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The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that New Jersey was wrong to try to force a pro-life pregnancy care center to disclose its private donor information, a violation of its First Amendment rights.
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The Supreme Court issued a decision on Wednesday morning in the case of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Matthew J. Platkin, Attorney General of New Jersey.
Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the 9-0 court opinion, clarifying that the justices “are not asked to decide the merits of First Choice’s federal lawsuit, only whether it may proceed.”
“First Choice has established that the Attorney General’s demand for private donor information injures the group’s First Amendment associational rights,” wrote Gorsuch. “The Attorney General does not dispute much of this.”
“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. A government that chooses to make private donor information public may make the damage worse.”
Gorsuch went on to note in the unanimous opinion that “this Court has confronted one official demand after another like the Attorney General’s” at least as far back as the 1950s.”
“Over and again, we have held those demands burden the exercise of First Amendment rights,” he concluded. “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. Accordingly, the judgment of the Third Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
In November 2023, then New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin subpoenaed First Choice for records, including donor lists and private correspondence, to investigate whether it was violating the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act.
Platkin was one of 16 Democratic attorneys general who signed a letter in 2023 accusing pro-life pregnancy centers of spreading “misinformation and harm” by purportedly “misleading consumers and delaying access to” abortion.
Before the subpoena deadline, First Choice filed a lawsuit against Platkin in December 2023, claiming that the subpoena was overly broad and unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp, an Obama appointee, ruled against First Choice in January 2024, writing that the complaint was “not ripe” and that he “lacks subject-matter jurisdiction.”
“Plaintiffs claims related to the Subpoena’s enforceability in this matter would ripen only after the contingent future event that forms the basis of its alleged injury occurs,” Shipp ruled.
“Because this Court cannot yet know whether the state court tasked by the New Jersey state legislature with overseeing subpoena enforcement proceedings like this will, in fact, enforce the Subpoena in its current form, this matter is not ripe for resolution because no actual or imminent injury has occurred.”
In February 2024, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the centers’ emergency request to block the subpoena, denying it “without prejudice to reconsideration by the merits panel and/or the filing of a request for an expedited briefing schedule.”
Although the Supreme Court had initially refused without comment to take up the case in May 2024, the high court later agreed to hear oral arguments in the case in June.
During oral arguments, Justice Clarence Thomas had asked New Jersey Chief Counsel Sundeep Iyer if the state attorney general’s office had “complaints that formed the basis of your concern about the fundraising activities” of First Choice.
Iyer admitted that “we haven’t had complaints about this specific crisis pregnancy center” but added that state and federal governments “initiate investigations all the time in the absence of complaints where they have a reason to suspect that there could be potential issues of legal compliance.”
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This article was originally published at The Christian Post. Photo Credit: Mathieu Landretti – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=130159633.
