The U.S. Supreme Court on June 16 agreed to consider whether New Jersey may subpoena donor records from a network of pro-life pregnancy help centers.

Donor information is a closely guarded secret in the nonprofit community. Donors generally expect their identities to be protected so they will not be subject to harassment by political opponents and hostile governments.

The court granted the petition in First Choice Women’s Resource v. Platkin without comment in an unsigned order. No justices dissented.

First Choice Women’s Resource says its mission is “to encourage and equip women and men to make informed pregnancy decisions.”

Some pregnant clients choose to give birth, while others opt for adoption, and some have abortions, the organization says.

“We do not benefit financially from any decision a client makes and we do not charge for our services. We believe that women and men are capable of making their own choices when given accurate information.”

The Supreme Court’s new ruling came after the justices had declined in May 2024 to take up a request from the petitioner, First Choice Women’s Resource, to halt the subpoena.

In 2023, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin issued a subpoena to First Choice demanding donor lists and private correspondence as part of an investigation into whether the group was breaking the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act.

Platkin was among the 16 Democratic attorneys general who signed a letter in October 2023 saying that pregnancy help centers spread “misinformation and harm” by “misleading consumers and delaying access to critical, time-sensitive reproductive healthcare.”

The attorneys general said they have watched “with increasing concern in recent years as anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) have proliferated in our states, outnumbering abortion clinics by a three-to-one ratio.”

These centers “do not provide full-scope reproductive healthcare and often use deceptive tactics to lure in patients seeking reproductive healthcare. These tactics can have dire health consequences and rob patients of their healthcare choices,” they alleged in the letter.

First Choice’s attorneys, the Alliance Defending Freedom, previously said in a statement that New Jersey’s attorney general has “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.”

Platkin’s Pro-Abortion ‘Strike Force’

After the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which struck down Roe v. Wade (1973), Platkin created a “Strike Force” to pursue “strategic initiatives” to promote access to abortion, First Choice said in its petition filed Jan. 20.

The Strike Force drew up a statewide “consumer alert” to advise New Jersey residents that pro-life pregnancy centers “do NOT provide abortions,” and advised women to contact abortion provider Planned Parenthood. He also co-wrote an open letter “falsely accusing pregnancy centers of misleading consumers,” the petition said.

Platkin served First Choice with an investigatory subpoena containing 28 demands for information and documents, “including the identity of every one of its donors who gave through any means other than one specific donor website.” Platkin said he was concerned that a donor might have donated in the mistaken belief that First Choice favored abortion.

The petition said that Platkin’s “staggering” demand required disclosure of more than 5,000 individual contributions, even though he didn’t identify “a single donor complaint.”

First Choice sued in federal district court, but the court dismissed the action and denied emergency relief. The court held the application was unripe until “the state court enforces the Subpoena,” according to the petition.

The ripeness doctrine holds that federal courts may only entertain cases that are considered ready for judicial resolution. The facts have to be sufficiently well developed, and the legal issues clear, before a court may get involved in a case.

Platkin then initiated an enforcement action against the organization in state court. First Choice appealed the district court ruling, seeking an injunction against the state in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The group also sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court, which denied the request in May 2024.

Later, the state trial court found the subpoena was enforceable and allowed Platkin to require First Choice to reply “in full” to the subpoena. However, the court did not rule on First Choice’s argument that the subpoena violated the First Amendment, finding the group’s objections were “premature,” the petition said.

First Choice appealed and has handed over more than 2,300 pages of documents without disclosing protected donor data.

The case continued to be litigated in state court and the Third Circuit. After the state court enforced the subpoena, both sides acknowledged the case was ripe, but the Third Circuit ruled that state-court litigation had to take place before First Choice could file a federal lawsuit to enforce its rights. The circuit court held that the lawsuit was still not ripe because First Choice could continue to “assert its constitutional claims in state court as that litigation unfolds,” the petition said.

The Third Circuit ruled that the affidavits filed by First Choice “do not yet show enough of an injury,” without explaining “how a First Amendment injury could exist while not being ‘enough’ to establish jurisdiction,” according to the petition.

First Choice said it filed its petition with the Supreme Court after Platkin agreed he would refrain from further subpoena enforcement efforts while the organization seeks review from the high court, the petition said.

In a Feb. 24 brief, Platkin urged the Supreme Court not to take up the case.

The brief stated that the Third Circuit ruling is correct, that there is no split among the federal courts of appeals on the issues the case presents, and that the ripeness question “turns on multiple highly idiosyncratic facts that complicate review.”

The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in its new term, which begins in October.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared June 16, 2025, in The Epoch Times.

Photo: New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin (D) (courtesy: his office)