Unanimous Supreme Court Sides With Pro-Life Pregnancy Group To Protect Donors’ Privacy
Last year, Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project (EPP) filed an amicus brief in First Choice v. Platkin, urging the Court to uphold the free association rights the First Amendment guarantees and protect non-profits.
A pro-life pregnancy organization can sue in federal court to keep its donors’ names private, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a religious non-profit, is a collection of five licensed medical centers offering free services and material support to women facing unplanned pregnancies.
In 2022, New Jersey’s Attorney General established a “Reproductive Rights Strike Force,” prepared in partnership with Planned Parenthood, that issued a consumer alert against groups like First Choice. Without identifying a single public complaint, then-Attorney General Matthew Platkin targeted First Choice for investigation, issuing a subpoena demanding years of sensitive internal information—including names, phone numbers, addresses, and places of employment of its donors—regarding nearly 5,000 contributions to its mission. The subpoena was backed by a threat of court-ordered compliance and sanctions should First Choice resist.
To protect its donors’ First Amendment rights, as well as its own, First Choice sued in federal court to block enforcement of the subpoena. The group argued that the demand made it impossible to guarantee donors’ anonymity, discouraging them from associating with the organization—an injury sufficient to support a federal claim.
A flurry of litigation ensued. In a tactical move, the Attorney General responded with his own suit in state court, where he accused First Choice of violating state law by failing to comply with the subpoena. The district court denied First Choice’s request to block the subpoena and dismissed the case, essentially forcing First Choice to litigate in state court before coming to federal court. A divided panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.
Last year, First Choice petitioned the Supreme Court. On August 28, 2025, the Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project (EPP) filed an amicus curiae, or “friend-of-the-court,” brief in First Choice v. Platkin.[*] urging the Court to uphold the free association rights the First Amendment guarantees and protect non-profits.
The Court took their case and heard oral argument in December 2025. Attorney Erin Hawley, representing First Choice, argued that the subpoena violated First Choice’s First Amendment right of association the moment it was received—not only if and when the state court enforced it.
Yesterday, all nine Justices agreed. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Gorsuch held that the Attorney General’s subpoena for private donor information burdened First Choice’s First Amendment right of association, giving the group standing—the legal right to bring its claims—in federal court. Rejecting the AG’s argument that no injury exists until a court actually enforces the subpoena, Justice Gorsuch wrote:
The question before us isn’t how badly the Attorney General has burdened First Choice’s associational rights; the question is whether he has burdened those rights at all. … [B]y effectively restricting how First Choice may interact privately with its donors, the subpoena did just that.
The Court held that the subpoena caused First Choice an ongoing First Amendment injury—one that the group “continues to experience so long as the subpoena remains outstanding.” As Gorsuch put it, invoking a prior decision, “[T]he value of a sword of Damocles is that it hangs—not that it drops.”
Yesterday’s ruling does not end the fight: the case now returns to federal district court, where the constitutionality of the subpoena itself will be litigated. But by opening the federal courthouse doors to First Choice and groups like it, the Court has once again made clear that the government cannot use the threat of disclosure to chill First Amendment rights while shielding itself from legal challenge.
[*] Jennifer Davenport’s name appears in the caption of the case because she succeeded Mr. Platkin as New Jersey’s Attorney General after this case was argued and submitted for decision.
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Comments
Wasn’t this issue of donor/member list privacy settled decades ago in NAACP v Alabama? What’s up with these d/prog politicians and their insistence on reliving their ‘glory days’ of demanding member/donor lists, counting, classifying and segregation by ‘race’? The d/prog just don’t seem to stray very far from their roots.
The vile, stupid and evil communist/Islamofascist Dhimmi-crats are rabid and fanatical totalitarians. They are ideologically committed to vindictively and obnoxiously persecuting people and institutions who decline to adopt their wretched beliefs.
What’s up is the same red flag I’ve been waving for years: These tyrannical politicos are not criminally prosecuted for their anti-constitutional actions which attempt to egregiously and aggressively deprive citizens of their plain, enumerated rights.
Yet, if you or I were to engage in such attempts at deprivation of rights, we’d be in prison.
What’s up with these d/prog politicians and their insistence on reliving their ‘glory days’ of demanding member/donor lists, counting, classifying and segregation by ‘race’?
Better question: What’s up with the lower federal courts making us re-litigate Constitutional questions that have already been decided by the Supreme Court years ago?
SCOTUS has limited time and accepts scant few cases per term. Having to re-hear and re-litigate the same questions over and over wastes everyone’s time and resources.
To answer your first question, yes, this was already settled in NAACP v. Alabama. So why are the District judges defying that precedent and making SCOTUS answer it again?
And why isn’t the Supreme Court smacking down the District judges for crap like this?
“Yesterday, all nine Justices agreed.”
Do people understand how lopsided an argument is to have all nine justices agreeing?
I seriously doubt you could get a 9-0 decision that water is wet.
This is an epic smack down.
When you lose even the dim-witted Latina and the non-biologist, you know that your legal argument doesn’t have merit.
I’m sure that NAACP caselaw had something to do with the 9-0
True, in which case what’s missing from this decision is a severe reprimand of the District judges for wasting the Supreme Court’s time by defying precedent and re-litigating Constitutional questions that have already been decided.
Unanimous.
Apparently, even dumb and dumber know how to butter their own bread.
So what personal penalty was the New Jersey Attorney General assessed, for violation of civil rights, financial persecution, and general tyranny?
I am gobsmacked that KBJ didn’t dissent!!
the fact that they want to attack innocent loving people is more proof of what we’re up against
and btw UCLA Law students are threatening maga who might attempt to exposse the names of the clowns who “violently” disrupted a campus meeting the other day being held by american patriots
Here’s the problem. The NJ AG’s harassment is so outstandingly bad that not even KBJ or the rest of the democrats masquerading as jurists dissent. Yet the pro life group loses at every level of lower federal court review from the district to appellate court. Getting to the Supreme Court is difficult. Protecting constitutional rights from creeps like the NJ AG depends on a responsible federal judiciary. The senate would do this country a great service with some real oversight of activist democrat judges. A little judicial removal could go a long way.