot everyone in the building. A brave staffer foiled his attempt, and he later confessed to using the SPLC’s map to find his target.

The Dustin Inman Society, a Georgia-based immigration group that sued the SPLC for branding it an “anti-immigrant hate group,” sued the SPLC for defamation, and that case has moved forward into the discovery process.

Telling Admissions

The Hate Crimes Unit launched an investigation into at least one organization the SPLC branded a “hate group,” namely Church Militant, a conservative Catholic website. Church Militant ultimately shut down amid an unrelated defamation lawsuit.

The American Freedom Law Center’s 2021 motion for summary judgment lists many key statements from Nessel that highlight why the legal group claims the Hate Crimes Unit announcement harmed its reputation and singled it out for government surveillance.

Testifying to the Michigan House Judiciary Committee in February 2019, Nessel said, “We also have now a Hate Crimes Unit to combat the exponential rise in hate crimes against members of our minority communities, as well as tackling the 28 identifiable hate groups that are currently operating in Michigan.”

In response to a question about the source of the information about “hate groups,” Nessel admitted that it came from the SPLC.

“That information was received from the Southern Poverty Law Center, and they do a detailed analysis on that,” Nessel said. “I think a lot of it has to do with when you have some sort of organized group—and part of the reason for that group’s existence has to do with some sort of animosity against minority community members.”

“So, if you have a group that speaks out, whether it’s through their postings on the internet or whether it’s in public appearances, and the seeming purpose of the group or large part of the purpose of the group has to do with disparaging members of minority communities, I think the SPLC frequently connotes that to be a hate group and then they do a further assessment, I believe, to see if they think that group is a threat of any manner,” she added. “And I think a lot of that has to do with whether there’s stockpiling of weapons or threats of violence or things of that nature.”

The SPLC does define a hate group in terms of attacking or maligning “an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics,” but its “hate group” accusations do not imply engagement in criminal conduct or any “actual unlawful action,” according to the SPLC’s website.

Contrary to Nessel’s suggestion, organizations do not have to have stockpiled weapons or have made any threats of violence to end up on the “hate map.” Her suggestion does reveal, however, that the SPLC accusation carries connotations that arguably harm the reputations of its targets.

The American Freedom Law Center asked the attorney general whether she would make a public announcement disavowing the SPLC’s claim that the organization is a hate group.

“No, because the Hate Crimes Unit does not investigate hate groups, and the Hate Crimes Unit hasn’t researched or investigated the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designation of plaintiff as a hate group,” Nessel replied. “Consequently, I cannot say whether plaintiff is a hate group or whether the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designation is correct.”

The American Freedom Law Center claims that Nessel’s endorsement of the SPLC accusation harms its reputation and unlawfully discriminates against the organization.

“When I get phone calls and people reaching out to me trying to understand what this is all about and donors who are fearful about being exposed as a result of this, you can bet your bottom dollar that AFLC has been damaged and that damage continues because at no time has the attorney general or the [civil rights department] apologized and retracted any statement by anyone on their behalf,” American Freedom Law Center’s other co-founder, David Yerushalmi, testified in the case.

Neither the attorney general’s office nor the SPLC responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.

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