In response to a recent Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) claim that the pattern of debanking of Christian organizations by American financial institutions is a “false narrative” and a “conspiracy theory,” a leading legal advocacy organization is pushing back.

The SPLC, which has been mired in controversy for years over its vilification of mainstream conservative organizations as “hate groups” and its founder being ousted over sexual abuse and racial discrimination, published an article on August 15 claiming that there is a “lack of evidence for any broad-based” movement by banks to involuntarily cancel the accounts of conservative Christian organizations.

But Alliance Defending Freedom’s (ADF) Jeremy Tedesco begs to differ. As the senior vice president of Corporate Engagement pointed out on “Washington Watch” Tuesday, part of the SPLC’s strategy is to lobby financial institutions to cancel conservative organizations’ bank accounts.

“[O]ne hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing over at SPLC headquarters, because they are one of the biggest proponents of urging financial institutions to debank people they disagree with,” he pointed out. “Namely Alliance Defending Freedom, where I work, Family Research Council … and several other Christian mainstream ministries that they disagree with. And they are actively urging financial institutions to debank us. Yet they come out with an article saying that we’re making the whole thing up. So it is really laughable. … Debanking is a serious issue. It is happening. It’s on the rise. It’s impacting Christian ministries.”

Tedesco went on to detail how numerous conservative and Christian organizations have had their bank accounts canceled without explanation.

“Our client, Indigenous Advance Ministries, does overseas relief work in Uganda,” he explained. “It’s a Tennessee-based ministry. Back in April of 2023, they got a notice out of the blue from Bank of America, where they had banked for eight or nine years as a ministry, that their account was being canceled, that the account of a local church in Tennessee that gives to them was being canceled. And the reason they gave was no reason at all. It was hiding behind vague policy terms like ‘risk tolerance’ and ‘business type disagreement.’ This caused a huge problem for the ministry [but was] a bigger problem for the people on the ground in Uganda … because the people in Uganda don’t live paycheck to paycheck, they live meal to meal. … [I]t put our client in Tennessee and the people they serve on the ground in serious risk of not getting the essential services, even food they needed.”

Tedesco continued, “JPMorgan Chase has debanked Sam Brownback and the National Committee for Religious Freedom, a religious nonprofit that supports religious freedom in America. Chase has debanked numerous other organizations, like the Arkansas Family Council, which is a pro-life and pro-family organization down in Arkansas because they considered them ‘high risk.’ We have resources on our website that go through 12, 15, maybe up to 20 examples at this point of the debanking that’s going on. The banks never say, ‘Oh yeah, you got us. We debanked you because we disagree with your religion or your politics.’ But the thing is, these debankings of religious and conservative groups are on the rise.”

Tedesco further emphasized that the issue of being canceled by a bank without explanation is a danger that all Americans face, which makes the matter particularly urgent.

“[I]t’s affecting religious and Christian institutions, but we’re concerned about it for all Americans,” he underscored. “It is not healthy for our society to have a financial industry that is weaponized against disfavored points of view, whether they are our points of view or somebody else’s. And so we really want to maintain a financial system that is viewpoint neutral. That’s not picking sides in the broader cultural, social, and political debates that are going on. … [T]here is an active, intentional attempt by left-wing progressive ESG activists to capture these financial institutions and … deprive essential financial services, loans, and capital [from] people who aren’t bending the knee to the political ideology of the Left.”

Tedesco concluded by sharing how ADF’s efforts to combat the practice are paying off.

“[W]e are having success. JPMorgan Chase was one of our biggest targets — and still is — but they’ve actually made moves in the right direction. We targeted over the last couple of years through shareholder engagement and other work a policy at JPMorgan Chase called a ‘social risk policy’ that included terms like ‘hate’ and ‘intolerance.’ They had actually used this policy to deprive certain religious organizations and political groups of payment processing services. And after our efforts to call them out on that policy and their broader banking problems at JPMorgan Chase, they actually dropped that policy this year. And they’re in communication with us on a regular basis about our concerns. … So, we’re making a dent. We’re seeing successes.”

“We must resist this,” Tedesco insisted. “We must call on banks to return to principles of equal treatment and providing services to all, regardless of their religious and political views.”