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.
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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