{"id":28011,"date":"2026-05-01T09:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T09:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=28011"},"modified":"2026-05-01T09:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T09:57:09","slug":"scotus-sides-with-pregnancy-centers-in-recent-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=28011","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS Sides with Pregnancy Centers in Recent Ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Reading Time:<\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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.\n<\/p>\n

Get prayer updates from IFA.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court issued a\u00a0decision\u00a0on Wednesday morning in the case of\u00a0First Choice Women\u2019s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Matthew J. Platkin, Attorney General of New Jersey<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n

Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the 9-0 court opinion, clarifying that the justices \u201care not asked to decide the merits of First Choice\u2019s federal lawsuit, only whether it may proceed.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst Choice has established that the Attorney General\u2019s demand for private donor information injures the group\u2019s First Amendment associational rights,\u201d wrote Gorsuch. \u201cThe Attorney General does not dispute much of this.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAn 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.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Gorsuch went on to note in the unanimous opinion that \u201cthis Court has confronted one official demand after another like the Attorney General\u2019s\u201d at least as far back as the 1950s.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cOver and again, we have held those demands burden the exercise of First Amendment rights,\u201d he concluded. \u201cDisputing none of these precedents but seeking ways around them, the Attorney General has offered a variety of arguments.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cSome 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.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

In November 2023, then New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin\u00a0subpoenaed First Choice for records, including donor lists and private correspondence, to investigate whether it was violating the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act.\n<\/p>\n

Platkin was one of 16 Democratic attorneys general who signed a\u00a0letter\u00a0in 2023 accusing pro-life pregnancy centers of spreading \u201cmisinformation and harm\u201d by purportedly \u201cmisleading consumers and delaying access to\u201d abortion.\n<\/p>\n

Before the subpoena deadline, First Choice filed a lawsuit against Platkin in December 2023, claiming that the subpoena was overly broad and unconstitutional.\n<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp, an Obama appointee,\u00a0ruled against\u00a0First Choice in January 2024, writing that the complaint was \u201cnot ripe\u201d and that he \u201clacks subject-matter jurisdiction.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaintiffs claims related to the Subpoena\u2019s enforceability in this matter would ripen only after the contingent future event that forms the basis of its alleged injury occurs,\u201d Shipp ruled.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause 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.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

In February 2024, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals\u00a0rejected\u00a0the centers\u2019 emergency request to block the subpoena, denying it \u201cwithout prejudice to reconsideration by the merits panel and\/or the filing of a request for an expedited briefing schedule.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Although the Supreme Court had initially\u00a0refused\u00a0without comment to take up the case in May 2024, the high court later\u00a0agreed\u00a0to hear oral arguments in the case in June.\n<\/p>\n

During\u00a0oral arguments, Justice Clarence Thomas had asked New Jersey Chief Counsel Sundeep Iyer\u00a0if the state attorney general\u2019s office had \u201ccomplaints that formed the basis of your concern about the fundraising activities\u201d of First Choice.\n<\/p>\n

Iyer admitted that \u201cwe haven\u2019t had complaints about this specific crisis pregnancy center\u201d but added that state and federal governments \u201cinitiate 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.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

What do you think of this verdict? Share your thoughts, prayers, and praises below.<\/h4>\n

This article was originally published at The Christian Post. Photo Credit: Mathieu Landretti \u2013 Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=130159633.<\/em>
\n \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: 3 minutes 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. Get prayer updates from IFA. \u00a0 The Supreme Court issued a\u00a0decision\u00a0on Wednesday morning in the case of\u00a0First<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[2535,2534,262,2074,1652],"class_list":{"0":"post-28011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-prayer","8":"tag-centers","9":"tag-pregnancy","10":"tag-ruling","11":"tag-scotus","12":"tag-sides"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}