NASHVILLE (BP) – The years-long efforts of New Jersey’s attorney general to force crisis pregnancy centers to provide internal documents as well as donors’ personal information is unconstitutional and the latest case of pro-life groups being persecuted for their beliefs, said attorneys for Alliance Defending Freedom on Aug. 22.
An opening brief filed on behalf of First Choice Resource Centers to the Supreme Court asks that the plaintiffs receive their day in a federal court instead of being the subject of an investigation certain to drag through the state levels.
“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.”
Miles Mullin, acting president for the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, agreed that the case is the latest in a pattern of pregnancy resource centers facing “constant attack for daring to provide life-affirming care to babies, mothers and fathers facing crisis pregnancies in a culture that tells women the life inside them is dispensable.”
An alert issued by Platkin’s office in December 2022 sought to “warn” others about crisis pregnancy centers, describing them as “providing false or misleading information in preventing women from seeking abortions.” An August 2024 Wall Street Journal column cited emails obtained through an open records request that the alert had been reviewed and drafted with Planned Parenthood’s input.
In November 2023, Platkin issued a subpoena that said First Choice must disclose the names, phone numbers, addresses and places of employment for many of the organization’s donors as well as up to 10 years of internal confidential documents.
New Jersey Republicans called for Platkin’s ouster earlier this year, in part, because of his targeting of pro-life centers.
Mullin said First Choice is being investigated “for simply doing what the Bible commands: providing for those in need while contending for the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.”
“The ERLC is grateful the Supreme Court has agreed to hear First Choice’s case and plans to engage in this case,” he added. “We ask that Southern Baptists and other Christians join us in praying that the court will rule in a way that ensures every pro-life pregnancy resource center has the right to find relief from those that seek to undermine their ministry through investigatory harassment.”
After lower-level federal courts refused to hear the case, the Supreme Court agreed in June to do so.
“First Choice must be able to seek redress in Federal Court instead of having to navigate a long and arduous process through the state court system first,” Mullin said. “This is the purpose for which these courts were established – to protect the constitutional rights of citizens and organizations that local authorities do not like. Otherwise, the investigation itself becomes a form of punishment.”
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