Every justice on the Supreme Court, liberal and conservative alike, agreed Wednesday that New Jersey went too far when it demanded the donor lists of a faith-based pregnancy center and then tried to block the group from fighting back in federal court. The unanimous ruling in favor of First Choice Women's Resource Centers marks a sharp rebuke of the state's attorney general and a significant First Amendment victory for donor privacy nationwide.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the full Court, traced the government's playbook back more than seven decades. Just the News reported that Gorsuch opened with a pointed historical comparison:
"Since the 1950s, this Court has confronted one official demand after another like the Attorney General's. Over and again, we have held those demands burden the exercise of First Amendment rights. Against this backdrop, the question before us all but answers itself."
The decision reversed the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had ruled 2-1 that First Choice's claims were not "ripe" and that the group had not yet suffered enough "injury" to sue in federal court. The Supreme Court sent the case back for further proceedings, but its language left little doubt about where the justices stand on government demands for private donor information.
The confrontation began in December 2022, when then-Attorney General Matthew Platkin's "Reproductive Rights Strike Force" issued a "consumer alert" asking the public to file complaints against pro-life pregnancy centers for allegedly "provid[ing] false or misleading information about abortion." First Choice Women's Resource Centers, a network of five Christian-based pregnancy centers in New Jersey, found itself in the crosshairs.
The following year, Platkin subpoenaed the group. The demand was sweeping: 28 categories of documents with as many as 29 subcategories. It sought names, phone numbers, addresses, and places of employment of donors going back to 2021, through every channel except one specific website. The subpoena twice warned that failure to comply "may render you liable for contempt of Court and such other penalties as are provided by law."
Platkin later said he wanted to learn whether donors had "been misled" by First Choice about its "mission and operations." But First Choice saw something else entirely: a state government using its investigative power to expose the private supporters of a pro-life organization and chill their willingness to give.
First Choice sued in federal court, arguing the subpoena violated its First Amendment rights to free speech and association. Platkin responded by filing his own lawsuit in state court, a move the Supreme Court opinion would later describe as part of a potential "preclusion trap" designed to keep the group out of federal court altogether. As AP News reported, the ruling does not resolve whether the center actually misled anyone about its services. It clears the way for the federal court challenge to proceed.
The opinion reads like a history lesson aimed at officials who should have known better. Gorsuch linked the New Jersey subpoena to a long line of government attempts to force disclosure of private associations, from Alabama's demand for NAACP member lists in the 1950s to California's compelled disclosure of Americans for Prosperity Foundation donors, which the Court struck down in 2020.
In that California case, the state's attorney general had promised to keep the donor information private. The Court was unpersuaded then, and Gorsuch made clear the same logic applied now. As Fox News reported, Gorsuch wrote that official demands for private donor information can discourage individuals from associating with a group and burden First Amendment rights, even before any enforcement action takes place.
Gorsuch put it bluntly in the opinion:
"Strip away the ability of individuals to work together free from governmental oversight and intrusion, and the freedom to associate may become no freedom at all, individuals deterred, groups diminished, and their protected advocacy suppressed."
On the question of standing, whether First Choice had suffered enough harm to bring a federal case, the Court found the answer obvious. The mere existence of the subpoena, with its threatened penalties, was enough. Gorsuch noted that New Jersey "does not dispute much of this," adding "for good reason." He wrote that the state's demand for donor information produced a "deterrent effect" and declared: "All this is more than enough to establish injury in fact under our precedents."
One line from the opinion captured the dynamic with particular precision:
"[T]he value of a sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it drops."
In other words, the government does not need to actually punish a group to injure it. The threat alone does the work. That principle has broad implications, and not just for pro-life organizations. The Court's unanimous posture in this case sends a message that cuts across ideological lines.
The 3rd Circuit panel had concluded 2-1 that First Choice could not yet sue because the subpoena had not been enforced through a court order. Appeals Judge Stephanos Bibas dissented, calling the case "indistinguishable" from the California donor-disclosure precedent.
