UVU Shooting Fuels SPLC Legal Battle

The Southern Poverty Law Center is fighting a new federal case that says its paid informant program defrauded donors. (lasvegassun.com) The Justice Department announced an 11-count indictment on April 21, 2026, in federal court in Montgomery, Alabama, charging the nonprofit with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of money laundering conspiracy. Prosecutors said the center paid at least $3 million from 2014 to 2023 to eight people tied to groups including the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America and the National Socialist Party of America. (cnbc.com) The Southern Poverty Law Center said the payments were for confidential informants used to gather intelligence on violent groups and protect staff and the public. Interim chief executive Bryan Fair said the allegations are false and said the group regularly shared information from informants with law enforcement, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (lasvegassun.com) Orem, Utah, is part of the story because the federal scrutiny landed months after Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025. The FBI says the shooting happened at about noon on campus and that a suspect later jumped from a rooftop and fled before a suspect was taken into custody. (fbi.gov) Kirk’s death turned new attention to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map,” which has tracked hate and anti-government groups since 2000. In its 2024 report, published May 22, 2025, the center said it documented 1,371 hate and anti-government extremist groups nationwide. (splcenter.org, splcenter.org) That map also swept in Turning Point USA, the group Kirk founded, through a 2024 report section titled “Case Study of the Hard Right.” Critics have argued that listing helped fuel hostility toward Kirk, while the Southern Poverty Law Center has stood by its broader extremism reporting. (splcenter.org, lasvegassun.com) Utah Valley University opened an outside review of the shooting on September 22, 2025, saying it wanted to examine security lapses and improve campus safety practices. The school said the review would be independent and third-party. (kuer.org) The legal case now puts two questions in the same frame: whether the Southern Poverty Law Center misled donors about how it funded intelligence gathering, and whether its public labeling of organizations has widened the political fight around its work. The indictment is pending, and the center says it will contest it. (npr.org, lasvegassun.com)