Equal Protection Project Supports Donor Privacy in U.S. Supreme Court Brief
At stake in this case is not only the free association rights of Americans expressing themselves anonymously through donations to charitable organizations, but the ability of those organizations to continue serving the public interest.
On August 28, 2025, the Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project (EPP) filed an amicus curiae, or “friend-of-the-court,” brief in the United States Supreme Court in First Choice v. Platkin.
We just filed an amicus brief at the U.S. Supreme Court supporting our friends at @ADFLegal and their efforts to protect the free association rights of anonymous donors. I would not trust the government to pump my gas, let alone protect my personal information from those who… pic.twitter.com/LQtVJPfCjP
— Tim Snowball (@1776_snowball) August 28, 2025
At stake in this case is not only the free association rights of Americans expressing themselves anonymously through donations to charitable organizations, but the ability of those organizations to continue serving the public interest.
First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc., are a collection of five licensed medical centers offering free services and material support to women facing unplanned pregnancies.
Pretty difficult to argue with a public interest mission like that. Afterall, who would be against helping women?
Seemingly, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin.
Platkin remains openly hostile towards pregnancy centers because, instead of automatically providing or referring women to child murder (abortion), they instead provide resources to preserve human life.
He has even gone so far as to issue a consumer alert, prepared in partnership with Planned Parenthood, against these pregnancy centers. Platkin also promised legal action against these life-preserving groups.
A promise he kept.
Without identifying a single public complaint, Platkin issued a subpoena demanding that First Choice turn over years of sensitive internal information, including donor information, about nearly five thousand contributions to First Choice’s mission.
Never mind that as a tax-exempt non-profit group serving the public interest, First Choice depends on donor contributions in order to operate and exist, but that those same donors depend on their identities remaining anonymous in order to associate with groups that are obviously the targets of government hostility.
But even more to the point: The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the right of Americans to associate with whoever they want, in public or anonymously.
EPP’s amicus brief offers the Court three additional reasons it should protect the First Amendment rights of anonymous donors to those First Choice offers.
First, we address the high likelihood of such potentially government-held private donor information becoming public through technological access to online data or leaks. In 2020, reports indicated the number of exposed government records increased two hundred and seventy eight percent from four and half million breaches of records in the first quarter of 2019, to seventeen million breaches in the first quarter of 2020.
And things have only gotten worse.
The New Jersey Attorney General can provide whatever privacy assurances he likes, but the record of government data breaches and purposeful leaks, and the resulting harm to millions of individuals, is well-documented and will continue to occur.
Second, we examine the worsening ideological divide, and use of political violence, in the United States.
Americans are more divided over political differences, and more likely to vilify members of the perceived “other side,” than at any time in the last two decades.
As an American Psychiatric Association’s recent survey found that thirty one percent of Americans expect to have a heated political conflict with their own family members. It gets worse. Twenty percent of respondents reported cutting ties with a family member because of disagreement over political issues.
Even more striking, a substantial number of Americans now support the use of violence against perceived political opponents.
While many people are shocked and outraged by these and other violent events, a good many other Americans supported them. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said it would be “somewhat justified” to murder President Trump, while thirty one percent said the same about Elon Musk.
Such targeting is likely to occur if and when otherwise anonymous donor information becomes public.
Third, we address the long-held tradition in the United States of anonymous political participation. Indeed, many of our Founding Fathers exercised this exact option in order to protect themselves and their property from reprisal.
While most Americans no doubt hope that political conflict with fellow citizens and neighbors might always be resolved through the “better angels of our nature,” history shows that all too often that has not been the case.
Time and time again anonymity has therefore proved an essential tool in fully participating in the political marketplace of ideas while also protecting oneself and one’s family from harm.
Attorney General Platkin may assure targeted charitable organizations that he can be trusted with their otherwise anonymous donors’ sensitive personal information.
But the government is not only ill-prepared to stop the spread of sensitive donor information, but in terms of animus towards disfavored associations, it is unwilling.
The Supreme Court should rule in favor of First Choice, uphold the free association rights the First Amendment guarantees, and protect non-profits.
Reminder: we are a small organization going up against powerful and wealthy government and private institutions devoted to DEI discrimination. Donations are greatly needed and appreciated.
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Timothy R. Snowball is a Senior Attorney at the Equal Protection Project.
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Comments
Government hostility is a badge of honor these day, especially leftist government. But there’s a cancel culture that isn’t governmental to worry about. Say Chase debanks you.
Richard Epstein says in an analogous case, freedom of association in terms of black/white, that it ought to fall only for monopoly markets. Not for example for Masterwork Cakes. But with the cancel culture you have the defacto monopoly market effect that Epstein said qualifies for suppression freedom of association. Nice lunch counter you have here shame if anything were to happen to it.
