COLUMBIA – On Jan. 22, 2026, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson sent letters demanding years’ worth of membership lists, meeting minutes, donor records, and other sensitive documents from several nonprofit organizations in South Carolina.
Wilson has initially targeted The Hope Foundation of Palestine, Islamic Relief USA, Carolina Peace Resource Center, Islamic Circle of North America Relief, Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Heal Palestine, accusing them of being “associated with terror-linked groups” without publicly stating any rationale for doing so.
ACLU of South Carolina Legal Director Allen Chaney gave the following statement in response:
The attorney general's brazen intimidation tactics echo from the Jim Crow South. They also reflect a staggering and concerning ignorance of constitutional rights. The First Amendment protects our right to associate privately and without government surveillance, intimidation, or coercion.
From Alabama's attempts to compel the NAACP to disclose member lists in the 1950s to California's attempts to do the same to Americans for Prosperity a few short years ago, the law protects all of us from being targeted by the government simply for associating with a view that politicians dislike.
For relevant cases, see NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson (1959) and Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta (2021). The ACLU filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of Americans for Prosperity in the latter case, citing precedent from the former. You can read that amicus brief here.
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