With a stunning $6.3 million judgment against the Aryan Nations, Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Foundation now have a perfect seven-for-seven record in litigation to bankrupt white supremacist hate groups. All who root for a civil society should cheer this winning streak.

An Idaho jury on Thursday voted unanimously for the award, a combination of compensatory and punitive damages, against Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler and three of his followers. As a result, all the assets of the four – including Mr. Butler’s 20-acre fortress compound at Hayden Lake and the name Aryan Nations itself – become the property of the mother and son terrorized by those hate-filled, deluded individuals.

On July 1, 1998, Victoria and Jason Keenan were driving near the compound when their car backfired. Three Aryan Nations security guards, who testified that they believed they heard gunshots, chased the Keenans down a public road for two miles and fired at least five shots into their car with an assault rifle. Then, the lawsuit said, the guards forced the Keenans out of their car and threatened to kill them. The Keenans are Native Americans, and thus not welcome in the horrid little world Mr. Butler and his followers hope to create.

Previous actions by Mr. Dees and his Alabama-based foundation have forced leaders of hate groups into the galling situation of having to turn over everything they own and hope to own to the people they detest. In 1998, the head of the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was ordered to pay $15 million to the victims of a conspiracy to burn black churches. In 1990, neo-Nazis Tom and John Metzger were hit with a $12.5 million award to the family of an Ethiopian student killed in Oregon by a skinhead gang organized by the Metzgers’ White Aryan Resistance.

The 19-year-old Southern Poverty Law Foundation is a pioneer among human rights groups n using the civil courts to hold hate-group leaders accountable for the actions of their followers. As a result of the SPLF’s persistence, its member’s courage (death threats are common) and the deft application of conspiracy laws, a solid body of case law has been compiled that draws an important distinction between constitutionally protected speech and incendiary rhetoric designed by clever demagogues to incite the gullible to violence.

The case against Mr. Butler illustrates this distinction. He was not sued for his view that everyone not just like him is (as stated on his Web site) part of a “Marxist anti-Christ anti-White Jewish cabal.” His worldly possessions are now reduced to the clothes on his back because, as was proved in court, he created such an atmosphere of paranoia at the compound that his security force mistook a backfire for the invading cabal and two innocent passersby nearly lost their lives.

Throughout the trial, Mr. Butler predicted victory, convinced his northern Idaho neighbors on the jury shared his views. Combined with the other SPLF victories, including several in the Deep South, the unanimous verdict to the contrary shows that nowhere can hate count on the home field advantage.