Arguments loom in Supreme Court showdown between Democratic AG, Christian pregnancy center that alleges harassment

The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in a case over a faith-centered pregnancy resource center that claims it was “selectively targeted” by New Jersey officials for its religious and pro-life views.

First Choice Women’s Resource Centers is a Christian organization that provides free pregnancy testing, ultrasounds and parenting resources to help encourage men and women to “make informed pregnancy decisions.” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who has sought the organization’s private donor information through subpoena, has accused it of refusing to answer questions about its operations.

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Tuesday in the high-stakes case, which comes as Democratic attorneys general across the country have targeted pregnancy resource centers with legal action. Although the case touches on sensitive topics including abortion and free speech, the main legal dispute is whether federal courts can hear First Amendment challenges to state investigations, or whether those claims must first be litigated in state court.  

“For more than two years, Attorney General Platkin has been pursuing a personal and political vendetta against First Choice and other pregnancy centers, targeting us with an aggressive demand requesting sensitive documents, including our donors’ identities,” First Choice Executive Director Aimee Huber said in a statement. “He has stopped at nothing to frustrate the important work we do – work that has made a tangible, life-and-death difference for tens of thousands of New Jersey women and their children. The government can’t harass those who support pro-life ministries just because it disagrees with their message.” 

Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the pregnancy center, has said Platkin’s demands for First Choice to “disclose the names, phone numbers, addresses and places of employment of many of its donors, plus up to 10 years of its internal confidential documents” is a violation of the Constitution.  

Although First Choice attempted to challenge Platkin in federal court, those courts ruled the pregnancy center must go through the state courts first. “ADF is asking the Supreme Court to hold that civil rights plaintiffs do not need to raise challenges to state investigations in state court before they can bring federal claims,” ADF said. 

“For decades, the Supreme Court has recognized the right to maintain the confidentiality of one’s donors from government disclosure demands,” ADF said in a statement. “And for more than a century, Congress has guaranteed that federal courts can decide claims of unconstitutional treatment at the hands of state officials.” 

Platkin, meanwhile, has insisted that his subpoena was lawful and intended to “ensure that First Choice was complying with all relevant state laws.”  

“Non-profits, including crisis pregnancy centers, may not deceive or defraud residents in our State, and we may exercise our traditional investigative authority to ensure that they are not doing so – as we do to protect New Jerseyans from a range of harms,” he said. He also accused the pregnancy center of looking for a “special exception” from procedure rather than complying with “an entirely lawful state subpoena.”  

A number of legal groups have filed amicus briefs in support of First Choice, including the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which said the subpoena interferes with the center’s ability to carry out its religious mission “free from state interference.”  

“The subpoena demands, among other things, First Choice’s internal religious communications, policies, and guidance documents – private, deliberative materials that instruct its own staff and volunteers on how to ‘guide their interactions’ with clients and donors consistent with First Choice’s religious ministry to pregnant women,” Becket wrote. “These intrusive demands would allow New Jersey to probe and pressure how First Choice implements its Christian beliefs and pursues its core religious mission to ‘serve women and the unborn as the Bible instructs.’” 

Other groups, including the Manhattan Institute and Religious Freedom Institute, have agreed that compelling the disclosure of membership information and donor records “chills associational rights.”  

“It serves as a type of indirect speech regulation,” a brief for the organizations noted. “Groups targeted for unlawful compelled disclosure have viable First Amendment claims that can, and should, be adjudicated in federal court.”