Supreme Court Sides With Anti-Abortion Centers in Subpoena Fight

The US Supreme Court sided with a network of anti-abortion pregnancy centers, holding that federal courts may review whether state subpoenas chill protected speech before they’re enforced.

In a unanimous ruling on Wednesday, the justices found the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office likely crossed the line into a First Amendment violation when it subpoenaed donor lists from a network of anti-abortion pregnancy centers in the state.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the subpoena ran afoul of repeated opinions by the court since the 1950s.

“Disputing none of these precedents but seeking ways around them, the Attorney General has offered a variety of arguments,” Gorsuch wrote. “Some are old, some are new, but none succeeds.”

First Choice Women’s Resource Centers Inc. sued to block a New Jersey subpoena seeking a host of records, including donor lists, as part of an investigation into possible violations of the state’s consumer protection laws.

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s investigation into the centers was one of several launched by Democratic state regulators in recent years into whether crisis pregnancy centers are misleading potential patients and donors about medical services they provide. The centers say they have been targeted over their religious views opposing abortion.

First Choice was represented by Erin Hawley, senior counsel at the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. Hawley argued New Jersey’s subpoena intimidated donors and chilled the faith-based pregnancy centers’ First Amendment speech even though no court had ever ordered its enforcement.

New Jersey was represented by Sundeep Iyer, chief counsel at the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office.

The case is First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, U.S., No. 24-781.