The Supreme Court unanimously handed a crisis pregnancy center a victory last week in its bid to fight a subpoena seeking its donor list, marking a major win for both First Amendment rights and anti-abortion groups operating in states that allow access to abortion.
The justices ruled 9-0 Wednesday in favor of allowing First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a crisis pregnancy center that provides support for expecting and new mothers, to challenge New Jersey’s sweeping subpoena in federal court. The high court’s opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, found that the pregnancy center had “established that the Attorney General’s demand for private donor information injures the group’s First Amendment associational rights.”
“An official demand for private donor information is enough to discourage reasonable individuals from associating with a group,” Gorsuch’s opinion said. “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. But even if there is no disclosure to the general public, the pressure to avoid ties and speech which might displease officials demanding disclosure can be constant and heavy.”
The ruling has wide implications both for pregnancy centers and other anti-abortion groups’ First Amendment rights, along with wider protections against sweeping subpoenas and government demands for private information broadly.
Supreme Court broadly affirms right to challenge actions that chill First Amendment rights
The unanimous ruling was a key victory for core First Amendment freedoms, said William Haun, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He said the opinion protects those rights by recognizing the “special significance” of “political, social, and religious association,” noting that the freedom of association guaranteed in the First Amendment connects all the other protected rights in the amendment.
“There’s no point in having a freedom of speech if you can’t talk to anybody. There’s no point in having a freedom of assembly if you can’t meet with other people. There’s no point in exercising your religion if you’re not responding, at least to a higher authority,” Haun told the Washington Examiner. “There is something necessarily associative, and that means that the court has to protect that as part of protecting the First Amendment.”
Haun noted the Supreme Court’s ruling also aims to ensure court processes, such as subpoenas, are not used to desecrate First Amendment protections through sweeping discovery or subpoena demands.
“They’re meant to be a place where we uphold the Constitution,” Haun said. “They’re not meant to have their procedures weaponized against the Bill of Rights.”
New Jersey officials had claimed the subpoena was issued to investigate claims that First Choice misled donors into thinking they were giving to an abortion clinic, but they had not identified any person who had come forward with a fraud claim. Instead, New Jersey officials planned to contact donors from First Choice’s list. Pregnancy centers do not perform abortions but instead tend to offer support and resources for pregnant women and mothers with young children.
Officials in the Garden State have not been subtle about their views on abortion, vowing to protect the ability for a woman to terminate her pregnancy at any time and issuing a consumer alert targeting crisis pregnancy centers. The Supreme Court found that First Choice had presented sufficient evidence to challenge the sweeping subpoena in federal court, expressing concern about the chilling nature of the demands.
“The fact that the government is imposing upon you discovery demands or subpoena demands, even if they never get enforced, they’re going to change your behavior simply because they exist,” Haun said. “And that could chill you out of expression that the First Amendment is meant to protect. That can be seen time and again with religious liberty cases, and it happens in other First Amendment contexts.”
Anti-abortion groups call ruling ‘win’ from government intimidation
Anti-abortion groups have welcomed the ruling as a massive victory for their organizations, which have been vilified in states led by pro-abortion-rights politicians, such as New Jersey.
Aimee Huber, the executive director of First Choice, said the ruling came after more than two years of “aggressive demands for sensitive documents, including our donors’ identities,” and welcomed the justices’ decision to allow them to challenge the subpoena in a federal court.
“[Former New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin] 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,” Huber said after Wednesday’s ruling.
“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,” she added.
Jor-El Godsey, president of the anti-abortion group Heartbeat International, also celebrated the ruling as a “powerful and unanimous affirmation that constitutional freedoms do not disappear simply because someone holds pro-life or Christian convictions.”
“Every single Justice of the United States Supreme Court stood on the side of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers and against government overreach that sought to intimidate and silence faith-based pregnancy help organizations,” Godsey said shortly after the ruling. “This ruling makes clear that no attorney general, no matter how politically motivated, can weaponize the power of the state to punish those who protect life and serve women with compassion.”
SUPREME COURT HANDS CRISIS PREGNANCY CENTER WIN IN FIGHT AGAINST NEW JERSEY’S DONOR LIST SUBPOENA
The Supreme Court’s ruling means First Choice’s First Amendment lawsuit still has a larger legal battle ahead. The high court’s concern about the nature of the subpoena in its ruling, however, does mean New Jersey’s subpoena will likely face strict scrutiny when it is put before a federal judge.
The ruling in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Davenport marks the latest instance of the Supreme Court upholding First Amendment rights this term. The high court also upheld the free speech rights of counselors in Chiles v. Salazar, a case that overturned Colorado’s conversion therapy ban that had forced counselors to affirm children’s gender dysphoria.