Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has pointed out that the SPLC often labels Christian groups as hateful, a concern shared on Monday by Justice Thomas. Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jeremy Tedesco said during congressional hearings in 2020 that "The SPLC actively lobbies corporations to harm and economically discriminate against groups and people they don’t like." He added that the SPLC has been "completely discredited."
Still, the Biden administration has teamed up with the SPLC to tackle "extremism." This administration also notably undertook to investigate parents who go to school board meetings to demand higher educational quality, and less indoctrination, for their children.
BREAKING: Biden Pentagon to welcome discredited, anti-Christian SPLC activists to advise Counter Extremism Working Group pic.twitter.com/DKEXV4iiNb— Jack Posobiec ?? (@JackPosobiec) May 19, 2021
The case of The New York Times v. Sullivan centered around an ad in defense of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. against charges against him. The ad contained some factual inaccuracies, and Montgomery, Alabama Public Safety Commissioner for the city said that those inaccuracies reflected badly on him, despite his not being named, and brought a libel suit.
In a lower, Alabama court, Sullivan was awarded damages. But when the case hit the Supreme Court, they ruled against Sullivan, saying that "public officials must meet a higher standard for libel judgments and show that the publisher acted with knowledge that something was false."
It was in this case that the term "actual-malice" was coined, meaning that the media entity had to be proven to have willfully made the statements "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." Proving "actual-malice" is remarkably difficult to do, and very rarely succeeds in court.
https://thepostmillennial.com/clarence-thomas-slams-us-defamation-laws-says-he-wants-individuals-to-be-able-to-sue-in-splc-case