When the American Civil Liberties Union agrees with pro-life, gun rights, and business groups in the Supreme Court, there must be a pretty clear and important principle at stake. The case is First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, and the Court heard arguments on Dec. 2. The important principle is whether the First Amendment allows a state to pry into private organizations’ internal communications and uncover donor lists, supposedly in the name of the “public interest,” even when those organizations have not been accused of violating any law. Every organization across the ideological spectrum will be affected by the Court’s decision. The Case First Choice is a group of faith-based organizations in New Jersey that has been helping women with unplanned pregnancies for 40 years, providing counseling, medical services, and practical support. In November 2023, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin issued a subpoena to First Choice demanding a breathtaking range of inside information. This included everything from videos shown to clients; internal guidance to personnel regarding interactions with clients; 10 years of documents supporting claims about abortion complications, effects, and costs; “documents concerning the development of content for [First Choice’s] website”; and documents that “identify donations made to [First Choice].” What on earth could this service organization have done for the state to pounce like this? Like other states, New Jersey has laws that prohibit deceptive practices by companies or charitable organizations. If a targeted organization refuses to comply with a subpoena, the attorney general may seek a state court order compelling compliance. In this case, Platkin claimed to be enforcing those laws even though he had not accused First Choice of violating any of them. There’s little doubt what Platkin is really up to. Government officials, especially in liberal states like New Jersey, have zeroed in on pregnancy centers for negative treatment. They have looked the other way as pregnancy centers have been bombed, blockaded, and vandalized. In July 2022, Platkin formed a “strike force” to promote abortion access, including a statewide campaign to disparage pregnancy centers and dissuade anyone from seeking their help, using as the excuse the fact that pregnancy centers do not provide abortions. The truth is that this heavy-handed treatment—and especially the demand for names, phone numbers, and addresses of donors—appears intended to make pregnancy centers seem controversial and, therefore, to suppress donations and other support. Represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, First Choice sued under a federal statute for redressing a violation of constitutional rights. They allege that the subpoena, with its threats of contempt and possible loss of operating licenses, violated the First Amendment’s protection for free speech and association. The U.S. District Court first said that First Choice would have to wait until the state actually attempted to enforce the subpoena through a court order. Then, when such an order was issued, the district court said First Choice would still have to wait because that order had not specifically threatened contempt for non-compliance. Even Platkin no longer defended this goal-shifting approach. Instead, in the Supreme Court, he argued that the threat of enforcement was not sufficiently “imminent” to justify the courts stepping in and preventing him from seeking information from First Choice. The Arguments This issue dominated the Supreme Court argument, with both conservative and liberal justices probing in different ways whether the language of the subpoena created a “credible threat of enforcement” that could chill the speech or association of First Choice or its donors. Several justices, for example, asked whether similar language in a letter simply requesting the information, rather than a formal subpoena, would have created such a threat. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch also asked whether the fact that the subpoena was not “self-executing,” that is, required an additional court order to enforce it, made any difference. Barrett suggested that the language threatening consequences, rather than how language was communicated, was the most important factor. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked whether the Court should look only at the language of the subpoena when it was issued or also consider whether courts were likely to ultimately support the state’s effort at enforcement. Justice Clarence Thomas’ questions highlighted that no complaints had been lodged against First Choice, again raising the question of Platkin’s real purpose in launching this probe. These technical questions were important for three reasons. First, the Court was trying to figure out how this case fit into its own past decisions. Second, as the broad interest by many different groups outside the litigation attests, how the Court decides this case will potentially affect every state’s investigative efforts and the rights of all private groups to resist them. The New Jersey statute Platkin used here allowed him to issue broad subpoenas whenever he thinks doing so might be in “public interest.” The New Jersey Supreme Court has described this as literally “the power of inquisition.” It takes no imagination to see how a hostile attorney general could use this power (no doubt in the name of the public interest) to harass and even suppress groups and activities that he politically opposes. Third, at issue too is whether federal courts and statutes are actually available when federal constitutional rights are allegedly violated. Making that contingent on whether and how state courts decide certain issues would compromise a critical way that citizens can defend against an aggressive and ideological government campaign. First Choice Likely to Win The fact that both liberal and conservative justices asked similar kinds of questions, and the Court’s own precedents protecting similar information from government-forced disclosure, suggest that First Choice is likely to win here. The dozens of groups filing briefs as interested parties suggests that the real question is how such a win will affect all of them. The post Supreme Court Skeptical of New Jersey’s Intrusive Probe of Pregnancy Center appeared first on The Daily Signal.