On August 15, 2024, the Southern Poverty Law Center called "debanking" a "conspiracy theory". The SPLC's assertions did not age well. As reported by Yahoo! Finance:
The Comptroller of the Currency says the nation's nine largest banks denied financial services to customers based on their political, religious, or social beliefs, according to a regulatory review released Wednesday.
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The federal banking watchdog determined that the banks' sweeping internal guidelines lacked objective, risk-based criteria, effectively shutting out legitimate customers and businesses based on ideological leanings rather than financial risk.
The OCC said its findings reveal a systematic effort within the banking sector to restrict access for politically sensitive industries through both public and nonpublic policies.
Federal regulators found that lenders restricted certain sectors' access to financial services, including oil and gas exploration; coal mining; firearms or ammunition manufacturing or distribution; construction or operation of detention facilities; and the manufacturing, distribution or online retail of tobacco or e-cigarettes.
JPMorgan Chase’s WePay closed the account of a religious organization after it was designated an “extremist hate group” by the SPLC; internal notes described it as a “right wing religious conservative non profit with strong anti LGBTQ rhetoric.” WePay also closed an account used by a devout Christian to fund a legal challenge to anti-discrimination laws.
PNC denied a line of credit to a media company in part because an owner funded Christian conservative groups the SPLC had labeled hate groups. Wells Fargo pressured a payment processor to end service to a religious nonprofit over its views on same-sex marriage.
These actions followed the circulation of a report titled “Bankrolling Bigotry: An Overview of the Online Funding Strategies of American Hate Groups.” The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network emailed it to leaders at major banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citibank.
Drawing on Southern Poverty Law Center designations, the report falsely listed pro-life and Christian organizations—Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel, the Family Research Council, the Ruth Institute, and the American College of Pediatricians—alongside white nationalist, white supremacist, and Holocaust denial groups. It urged platforms to restrict their access and recommended that Congress consider stripping them of tax-exempt status.
And from a New York Post article about the OCC findings:
Banks regularly used hate group designations from the Southern Poverty Law Center to debank customers. The SPLC was indicted in April on federal fraud and money-laundering charges, with prosecutors alleging it defrauded donors of millions of dollars. FBI Director Kash Patel has described the non-profit as a “partisan smear machine.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) isn't a harmless non-profit; it is a domestic terrorist organization disguised as one. It's leaders should be arrested and thrown in jail, and its funding stripped and returned to the taxpayers. The SPLC has been illegally circumventing U.S. immigration policy for decades, to name one of its crimes - among others.
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