Supreme Court Delivers 9-0 Rebuke to New Jersey’s Pro-Life Donor Dragnet

The Supreme Court slapped down the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office yesterday for violating the First Amendment rights of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers when it sent a subpoena demanding the non-profit turn over its donor list. In a rare 9-0 decision, the justices ruled that the pro-life pregnancy center’s lawsuit challenging the subpoena can proceed, overturning a lower court ruling.

First Choice, a group of five different pro-life centers in New Jersey, sued then-Attorney General Matthew Platkin in 2023 after his office sent a subpoena ordering the non-profit to produce a trove of confidential operating and mission documents, including the names, numbers, addresses, and employers of anyone who donated to the group over the past 10 years. Platkin had opened an investigation into First Choice despite the fact that the state hadn’t received a single client complaint against any of its facilities. Platkin has since been replaced as attorney general by Jennifer Davenport.

Citing the landmark 1958 case of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, the Supreme Court took aim at both Davenport’s arguments and the U.S. district court judge, who claimed that First Choice had no standing to sue because it couldn’t show an actual injury. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote,

“An official demand for private donor information is enough to discourage reasonable individuals from associating with a group. It is enough to discourage groups from expressing dissident views. Just ask yourself, would it have been an answer in NAACP v. Alabama if the State’s Attorney General promised to keep the NAACP’s membership rolls to himself?”

In that case Alabama Attorney General John Patterson claimed the NAACP was operating illegally in Alabama and also demanded their list of donors, including all personal information. Gorsuch continued,

“Since the 1950s, this Court has confronted one official demand after another like the Attorney General’s. Over and again, we have held those demands burden the exercise of First Amendment rights. Disputing none of these precedents but seeking ways around them, the Attorney General has offered a variety of arguments. Some are old, some are new, but none succeeds.”

Platkin, who was staunchly pro-abortion, created the Reproductive Rights Strike Force in 2022 to target pro-life pregnancy centers for allegedly misleading people into thinking that the groups provide abortions when they do not. Soon after, Platkin’s office issued a consumer alert accusing pro-life pregnancy clinics of “seek[ing] to prevent people from accessing comprehensive reproductive health care” by “provid[ing] false or misleading information about abortion.”

It solicited supposed victims to file complaints with the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs. However, there were no complaints filed against First Choice. In November 2023, according to the lawsuit, Platkin engaged in a” fishing expedition,” demanding such a large number of documents that it would take numerous staff members at least a month to produce the documents, leaving it unable to perform its mission.

Platkin did not explain why he was subpoenaing the documents until later in court when he said his office hoped to “contact a representative sample [of donors to] determine” if they had “been misled” about First Choice’s “mission and operations.” Irrationally, he argued that First Choice’s advertising materials, such as a website showing couples holding babies, could trick donors into thinking they provided abortions.

First Choice, with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, filed suit in November 2023 challenging the subpoena, but a lower court ruled that they did not have standing to challenge because there was no court order as yet forcing them to provide the documents, even though Platkin had threatened to get one. First Choice then appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In issuing its unanimous decision, the Court remanded the case back to the district court to be heard on its merits.

Aimee Huber, executive director of First Choice, celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision by stating,

“For more than two years, Attorney General Platkin targeted First Choice with aggressive demands for sensitive documents, including our donors’ identities. He has gone to great lengths to frustrate the important work we do—work that has made a tangible, life-saving difference for tens of thousands of New Jersey women and their children. As the Supreme Court recognized, the government can’t evade federal court review when it harasses those who support pro-life ministries just because it disagrees with their message and their mission.”

The ruling comes even as several progressive states have been part of a politicized campaign to target and discredit pro-life pregnancy centers, claiming that they engage in deceptive business practices and mislead women. Numerous attorneys general involved in this effort, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, have been upbraided by federal judges for engaging in blatant and hostile viewpoint discrimination.

ORIGINAL STORY

New Jersey pregnancy center challenges attorney general’s unconstitutional fishing expedition

{Published on December 20, 2023}  First Choice Women’s Resource Center has filed suit against New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin after he served the ministry with a subpoena demanding a broad collection of internal documents — a move that the pregnancy resource center claims is motivated by Platkin’s animus towards pro-life pregnancy ministries.

First Choice is a Christian non-profit that serves women who are pregnant, as well as newborns and families with babies. It provides free services such as pregnancy options counseling; sexually transmitted infection testing and referral; ultrasounds; parenting education; and also material support, such as diapers and maternity clothes. First Choice, which has five locations throughout New Jersey, states on its website that it does not provide abortions.

According to the suit, filed on First Choice’s behalf by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Platkin has never cited a complaint against First Choice or any evidence to justify the subpoena “but has launched an exploratory probe into the lawful activities, constitutionally protected speech, religious observance, constitutionally protected associations, and nonpublic internal communications and records of a non-profit organization that holds a view with which he disagrees as a matter of public policy.”

