Law360 (November 13, 2025, 7:17 PM EST) -- An organization that operates anti-abortion pregnancy centers told the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday that New Jersey is undermining its own subpoena power in a bid to avoid constitutional review of its request for information about the group's donors.

In its response brief to the justices, First Choice Women's Resource Centers Inc. argued that the state's subpoena for donor information is inherently chilling to the group's associational rights, despite the state's claims that a subpoena from the state attorney general is "non-self-executing" and unripe for review until a court moves to enforce it.

"The [New Jersey] attorney general insists First Choice's chill is unreasonable because the subpoena 'does not require [First Choice] to do anything, and compliance is entirely voluntary,'" the organization wrote. "The subpoena says otherwise: it 'command[s]' First Choice to comply or risk contempt and other penalties. … The subpoena's comply-or-else demands would objectively chill a person of ordinary firmness. One might suspect that was the point of issuing it."

The brief comes as First Choice seeks a revival of its lawsuit challenging the attorney general's subpoena, which was dismissed from New Jersey federal district court and sent back to state court in a ruling that was upheld by the Third Circuit last year. The U.S. Supreme Court granted First Choice's certiorari petition in June.

Now, the group says that the state is trying to get away with claiming that "no consequences attach" if First Choice fails to comply with the subpoena, despite having told the Third Circuit the opposite in another case.

In 2022's Smith & Wesson v. New Jersey , the state argued that "failure to obey is a wrongful act that can justify … contempt,'" First Choice pointed out. And the subpoena's own language twice warns that failure to comply "may render [the recipient] liable for contempt of court and such other penalties as are provided by law."

But in its brief to the Supreme Court last month, the state claimed that subpoenas can't cause any injury sufficient for Article III jurisdiction because they alone impose no legal obligation to produce documents and aren't "regulatory, proscriptive, or compulsory." That only comes, the state argued, when a court compels production.

"Were the attorney general correct," First Choice said Thursday, "one wonders why he issues subpoenas. But he is wrong. … Since state law authorizes punishment for the failure to comply, a subpoena is no different from the myriad criminal and civil statutes this court has found to support pre-enforcement review."

According to the group, the attorney general is using the argument that subpoenas don't carry weight on their own to argue that the high court shouldn't take up the group's claim that the subpoenas have a chilling effect.

In its Thursday brief, First Choice argues that the subpoena objectively chills its First Amendment rights because donors can reasonably fear disclosure to a hostile state official. The fear, First Choice said, could deter donations and protected associational activity.

"Because donor disclosure demands strike at the heart of the right to associate privately, this court's cases recognize that an inherent chill arises from such demands," the group said, citing the high court's ruling in 2021's Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta , in which the court held that California's blanket donor-disclosure requirement violated the First Amendment because it wasn't narrowly tailored to the state's interest in investigating charitable fraud. The group added: "Such demands necessarily chill associational rights because they give rise to an objective 'fear of exposure of [the donor's] beliefs shown through their associations.'"

The state, meanwhile, "reinforce[d]" that chill when it claimed that First Choice's refusal to turn over donor information violated state law.

"[T]he attorney general cannot now claim First Choice has nothing to fear from his supposedly 'voluntary' subpoena," the group said.

First Choice Women's Resource Centers, Inc. is represented by Erin M. Hawley, Kristen K. Waggoner, James A. Campbell, Erik C. Baptist, Natalie Thompson, Gabriella M. McIntyre, Dalton A. Nichols, John J. Bursch, Lincoln Davis Wilson and Caroline Lindsay of Alliance Defending Freedom.

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin is represented by Jeremy M. Feigenbaum, Sundeep Iyer, David Leit, Liza B. Fleming, Lauren E. Van Driesen and Elizabeth R. Walsh of the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General.

The case is First Choice Women's Resource Centers Inc., Petitioner v. Matthew J. Platkin, attorney general of New Jersey, case number 24-781, in the U.S. Supreme Court.

–Additional reporting by Carla Baranauckas and George Woolston. Editing by Amy French.

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