The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 Wednesday that a Christian pregnancy center in New Jersey can take its fight to federal court after a Democrat state attorney general subpoenaed its donor lists, decade’s worth of internal records, and promotional materials tied to abortion pill reversal.
The unanimous decision hands First Choice Women’s Resource Centers a major legal victory in a case that pitted the state’s top law enforcement official against a nonprofit providing free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and counseling to women across five New Jersey cities.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion, finding that First Choice had presented sufficient evidence that its First Amendment associational rights were being burdened, entitling it to challenge the subpoena in federal court. “The question before us isn’t how badly the Attorney General has burdened First Choice’s associational rights; the question is whether he has burdened those rights at all,” Gorsuch wrote. “And by effectively restricting how First Choice may interact privately with its donors, the subpoena did just that.”
Gorsuch was unsparing in his assessment of the state’s legal arguments, noting that every one of them failed. “Since the 1950s, this Court has confronted one official demand after another like the Attorney General’s,” he wrote. “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.”
The dispute began in November 2023, when former New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, a Democrat, issued a sweeping subpoena demanding 10 years of records from the organization. The demands included donor identities and contact information, details about how First Choice promoted abortion pill reversal, records of information provided to clients, personnel files, and copies of every advertisement the centers had run.
Attorney General Jen Davenport, who replaced Platkin, said in a statement that the decision “holds only that First Choice can pursue its challenge to our subpoena, not that its challenge should prevail.”
“New Jersey law makes clear that nonprofits cannot deceive or defraud New Jerseyans, and we regularly exercise our traditional investigative authority to ensure they are not doing so — regardless of the particular services they provide,” Davenport said. “We look forward to defending our subpoena in court. We will continue to enforce our fraud laws without fear or favor.”
