Why Is the SPLC President Resigning?

The sudden announcement comes at time of turmoil for the organization.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the Southern Poverty Law Center announced that its president and CEO, Margaret Huang, resigned Thursday.

“After five years serving as president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Margaret Huang has stepped down from her role to prioritize family life,” the organization announced in a press release.

The SPLC Union, which voted by 90% to demand the board oust Huang amid a round of SPLC layoffs last fall, has yet to comment on the move.

The union formed after a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal led the SPLC to fire its co-founder, Morris Dees, and saw the resignation of its previous president, Richard Cohen. The union accused the SPLC of “union-busting” in the layoffs, which involved many union leaders.

Huang’s resignation follows about two months after the SPLC released its annual “hate map” report.

While the SPLC has long put mainstream conservative and Christian groups on the “hate map” with the Ku Klux Klan, suggesting they are driven by a hatred similar to the Klan and claiming to reveal the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy,” this year’s “hate map” added three noteworthy new names.

There’s Turning Point USA, the largest conservative youth organization in America.

Then there’s PragerU, a conservative nonprofit known for making smart 5-minute videos.

Finally, there’s Focus on the Family, one of the oldest and most mainstream Christian nonprofits.

The SPLC long defended itself from accusations that it is “anti-Christian” by noting that it did not put Focus on the Family on the “hate map.” Now, the SPLC has pulled out the stool from under its own defense.

Meanwhile, the SPLC is now swearing up and down that its “hate” accusations are merely a matter of “opinion” and not statements of fact—because statements of fact would be liable for defamation.

The group recently asked an Alabama judge to toss out a defamation lawsuit before it heads to what will likely be a rather embarrassing public trial. After two years of discovery—the process by which a plaintiff and a defendant go through each other’s documents to prove their points before trial—the SPLC is desperately returning to an argument the judge dismissed earlier in the case.

This impending trial may have played a role in Huang’s departure.

The SPLC’s IRS Form 990 also just became public, drawing attention to the fact that the group has $30 million in offshore bank accounts, likely in the Cayman Islands.

Finally, the Trump administration is not taking kindly to the policies the SPLC has championed, from critical race theory to gender ideology to open borders. As the Left struggles to redefine itself for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election, the SPLC may have decided it needs to alter its strategy and remove the CEO who worked closely with the Biden administration.

Each of these factors may have played a role in Huang’s departure, but it would be remiss of me not to at least entertain the idea that there is no deception in the SPLC’s announcement. Perhaps—perhaps, Huang merely wanted to spend more time with her family. There is the slightest chance that old canard is actually true in this instance.

Then again, “leaving to spend time with family” is the oldest excuse in the book when an organization wants to oust its leadership—without revealing the true reason why.