Key keywords: Trump Justice Department, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC hate group designation, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, Federal False Claims Act, First Amendment nonprofit rights, civil action against advocacy groups The 2025 civil action filed by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Trump administration against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) marks one of the most high-profile federal legal challenges to a U.S. civil rights nonprofit in modern history. For over 50 years, the SPLC has operated as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, with a core mission to track domestic extremist activity, litigate against white supremacist groups, and publish an annual list of organizations it classifies as "hate groups" based on documented evidence of bigoted ideology or violent action against marginalized communities. The DOJ’s 78-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in March 2025, centers on two core allegations. First, federal prosecutors claim the SPLC intentionally misclassified more than 30 conservative advocacy organizations as hate groups between 2020 and 2024, despite having no credible evidence of violent or bigoted activity, in order to inflate donation totals and secure $120 million in unwarranted grant funding from federal and state government agencies that reference the SPLC’s hate group list for procurement and security screening decisions. The DOJ alleges these actions violate the Federal False Claims Act, which imposes steep penalties for intentional misrepresentation to secure government funds. Second, the DOJ is seeking to revoke the SPLC’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, arguing the organization has abandoned its charitable mission to operate as a partisan political advocacy group in violation of Internal Revenue Service rules for nonprofits that prohibit excessive participation in partisan political activity. In its official response filed in April 2025, the SPLC called the lawsuit an "unconstitutional act of political retaliation" by the Trump administration, noting that the organization has faced repeated criticism from conservative political figures for its classification of groups aligned with the former president’s agenda, including hardline anti-immigration organizations and groups that push unsubstantiated false claims about the 2020 presidential election. The SPLC’s legal team argues that its hate group designations are protected under the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and free press, as all classifications are based on publicly available, independently verifiable evidence of group activity. Legal analysts note that the case has no direct precedent in federal court, as the DOJ has never before sought to revoke a major civil rights nonprofit’s tax status over the content of its published research. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for June 18, 2025, and advocacy groups across the political spectrum are monitoring the proceedings closely, as the ruling will set binding precedent for federal regulation of nonprofit advocacy speech for decades.