Why Moms for Liberty was designated an ‘extremist’ group by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Moms for Liberty calls itself a parent empowerment group. But as the polarizing organization arrives in Philadelphia this week for its annual summit, it’s being identified as something else: an “antigovernment extremist group.”

That’s according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the veteran civil rights organization that tracks domestic extremism. This year, the group added a number of “parental rights” groups — the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to them as “anti-student-inclusion” — to its tally of hate and antigovernment extremist groups.

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Moms for Liberty has accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of espousing “hate” toward its members. Here’s why the organization says Moms for Liberty warrants the designation:

Founded in Florida in 2021, Moms for Liberty was born out of opposition to COVID-19 mandates in schools and now claims 285 chapters across 45 states. It pivoted to targeting diversity education and how LGBTQ issues are handled by schools, as part of a broader conservative movement that has accused schools of indoctrinating students around race, gender, and sexuality.

That messaging is what landed Moms for Liberty on the SPLC’s list, said Maya Henson Carey, a research analyst with SPLC’s Intelligence Project.

“It’s really looking at their overall narrative: that public educators and public schools are attempting to indoctrinate and sexualize children through this radical Marxist agenda,” Carey said.

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The SPLC notes statements from Moms for Liberty leaders, including the group’s slogan that “we do not co-parent with the government,” comments referring to “government schools,” support for abolishing the federal Department of Education, and accusations that teachers unions are responsible for indoctrination.

In one example flagged by the SPLC, Moms for Liberty said last year that “the K-12 cartel — also known as the national teachers union (NEA) — met and drafted a proposal to replace the word ‘mother’ with ‘birthing person.’” Describing the proposal as “insane,” Moms for Liberty said that “as the teachers union pushes an agenda focused on everything but educating our children, American parents are rising up, taking back our school districts and putting the focus back on educating our children.”

The SPLC didn’t designate Moms for Liberty as a hate group, which “really attack an entire class of people,” Carey said. Still, she said, “their tactics are definitely hateful.”

She drew parallels to segregationist parent groups that arose after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision — saying Moms for Liberty similarly aims to “suppress” different groups of people.

Carey pointed to the group’s opposition to critical race theory — an academic framework that examines racism as embedded in institutions, but that critics have used as a catchall for diversity education and “divisive” lessons. A Tennessee Moms for Liberty chapter, for instance, filed a complaint in 2021 alleging that texts about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington and Ruby Bridges’ autobiography violated the state’s anti-critical race theory law.

Moms for Liberty has also opposed policies accommodating transgender students and has referred to gender dysphoria as being “normalized by predators.” And while Moms for Liberty has said it’s focused on removing inappropriate sexual content, efforts to ban books from libraries have disproportionately targeted stories about LGBTQ people or people of color, Carey said.

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Moms for Liberty isn’t the only education-related group to land on the SPLC’s list this year. Others include No Left Turn in Education, started by a Gladwyne mother, and Parents Defending Education, which has been filing complaints against school districts across the country — including Lower Merion — saying it’s “fighting indoctrination in the classroom.”

Local Moms for Liberty chapters — Pennsylvania has the second-largest Moms for Liberty presence nationally, according to the group — appear on the SPLC’s “Hate Map” alongside neo-Nazi groups, like the National Socialist Movement, and white nationalist groups, like the Patriot Front.

Carey said the education groups represent a trend of “a shift to public spaces” by extremist groups, that “comes with them showing up for school board meetings and running for public office. A lot of these antigovernment and hate groups are really infiltrating the lives of everyday Americans.”

Some Moms for Liberty chapters have been linked to groups like the Proud Boys. Last week, an Indiana chapter made national headlines for a quote it attributed to Hitler in its newsletter: “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.” (Following a backlash, the chapter condemned Hitler and updated its newsletter: “The quote from a horrific leader should put parents on alert … If the government has control over our children today, they control our country’s future. We The People must be vigilant and protect children from an overreaching government.”)

Some right-leaning groups, including Christian conservative groups, have previously accused the SPLC of unfairly labeling them hate groups. Moms for Liberty continues to be embraced by leading Republicans: GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy are all expected to speak at the Philadelphia summit, which begins Thursday.

In a statement, Moms for Liberty cofounders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich said parents deserve to be a part of their child’s public school education.

“Name-calling parents who want to be a part of their child’s education as ‘hate groups’ or ‘bigoted’ just further exposes what this battle is all about: Who fundamentally gets to decide what is taught to our kids in school — parents or government employees?” they said. “We believe that parental rights do not stop at the classroom door and no amount of hate from groups like this is going to stop that.”