Did the Biden administration coordinate with the Southern Poverty Law Center to designate Moms for Liberty an “extremist” group, and what kinds of communications have the FBI, the Department of Justice, and other federal agencies had about the parental rights group?

Those questions are central to a lawsuit filed last week by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project against a host of agencies in the Biden administration for their failure to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests regarding Moms for Liberty, its co-founders, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In June, the Southern Poverty Law Center designated Moms for Liberty an “extremist” organization, adding the group to its “Hate Watch List” along with the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and the Proud Boys.

“The SPLC designation painted a target on the backs of every mom and dad across the country,” a Moms for Liberty co-founder, Tiffany Justice, tells the Sun. “We want to know if the Biden administration — if the DOJ and DOE — is talking to the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

White House records show that members of the Southern Poverty Law Center visited the White House — meeting with President Biden in some instances — at least 11 times in the last three years, according to Heritage’s news outlet, the Daily Signal.

Heritage filed Freedom of Information Act requests in July with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Health and Human Services and received “no substantive” response, its lawsuit states. It is suing for the release of these records.

“We know that the radical Southern Poverty Law Center has targeted the patriots at Moms for Liberty, which resulted in an unhinged mob harassment campaign. We know the Biden administration and their weaponized law enforcement agencies work closely with the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the director of Heritage’s Oversight Project, Mike Howell, said. “President Biden needs to leave the moms alone.”

“Having your voice heard at a local school board meeting is not extremism, it really embodies everything it means to be an American,” Ms. Justice says. “Why would they not comply with the records requests? What are they hiding?”

Ms. Justice and two other school board mothers in Florida founded Moms for Liberty in 2021 to fight school closures and mask mandates in public schools. Since then, the group has shifted its focus to a broader parental rights in education mission, mainly fighting critical race theory, gender ideology, and LGBTQ lessons in schools. One of the group’s mottos is, “We don’t co-parent with the government.”

As concern has grown over LGBTQ and race lessons in public schools, Moms for Liberty has become a potent force in Republican politics. The group has expanded rapidly and now has chapters in 48 states, where it recruits mothers to run for school boards and local offices. 

Most of the major Republican presidential hopefuls, including President Trump, Governor DeSantis, Governor Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy, spoke at Moms for Liberty’s annual summit at Philadelphia in June. Ms. Justice says Moms for Liberty and the parental rights mission is nonpartisan, but the group’s focus on fighting LGBTQ lessons in schools has made it a darling in Republican circles and more of a third rail for Democrats. 

A Democratic presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dropped out of a planned speaking engagement at the Moms for Liberty summit at the last minute. His campaign said he did this for “family reasons,” but the SLPC designation and negative press around the group likely didn’t help. There were large protests outside the event, with signs decrying book bans and saying, “Hate has no place here.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Moms for Liberty a “far-right organization” that is “antigovernment and conspiracy propagandist, anti-LGBTQ and anti-gender identity, and anti-inclusive curriculum.” The SPLC warns that the group is “spreading like hellfire,” that it is “firmly anti-public school,” and that “pictures have circulated across social media of Moms for Liberty leaders and members posing with Proud Boys in their full regalia.”

No doubt Moms for Liberty has generated controversy. The group was temporarily suspended from Twitter in July for posting that “Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA.” Chapters of the group have actively worked to ban from schools books with LGBTQ and race content.

A Tennessee chapter of Moms for Liberty tried to remove a book on Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington, saying it promotes “anti-American, anti-White, anti-Mexican” instruction. In June, an Indiana chapter of Moms for Liberty quoted Hitler — “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future” — on the front of its newsletter. The chapter later apologized and removed the quotation. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s “extremist” designation and “hate watch” list, though, have lost some credibility in recent years. Along with neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, the SPLC designates a religious liberty law firm, Alliance Defending Freedom, as a “hate group” and even added a Somali survivor of genital mutilation, Ayan Hirsi Ali, to its anti-Muslim extremist list.

The SPLC apologized and paid a hefty settlement to a British activist, Maajid Nawaz, in 2018 for including him on the 2016 anti-Muslim extremist list. An immigration reform group, the Dustin Inman Society, is suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for labeling it a “hate group.”

Ms. Justice says the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “extremist” designation is “in the first paragraph of every article that’s written about us.” She says one of her member mothers was contacted by the FBI after she spoke at a school board meeting. She wants to know if the Biden administration is working to undermine or investigate the group.

“You’re making peanut butter and jelly one minute, and then the next minute you’ve got the FBI calling you asking questions like, ‘Do you have guns in your home?’” Ms. Justice says. “It seems to us that there is some coordination going on.”

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This dispatch has been expanded from the bulldog edition to include examples of controversy that Moms for Liberty has engendered.