Pregnancy Center Appeal to Be Heard at US Supreme Court
New Jersey pregnancy resource centers ordered to turn over documents by state attorney general.
The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a group of pregnancy resource centers in New Jersey.
First Choice / Photo via ADF
The case began in November 2023 when New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin demanded that First Choice turn over documents, including information it provides to clients, statements about abortion pill reversal, documents about personnel and outside organizations with which it works, and donor information.
Reluctant to provide such confidential and private information, First Choice, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), challenged the attorney general’s subpoena in federal court based on the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, claiming the subpoena chilled the right to freedom of association and freedom of speech.
“New Jersey’s attorney general is targeting First Choice—a ministry that provides parenting classes, free ultrasounds, baby clothes, and more to its community—simply because of its pro-life views,” ADF Senior Counsel Erin Hawley said in a press release. “The Constitution protects First Choice and its donors from unjustified demands to disclose their identities, and First Choice is entitled to vindicate those rights in federal court.”
Originally, the federal district court dismissed the case, saying it was not ripe for a decision until the state court enforced the subpoena. The attorney general then filed an enforcement action in state court.
The state court granted the enforcement action of the subpoena, but it declined to decide the federal constitutional claims raised by First Choice, finding them “premature.”
First Choice filed an appeal, meanwhile producing some documents requested by the subpoena.
After the state court enforcement action, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit sent the case back to the federal district court, stating that First Choice’s claims were now ripe.
However, the federal court again declared First Choice’s claims not ripe until the state court “require[s] the subpoena recipient to respond to the subpoena under threat of contempt.”
First Choice filed yet another appeal to the Third Circuit where the majority said the case was not ripe because the pregnancy center could still assert its constitutional claims in the state court.
The back and forth led ADF to file a petition asking the Supreme Court to review the case to decide the question of whether civil rights plaintiffs need to litigate challenges to state investigations in state court before they can bring federal claims.
“The lower courts have wrongly held that First Choice is relegated to state court to present its constitutional claims,” Hawley asserted. “We are looking forward to presenting our case to the Supreme Court and urging it to hold that First Choice has the same right to federal court as any other civil rights plaintiff.”
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