I’ll be interested to hear if this decision is appealed to SCOTUS by the losing entity, a church:
The 11th Circuit on Wednesday struck down a Florida evangelical Christian ministry’s claim that it was discriminated against and defamed after the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled it a hate group, causing Amazon to deny its application to fundraise through the online retailing giant’s charitable website.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court upheld an Alabama federal judge’s September 2019 decision to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Fort Lauderdale-based Coral Ridge Ministries Media (also known as D. James Kennedy Ministries) against Amazon, the AmazonSmile Foundation and the SPLC.
In a 15-page opinion, the panel found that Coral Ridge’s defamation claim against the Alabama-based SPLC fails because it did not show that the organization “acted with actual malice” when it listed the ministry on its “hate map” as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.
“Coral Ridge did not sufficiently plead facts that give rise to a reasonable inference that SPLC ‘actually entertained serious doubts as to the veracity’ of its hate group definition and that definition’s application to Coral Ridge, or that SPLC was ‘highly aware’ that the definition and its application was ‘probably false’,” U.S. Circuit Judge Charles Wilson, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote on behalf of the panel. [Courthouse News Service]
That the SPLC (Southern Policy Law Center) is not a governmental entity is beyond dispute.
That it used standard criteria to find Coral Ridge belonged in its hate group listing appears to be a finding of the court. The use of a criteria approach, as I understand it, provides protection in the form of appeal to standardized processes, rather than just foaming at the mouth. While the First Amendment can be limited, this approach permits what it’s doing.
And is Coral Ridge Ministries Media a hate group? Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist sure thinks so, and advocating murder based on sexual orientation sure seems like a reason to be on the list to me.
But here’s the thing: SCOTUS, with the addition of Associate Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett to the court, has definitely taken to favoring religious organizations, even when it’s clearly a mistake. Will this case make it to them for examination? Keep in mind the 11th Circuit Court was composed of three judges, and it wasn’t a monoculture:
Wilson was joined on the panel by U.S. Circuit Judge Britt Grant, a Donald Trump appointee, and Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Gerald Tjoflat, a Gerald Ford appointee.
The legal issues seem clear and with little nuance – and Coral Ridge is hardly an honorable institution. In my mind, it’d be a tragedy just to have this heard by SCOTUS. Keep an eye out.
