Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Supreme Court rejects request by Coral Ridge
Church wants designation as ‘hate group’ removed
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down a South Florida church that says its designation as a “hate group” is preventing it from collecting donations from online shoppers, rejecting a chance to make it easier to sue organizations for libel and defamation.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated Fort Lauderdale’s Coral Ridge Ministries a “hate group” since at least 2010 for its condemnation of homosexuality. In 2017, the church applied to be a part of the Amazon Smile program, which allows online shoppers to direct a portion of their spending to approved charities.
When Amazon declined to approve Coral Ridge over the hate-group designation, the church sued the Southern Poverty Law Center, which responded that it was allowed to criticize the church under the First Amendment. The church asked the Supreme Court to revisit its landmark 1964 case in New York Times v. Sullivan, which held that public figures must demonstrate that the defamation was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false.”
Lower courts sided with the civil rights group’s First Amendment argument.
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas was the only one to dissent from the decision not to take up the case, arguing that it missed an opportunity to revisit a legal standard, “actual malice,” that Thomas complained was “almost impossible” to meet.
Under the “actual malice” standard, Thomas said, media organizations have been able to “cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.” Coral Ridge does not belong on the same list as groups like the KKK and neo-Nazis, Thomas wrote in his two-page dissent.
The church remains on the list of hate groups under the name “D. James Kennedy Ministries.” There are 53 Florida organizations on the list, including Israel United in Christ in Pompano Beach, the Nation of Islam, the Proud Boys and the United Skinhead Nation.