SPLC Brands Moms For Liberty, Other Parental Rights Organizations As ‘Extremist’ Groups

A recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center branded a handful of parental rights groups — including Mom’s For Liberty — as “extremist” organizations.

On Tuesday, the SPLC released their “Year In Hate and Extremism 2022” report. The report deviated from past iterations in that “anti-government extremist groups” were listed beside what the notoriously biased organization deem to be “hate groups.”

I’m 2021, the SPLC’s “hate map” included 733 organizations. The number swelled significantly in 2022, with the number increasing to 1225 “hate and antigovernment extremist groups.”

Many of the latest additions were parental rights groups and other education-based organizations, who are now listed aside the Ku-Klux-Klan.

Following COVID-19-related school closures, schools “have been on the receiving end of ramped-up and coordinated hard-right attacks,” the report claimed. After being “spurred by the right-wing backlash to COVID-19 public safety measures,” parental rights groups appeared to have “grown into an anti-student inclusion movement that targets any inclusive curriculum that contains discussions of race, discrimination and LGBTQ identities.”

“At the forefront of this mobilization is Moms for Liberty, a Florida-based group with vast connections to the GOP that this year the SPLC designated as an extremist group. They can be spotted at school board meetings across the country wearing shirts and carrying signs that declare, ‘We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.’ The group hijacks meetings, preventing officials and parents from conducting their normal proceedings,” the report continued.

The SPLC went on to compare Moms For Liberty to groups who opposed the integration of public school systems. “Galvanizing supporters around supposed ‘parental rights’ and ‘family values’ is nothing new – similar rallying cries were adopted by those who opposed school desegregation during the civil rights movement and by the Moral Majority of the 1980s. These political slogans have been used repeatedly because they are effective, framing the organizing of far-right activists as something done solely out of real concern for children,” the report read.

“But Moms for Liberty activities make it clear that the group’s primary goals are to fuel right-wing hysteria and to make the world a less comfortable or safe place for certain students – primarily those who are Black, LGBTQ or who come from LGBTQ families,” it added.

Moms For Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich condemned the SPLC’s allegations and reiterated their commitment to reforming the public school system in a statement to Fox News.

“Two-thirds of Americans think the public education system is on the wrong track today. That is why our organization is devoted to empowering parents to be a part of their child’s public school education. That is our fundamental goal, which began just two years ago when teacher’s unions locked students out of schools during the pandemic,” they said.

“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? 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,” the statement continued.