Amazon has barred prominent Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) from participating in its Amazon Smile charitable program, which allows nonprofits to recoup a small fraction of the money their supporters spend through Amazon.
ADF, which specializes in First Amendment law and has won cases at the Supreme Court, is barred from Amazon Smile on account of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, which labeled ADF a “hate group.”
“All nonprofits are eligible as long as they meet our participation agreement,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “As a part of that participation agreement, we also state that Amazon relies on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which charities are eligible.”
The participation agreement forbids member groups from, among other things, promoting “hate” or “intolerance.”
ADF CEO Michael Farris sent a letter to Amazon on May 3, saying he was “surprised and disappointed” to find out his group was no longer able to participate in the Amazon program. Farris criticized Amazon for so greatly empowering the SPLC, which he described as a “discredited partisan organization.”
The SPLC is known for labeling pedestrian conservative organizations as “hate groups” and calling critics of political correctness “extremists.” The SPLC deleted four articles in March and April alone, after the articles were challenged as inaccurate, and the SPLC threatened with lawsuits.
“In order for us to remove ourselves from the decision-maker and send away, because we don’t want to be biased whatsoever, so we’re using the SPLC to establish the criteria for those organizations,” said the Amazon spokesperson, who declined to answer whether it’s a conflict of interest for the SPLC to both police Amazon Smile and participate in the program.
Unlike ADF, hardline Islamic groups are allowed to participate in Amazon Smile. That includes the Islamic Center of Jersey City, whose imam called Jews “apes and pigs” and requested Allah’s help in killing them “down to the very last one,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
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