Wasn’t the issue of maintaining privacy for members/donors settled way before I born in NAACP v Alabama where the State was (eventually) rebuffed by SCOTUS in its attempt to compel the NAACP to hand over similar lists of members and donors?
I don’t understand. Didn’t the Supreme Court already decide this one in 1958, in NAACP v Alabama? How does Platkin claim to distinguish his demand from Alabama’s demand, 70 years ago, that the NAACP disclose its membership list?
Question: is this a two-edged sword that also will facilitate foreign donations and nefarious dark money organizations that seek to influence U.S. policy?
How do we protect Americans while preventing these?
Why should we “protect” Americans from opinions just because they belong to foreigners? All humans everywhere have the same freedom of speech, even if the US constitution doesn’t protect it.
But your legal answer is that the US constitution doesn’t protect foreigners while they are not in the USA. So it would be lawful to demand, of organizations based abroad, lists of their foreign donors or members. It still wouldn’t be legal to demand the identity of their American donors/members.
excellent article
if the msm wasnt running cover for the left and the schools kids werent being indoctrinated with the lefty agenda ( come on parents pull the money out of the schools!)
this country would be more efficient
The odd thing is there is another article about dark money groups funding influencers. To me the two articles have opposing view points.
Frankly I come down on the side of transparency. I want to know who is funding candidates and who is funding opinions. I want to understand motivation. I think it is important to know that Soros has been funding wacky progressive district attorneys and also know who else he’s funding. I don’t want that information hidden, If this means other peoples donations to other groups is revealed then so be it. I’m tired of monied interests putting their foot on the scale of elections and manipulating public opinion through their misinformation.
There is already court-ordered transparency for explicitly and exclusively political donations, like to a given politician, his campaigns, PACs, a Political Party, and so on.
Just because any other group takes a stance on an arguably political issue – that’s where privacy protection kicks in. The KKK doesn’t get a list of donors to the NAACP was the most famous such case.
There is a real public interest in knowing (say) that politician X gets lot of money from group Y or individual Z and he “coincidentally” always votes in their favor. You may not be able to prove which is cause and which is effect, but it’s in the public interest that that “coincidence” NOT be hidden,
In addition there’s CRIMINAL public interest in knowing if such donations come from illegal orgs (like, say HAMAS) or just plain foreign shores.
The NAACP officially supports registering more black citizens to vote.
The AARP officially supports no limits on late term abortions.
The NRA officially supports very few (not none, btw) limits on gun ownership.
All those issues – and many others – are kinda political but they are NOT “politics” as such.
As evidenced by members of a given political Party being on both sides.
It is corrupt to (covertly) buy a party’s or office-holder’s vote for an issue.
It is just DEMOCRACY to use your money support an issue in general.
Do you not see the difference?
I think you ignoring dark money, Person A gives a donation to PAC A which then donates to a candidate or a cause. You can know that donation came from PAC A but not necessarily who loaded up PAC A and potentially steered them to make a specific donation. The money is laundered and the trail is gone.
Platkin aggressively facilitates women killing their unborn babies. He can’t be trusted to protect pro-life donors’ privacy.
Thank you for your patriotic and Godly work. May your successes “snowball”!
There’s political donations and all others.
Political ones are not protected, since we have an over-riding interest in preventing foreign donations to what Mark Twain referred to as America’s one native criminal class – Congress. (And other pols as well).
All others are protected from forced disclosure ever since the courts told the KKK and associates “NO, you don’t get the NAACP donor list so you can murder NAACP donors”.
The problem here is that to The American Left – as presently constituted – EVERYTHING is political – and hence fair game.
I’m conflicted on this issue.
I do see the obvious problem of retaliation if donors’ names are made public.
On the other hand, I do want to know what a person’s beliefs really are – when someone puts ĥis money where his mouth is.
And maybe people would have thought differently about the Constitution had they known the rich white guys who were so hellbent on ratifying it.
It’s curious that the Constitution’s most avid supporters had to hide behind aliases and nomes de plume. Nothing sketchy going on at all.
Sounds like you’re getting your history from Howard Zinn.
His “a people’s History of the United States” is – as you might guess from the title – not really a dispassionate or unbiased work. Just as any place called a “people’s democratic republic:” is no more democratic, a republic, or run for the benefit of the people than any other “Marxist” dictatorship run exclusively for the benefit of the few, Just as centuries ago the “holy roman empire” was neither holy, Roman, or an empire.
In Zinn’s version of history, every blessed American is a Villian and every opponent is a hero – it’s a reverse hagiography of many famous Americans in which every one is portrayed as evil incarnate instead of sometimes fallible Homo sapiens.
Just as with the Declaration of Independence real people gave their real signatures to the signing of the new Constitution.