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 – The United States government, 19 states, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, religious organizations, anonymous donors to pregnancy centers, the ACLU, and many other business and advocacy groups from across the full ideological spectrum filed friend-of-the-court briefs Thursday with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a collection of five faith-based pregnancy centers in New Jersey.

Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, 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.

“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 Supreme 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’re grateful for the diverse voices joining us in urging the Supreme Court to hold that First Choice has the same right to pursue its constitutional claims in federal court as does 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 First Choice Executive Director Aimee Huber. “He has stopped at nothing 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.”

Platkin demanded that First Choice disclose the names, phone numbers, addresses, and places 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 more than a century, Congress has guaranteed that federal courts can decide claims of unconstitutional treatment at the hands of state officials. Despite this, the district court’s decision under review in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin keeps victims of abusive investigations out of federal court.

First Choice tried to challenge the demand in federal court, but those 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.

In its brief, the federal government called this “a simple case” controlled by “bedrock principles” of federal law. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce noted in its brief that, “The number of politically motivated investigations is exploding. There are many recent examples of governments ordering disfavored groups to divulge their confidential internal materials, without regard to the severe and obvious chilling effects on speech and association that these demands create…. The First Amendment guards against ‘use of the power to investigate enforced by the contempt power to probe at will and without relation to existing need.’”

The 19 states supporting First Choice urged the Supreme Court to reverse the decision below, writing that the “New Jersey Attorney General’s subpoena violates the First Amendment. He has handed the keys to his office over to Planned Parenthood, an organization that has waged a relentless campaign to intimidate and silence PRCs for nearly 40 years. [First Choice] and its donors have every reason to fear the consequences of disclosure.”

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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