Beth Littrell
Senior Supervisor Attorney, Special Litigation, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
2021, 2024
Beth Littrell is the Senior Supervisor Attorney for Special Litigation at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). A career-long civil rights attorney, she specializes in constitutional torts and impact litigation. Littrell joined SPLC in 2018 after 17 years spent in the trenches at the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (the oldest and largest LGBT rights legal organization in the country).
She has litigated dozens of significant constitutional cases impacting civil rights, including Gersh v. Anglin, a case against racist and anti-Semitic propogandist, Andrew Anglin, who targeted Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent, wife and mother in Montana, for a months-long harassment campaign via his Nazi-inspired website. The case created precedent in federal law rejecting a First Amendment defense for Anglin’s actions in doxing Gersh and her family – including her then 12 year-old child – and encouraging his “army” of “trolls” to “bring a good old-fashioned troll storm” against Gersh and her family. The case resulted in a $14 million judgment against Anglin for compensatory and punitive damages.
Among Littrell’s legal accomplishments prior to joining the SPLC, beyond a pages-long list of cases she led that struck down, reversed or otherwise eliminated discriminatory laws and actions, is having brought a tort-based challenge to hospital visitation restrictions that, although unsuccessful in federal court, led to now-existing federal regulations prohibiting discriminatory hospital visitation policies nationwide (and an invitation to the White House to watch President Obama give her client, Janice Langbehn, the Presidential Citizen’s Medal for her role in the case). Her current and recent SPLC docket includes a case against a militia-style hate group in Arizona for their speech-related targeting of churches who assist asylum seekers, a case against lawyers for an anti-gay hate group, Liberty Counsel, and others for their roles in orchestrating an international parental kidnapping, and a case challenging Georgia prison system’s systemic denial of constitutionally adequate protection and medical care to incarcerated transgender women.
A cum laude graduate of Georgia State University who enjoyed an early career in the music industry, Littrell went on to graduate in the top of her class at Georgia State University’s College of Law, and taught Mass Communications Law at her undergraduate alma matter from 2001 – 2007. Among the awards Littrell has received over the years in recognition of her civil rights work are the Phillip Rush Service to Youth Award, the Stonewall Bar Association Service Award and, most recently, Fulton Daily Report’s 2018 Distinguished Leader Award.
It is a tragic reality that hateful ideology has found fertile ground online and offline, with consequences affecting not only Americans but people around the world. We cannot stand idle in the face of bias, bigotry, and extremism. Together, at the Eradicate Hate Summit and beyond, the collective will of individuals and organizations is needed to galvanize all people of good will to protect and defend our communities.
