A non-profit, public interest law firm which focuses on religious freedom issues has been booted from AmazonSmile, after the Southern Poverty Law Center deemed the law firm a “hate group.”
In a statement released Thursday, Alliance for Defending Freedom President Michael Farris said the law firm has been excluded from the retail giant’s program, which donates a small portion of purchases to the nonprofit of the customer’s choice. Farris said the firm’s exclusion is the result of Amazon’s reliance upon SPLC, an organization that has long been regarded as a glorified direct-mail scam that profits from hate-mongering.
“If you are going to rely on a discredited partisan organization like the SPLC to determine who is eligible to participate in AmazonSmile, you should disclose that in your policy and to your customers,” Farris wrote in a letter to the retail giant. “Your customers have a right to know that you’ve placed such an organization as the gatekeeper to participation in a charitable program.”
SPLC has come under fire for its shady financial practices — which includes shuttling millions of dollars to offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda. Tax records show the organization has stockpiled nearly a half a billion dollars in assets, which spends more money on fundraising than it does actual legal work. The organization, which is famous for it’s “hate list” which targets legitimate conservative or religious groups by including them on a map alongside white supremacists and other extremist groups. SPLC’s hate list inspired a gunman to shoot a guard at the Family Research Council in 2013 with the intention to kill as many people as possible after the Christian organization found itself on the infamous list.
ADF, which is currently representing Jack Philips of Masterpiece Cakeshop before the Supreme Court, has reached out to the retailer in hopes that the firm can be re-enlisted in it’s program. While ADF is on the outs, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, is an eligible AmazonSmile recipient.