Platkin is staunchly pro-abortion and considers the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson — which overturned Roe v. Wade and said there is no constitutional right to an abortion — to be a denial of women’s rights. The suit claims that Platkin used the help of abortion provider Planned Parenthood to draft a consumer alert claiming that pregnancy centers lie about the services they provide, provide inaccurate or misleading ultrasounds, and provide inaccurate information. He also warned consumers about potential privacy and security risks for patients’ health data. Platkin made these claims without evidence.

Platkin’s subpoena asks for a massive number of documents. First Choice argues it would require the attention of several staff members for an entire month to produce all the documents. First Choice says that it is short-staffed and complying with the subpoena would take “such a large deployment of staff and resources that document production would become the driving focus of the Ministry, not its mission of serving women and men in need.”

It also expresses concern about Platkin’s demands that First Choice expose the names of all employees, all associates it has worked with, and all donors, potentially causing them to end their relationships with First Choice due to fear of reprisal by pro-abortion groups.

First Choice claims Platkin’s actions encroach on its First Amendment rights, including the right to free exercise of religion. It also claims he has violated its Fourth Amendment right protecting against unreasonable search and seizure and is engaging in retaliatory discrimination to silence its protected speech.

The suit says that Platkin is also guilty of selective enforcement, noting his praise of Planned Parenthood and devotion to abortion and explaining that Platkin makes no mention of “several large, recent, and well-publicized instances of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America exposing consumer data without consent, causing breaches of sensitive patient information such as abortion method used and the specific Planned Parenthood clinic where an appointment was booked.”

ADF Senior Counsel Lincoln Wilson stated,

“It’s unlawful for New Jersey’s attorney general to use the authority of his office to harm those with whom he disagrees. Attorney General Platkin has aligned himself with Planned Parenthood’s pro-abortion mission and even enlisted its help to target pro-life pregnancy centers like our client First Choice.”

The Left has always loathed pro-life pregnancy centers, but since the Dobbs decision it has ramped up its attacks on these non-profit organizations. High-profile legislators like U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have smeared them, state officials have used the power of their office to investigate and intimidate them, and pro-abortion terrorists have firebombed and vandalized them.

The shared and unfounded language is striking as they all claim that crisis pregnancy centers are guilty of deceptive business practices, are dangerous to women, are “fake clinics” and “liars,” and need to be shut down. And it is that very language that has been spray-painted on dozens of pro-life pregnancy centers around the country by pro-abortion shock troops like Jane’s Revenge and Ruth Sent Us.

The suit notes that the attorney general’s consumer alert was leveraged by state Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J. at a press conference, during which he called pregnancy resource centers “brainwashing cult clinics.” Gottheimer wants to shut down all pregnancy resource centers through legislation called the Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act. This bill states that pro-life pregnancy centers lie about the services they provide and will create a commission to “promulgate rules to prohibit a person from advertising with the use of misleading statements related to the provision of abortion services.”

New Jersey’s efforts are similar to Illinois’s brazen attempt to target pro-life pregnancy centers with a law that regulates their speech and threatens their operations. The law, authored by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, was immediately challenged in court. U.S. District Court Judge Iain Johnston, after hearing hours of testimony, determined that the legislation was “stupid and very likely unconstitutional.”

In his decision to grant an injunction, Johnston wrote, “The bill is painfully and blatantly a violation of the First Amendment. There’s no doubt who the Attorney General wants to win or lose in the marketplace of ideas, but the government doesn’t get to decide that. The people do.”

Attorney General Raoul has subsequently announced that his office will not enforce the new law.

The Left is so feverish in its worship of abortion that it is engaging in fatuous, unconstitutional attacks on non-profit pro-life pregnancy centers with organized and ridiculous messaging.

Pro-life pregnancy resource centers don’t claim to perform abortions, any more than they claim to provide genetic testing or birthing services. They only claim to provide those services that help mothers keep their babies and support low-income families who are raising children.

Unlike Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics, these mostly volunteer nonprofits provide all of their services and resources for free, including counseling, medical tests, parenting classes, and much-needed material support like food, formula, baby clothes, car seats, and so forth. They do so out of love for mothers and children. And the people who donate to them do so out of love for mothers and children.

The left thinks that the only way you can “love” a woman is to make her believe that her only “reproductive” option is to murder her child. Hopefully, the judge assigned to consider this targeted fishing expedition intended to intimidate and destroy a pro-life pregnancy center will see it as Judge Johnston did: petty, stupid, and an unconstitutional effort to use the power of the state to attack those with whom it disagrees.

When state officials use subpoenas to pressure pro-life ministries and expose the people who support them, silence is not neutrality. Make your tax-deductible gift today to equip the Standing for Freedom Center to expose government overreach, defend the unborn, and prepare Americans to stand with courage when faith, life, and liberty are under fire.