The Center celebrates the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Davenport, a case that is very important to two of the Center’s clients—two crisis pregnancy centers in New Jersey that have been served with similarly abusive subpoenas from the same attorney general in this case.
The Court unanimously ruled that First Choice, a religious crisis pregnancy center in New Jersey, may bring a First Amendment lawsuit over a subpoena from New Jersey’s top law enforcement official for information about its donors. The Court found that First Choice has Article III standing to challenge a subpoena from the New Jersey Attorney General demanding First Choice identify the donors behind nearly 5,000 donations. The attorney general, who had been outspoken in his support of abortion, cited no violations of law, only a vague accusation that First Choice was misleading clients and donors, and hoped to use the subpoena to obtain the information of individuals who made donations to the center so that the state could contact a sample of donors to determine if they had been misled into thinking that the center provided abortions.
Writing for the Court, Justice Gorsuch said First Choice established a “present injury” to its First Amendment right of association and has legal standing to pursue its civil rights case in federal court, citing the limitation the subpoena created to First Choice’s association rights. Gorsuch noted that the Court has “held that ‘compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy’ can ‘constitute a[n] effective . . . restraint on freedom of association.”
The Supreme Court agreed with First Choice that the subpoena presents a chilling effect on donors associating with First Choice, given that—once the subpoena is enforced—their personal information will be handed over to the state attorney general. Whether the state ultimately keeps that information to itself does not alter that conclusion.
The Center filed amicus briefs at both the cert. petition stage and the merits stage encouraging the Court to clarify that a claim “should be found ripe in federal courts when injury based on First Amendment interests has been clearly and adequately alleged.” The Center’s arguments about the lower court’s ripeness rulings track well with the Court’s opinion that rejected and reversed those rulings.