The Supreme Court agreed with Bibas. Gorsuch's opinion emphasized that Congress enacted Civil Rights Act Section 1983 more than 150 years ago "with the express goal of ensuring a federal forum to citizens who claim that state actors have violated their constitutional rights." Requiring plaintiffs to exhaust state court remedies first, the opinion said, would undermine that guarantee.
The Court also rejected New Jersey's "federalism" argument, the claim that state investigations should play out in state courts before federal courts get involved. National Review reported that Gorsuch wrote the demand for private donor information itself was enough to establish injury to the group's associational rights, making the federal case viable now, not after some future enforcement action.
This matters far beyond one pregnancy center in New Jersey. If the 3rd Circuit's logic had stood, any state attorney general could issue a subpoena designed to chill First Amendment activity, then argue the target had no right to challenge it in federal court until the state finished its own proceedings. The Supreme Court shut that door.
The ruling drew praise from an unusually wide range of organizations. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, framed the decision as a warning to state officials who use their offices to target ideological opponents:
"Even the Court's left-leaning justices recognized the far-reaching chill AG Platkin's weaponization of government would have on all Americans' cherished freedoms."
Dannenfelser added that "Democrats across the country have pursued a political vendetta" against pregnancy centers that provide "hundreds of millions' worth of vital services a year for women, children and families" and "don't profit from violence and harm."
Aimee Huber, executive director of First Choice, said through her lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom that Platkin "has gone to great lengths to frustrate" the group's work, which she described as making "a tangible, life-saving difference for tens of thousands of New Jersey women and their children." Her declaration in the case stated that the attorney general's demands threatened First Choice's ability to "recruit new donors." As the Washington Examiner reported, Huber said bluntly: "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."
Even the ACLU cheered the ruling, saying it confirmed that advocacy groups have a "legal path to fight retaliatory conduct by government officials." That bipartisan consensus on the principle, if not on the underlying politics, speaks to how far New Jersey overreached.
William Haun, senior counsel at the religious liberty law firm Becket, called the decision "a triumph for every faith-based ministry in America." Becket also cited a poll finding that four in five Americans oppose government interference in private organizations operating consistent with their religious beliefs. The current Supreme Court term has already produced several high-profile rulings, but this one may carry some of the broadest First Amendment implications.
Heather Lauer, CEO of People United for Privacy Foundation, called the ruling a "milestone victory for donor privacy in the courts" and said her organization had predicted "New Jersey was headed for trouble" after oral argument. She added that "the privacy of donors is a foundational First Amendment right."
The same day the Supreme Court ruled, the Buckeye Institute, an Ohio-based policy group, argued a similar case before the 6th Circuit. Buckeye is fighting to stop the IRS from obtaining donors' identities during an audit. The group's roots in political advocacy run deep; it lobbied state leaders to reject President Obama's Medicaid expansion in 2013. The Institute for Free Speech, which represents Buckeye and also filed in the First Choice case, told Just the News the ruling will make it harder for the government to sidestep First Amendment analysis through standing, ripeness, or abstention arguments.
That is the real significance of this decision. The Court did not rule on whether First Choice deceived anyone. It ruled that a state government cannot use subpoena power to expose the private supporters of a disfavored organization and then claim the target has no standing to fight back. The New York Post noted that the ruling rejects the lower court's reasoning that the group could not sue until the subpoena was enforced by court order, a standard that would have left the chilling effect fully intact while the legal process dragged on.
New Jersey's new attorney general, Jennifer Davenport, confirmed only two months ago, inherited a case her predecessor built and lost on every argument. The Court's willingness to reverse lower courts this term has been notable, and this case fits the pattern: a state government overstepped, a circuit court let it slide, and the justices corrected course unanimously.
The case now returns to the lower courts for proceedings on the merits. But the unanimity of this decision, nine justices, no dissent, leaves little room for ambiguity about the constitutional stakes. The political consequences for officials who target disfavored groups through investigative overreach may be just beginning.
When every justice on the bench, from the left to the right, agrees that your state crossed the line, the problem is not the Court. The problem is the conduct.
