First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin

Description:  First Choice Women’s Resource Centers is a Christian, pro-life, medical nonprofit that serves pregnant mothers, mothers of newborns, and fathers. New Jersey’s attorney general selectively targeted the nonprofit based on its religious speech and pro-life views with a wide-ranging, unfounded, and burdensome subpoena that requires the organization to expend its limited resources to produce extensive documentation or face judicial sanctions. The attorney general does not refer to any substantive evidence of wrongdoing to justify his onerous demands.

WASHINGTON – Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed their opening brief Thursday with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a collection of five faith-based pregnancy centers. First Choice is asking the Supreme Court to allow it to challenge in federal court an unconstitutional investigation by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin.

Platkin demanded that First Choice disclose the names, phone numbers, addresses, and place of employment of many of its donors, plus up to 10 years of its internal confidential documents. For decades, the Supreme Court has recognized the right to maintain the confidentiality of one’s donors from government disclosure demands. And for over a century, Congress has guaranteed that federal courts can decide claims of unconstitutional treatment at the hands of state officials. Yet the court’s decision under review in this case keeps victims of abusive investigations out of federal court.

“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,” said ADF Senior Counsel Erin Hawley, vice president of the ADF Center for Life and Regulatory Practice, who will be arguing before the court. “The Constitution protects First Choice and its donors from demands by a hostile state official to disclose their identities, and First Choice is entitled to vindicate those rights in federal court. 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.”

“For more than two years, Attorney General Platkin has been pursuing a personal and political vendetta against First Choice and other pregnancy centers, targeting us with an aggressive demand requesting sensitive documents, including our donors’ identities,” said Aimee Huber, executive director of First Choice. “He has shown a willingness to bend the law to frustrate the important work we do—work that has made a tangible, life-and-death difference for tens of thousands of New Jersey women and their children. The government can’t harass those who support pro-life ministries just because it disagrees with their message.”

First Choice tried to challenge the demand in federal court, but the lower federal courts said that First Choice must pursue its federal claims in state court first. ADF is asking the Supreme Court to hold that civil rights plaintiffs do not need to raise challenges to state investigations in state court before they can bring federal claims—the same standard that applies to any other person suffering constitutional injury at the hands of a state official.

“The Attorney General’s attempt to manufacture procedural roadblocks to evade federal court review fails for the simple reason that his subpoena has objectively chilled First Choice’s associations and speech,” the brief filed in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin explains. “These delicate First Amendment’s freedoms need breathing space to survive. And the right to keep donor identities confidential ‘is especially important’ for ‘shielding dissident expression.’”

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

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