(Daily Signal)—A tech employee voiced opposition to his company’s policy against doing business with a nonprofit on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map,” calling the policy “absolutely ridiculous.”
Now, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is investigating the Big Tech firm that acquired the employee’s company, claiming the firm “systematically deplatforms conservatives.”
“It is outrageous that the SPLC gets away with labeling people this way,” Jennifer Roback Morse, founder of the blacklisted nonprofit Ruth Institute, told The Daily Signal. “The only thing worse is that supposedly sophisticated companies like tech businesses outsource their moral judgments to a scurrilous group like the SPLC.”
The SPLC publishes a “hate map” that it claims highlights the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy.” Critics say the map includes mainstream conservative and Christian groups alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, falsely smearing mainstream groups as hateful.
In a February 2021 email, the fundraising company Salsa Labs refused to work with the Ruth Institute, a pro-family nonprofit in Louisiana that serves victims of the Sexual Revolution. Morse maintains that the Sexual Revolution harmed men, women, and children by deemphasizing marriage and the family, which promote human flourishing for husbands, wives, and children.
Salsa Labs cited the SPLC’s accusation that the institute is an “anti-LGBTQ hate group.”
The constituent relationship management platform and fundraising software company EveryAction acquired Salsa Labs in June 2021. Bonterra, a Big Tech company that claims to have raised $28 billion from 53 million donors supporting 437,000 nonprofits in 2024, acquired both EveryAction and Salsa Labs in 2022.
The Email Chain Mentioning SPLC
Morse reached out to Salsa Labs in 2021, seeking to hire the company for fundraising. The Ruth Institute had experienced blacklisting before, and Morse wanted to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
“There is one thing that I feel I should mention to you up front,” she wrote. “We are an interfaith international coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love. We deal with pretty much all the major issues raised by the Sexual Revolution, trying to help people who have been harmed by the Sexual Revolution understand what has happened to them and how they can recover. This is naturally controversial work.”
She noted that the SPLC branded her organization a “hate group” and noted, “We dispute this characterization of our work. We challenge this description every time it comes up in the news.”
“I do not want to go through all the trouble of signing up with you, switching our lists over to you, and then being abruptly canceled,” Morse added. “If there is a problem, I would like to deal with it up front.”
The Salsa Labs employee she was communicating with said he appreciated the candor and would have to run the decision “up the ladder.”
“I think it’s absolutely outrageous that the SPLC gets to pick and choose who is a hate group,” he added. “You clearly are not. I really hope we can move forward. We typically are not able to if you are on the SPLC website. I’m going to fight for you because I think this is a travesty.”
He followed up a few days later, writing that it “pains” him to say Salsa Labs could not work with the institute.
The employee added, “I am aligned with the beliefs of your organization and I think it’s absolutely RIDICULOUS that the SPLC gets to pick and choose who is a hate group” (emphasis original).
“Doesn’t make any sense, and they should be shut down,” he added. “My CEO agrees that you shouldn’t be on there, she took it up to our board, and they said that is one rule they will not make an exception on.”
Bonterra, the company that later acquired Salsa Labs, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about the move and whether it uses the SPLC “hate map” to screen potential clients. The Daily Signal cannot reveal the employee’s name.
While parts of the email were first reported by The Daily Wire, The Daily Signal obtained the email chain in full.
When approached for comment, the Ruth Institute confirmed the contents of the email and put them in a larger context. Morse was unfamiliar with Bonterra, “however, we can confirm that the information reported corresponds precisely to an email exchange we had with a company called Salsa,” she said.
Morse said how grateful she was to her organization’s supporters: “You stood by us when the Southern Poverty Law Center put us on their ‘hate map’ in 2013,” she noted. “You stood by us when our credit card processor, Vanco, abruptly withdrew their services from us in 2017.”
Cruz Investigates Bonterra
Cruz, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, launched an investigation into Bonterra earlier this year. In a 2024 report, Cruz revealed that Bonterra’s terms of service prevent the company from working with clients that denied “rights to the LGBTQ community,” “a woman’s right to reproductive choice,” “racial justice,” or “climate change.”
In June 2021, the constituent relationship management platform and fundraising software company EveryAction acquired Salsa Labs. In March 2022, Bonterra announced that it would acquire Salsa Labs and EveryAction, combine them, and produce a “nonprofit fundraising and relationships management system” now known as Bonterra Fundraising and Engagement.
Cruz’s investigation found that EveryAction said it would not work with nonprofits that are “not progressive aligned,” meaning they “can’t be a Republican org,” “can’t go against LGBT+,” and “can’t be against pro-choice.”
According to Cruz, Bonterra refused to renew contracts with Wisconsin Right to Life, Idaho Family Policy Center, Deaconess Pregnancy & Adoptions, and Stand for Health Freedom.
“Big Tech companies like Bonterra weaponized their terms of service to systematically deplatform conservatives,” Cruz told Politico.
“My committee’s investigation exposed what we long expected: Big Tech companies like Bonterra have used vague, broadly worded terms of service agreements as a political weapon to deny conservatives access to essential business technology,” the senator told The Daily Wire.
Earlier this week, Cruz reintroduced the “TERMS Act,” which would mandate that online service providers “disclose their acceptable use policies, provide users with written notice before the termination of a user’s account, and publish an annual report detailing actions taken to enforce their acceptable use policies.” Eight Republican senators have joined Cruz in backing the legislation, The Daily Wire reported.
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