Unanimous Court Rules NJ Faith-based Pregnancy Centers Can Challenge Subpoenas for Donor Info

In First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Davenport, 608 U.S. ____ (2026), the U.S. Supreme Court held that faith-based pregnancy centers have standing to challenge state investigatory subpoenas in federal court. According to the unanimous Court, demands for donor information create an immediate, “actual and ongoing injury” to First Amendment associational rights.

Facts of the Case

First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc., is a religious nonprofit organization that has provided counseling and resources to pregnant women in New Jersey since 1985. Believing that life begins at conception, the group does not provide abortions or refer clients to others for abortions. In 2022, New Jersey’s Attorney General established a “Reproductive Rights Strike Force” that issued a consumer alert accusing groups like First Choice of seeking to prevent people from accessing reproductive health care by providing false or misleading abortion information.

The Attorney General served a subpoena on First Choice, commanding the group to produce 28 categories of documents, including documents reflecting the names, phone numbers, addresses, and places of employment of all individuals who had made donations to First Choice by any means other than through one specific webpage. Effectively, that demand required First Choice to provide personal information about donors who gave through two other websites, through the group’s various social media pages, by mail, in person, or by any other means. The subpoena warned twice that failure to comply may render the group liable for contempt of court and other penalties.

First Choice filed suit in federal district court under 42 U.S.C. §1983, seeking to prevent the Attorney General from enforcing the document demands and arguing that the demand for donor information violated its First Amendment rights. First Choice alleged that its inability to guarantee its donors’ anonymity in the face of the Attorney General’s demands injured the group by discouraging donors from associating with it.

The district court denied First Choice’s motion for a preliminary injunction and dismissed its complaint, holding that the group failed to state a justiciable claim as a matter of law because, absent any state court order compelling production, First Choice had yet to suffer an injury from the subpoena and thus lacked Article III standing. A divided panel of the Third Circuit affirmed, with the majority agreeing that First Choice had not established “enough of an injury” to permit its case to proceed.

Supreme Court’s Decision

The Supreme Court unanimously reversed, holding that First Choice had established a present injury to its First Amendment associational rights and therefore had standing. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote on behalf of the justices.

As Justice Gorsuch explained, Article III’s standing requirement consists of three elements: “injury in fact, causation, and redressability.” In this case, the dispute involved the injury-in-fact element, which requires “an injury that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent.

Justice Gorsuch next turned to whether the Attorney General’s subpoena caused First Choice to suffer an ongoing injury to its First Amendment rights. Citing NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449 (1958), he noted that the Court has long held that “compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association” as more direct forms of suppression, and thus has repeatedly subjected demands for private donor or member information to heightened First Amendment scrutiny. 

In this case, the Court found that an injury in fact arises when the government demands for a charity’s private donor information, as such demands inevitably discourage association with groups engaged in protected First Amendment advocacy and encourage groups to cease or modify protected advocacy the government disfavors.

“An injury in fact does not arise only when a defendant causes a tangible harm to a plaintiff, like a physical injury or monetary loss. It can also arise when a defendant burdens a plaintiff’s constitutional rights,” Justice Gorsuch wrote. “And our cases have long recognized that demands for a charity’s private member or donor information have just that effect.”

As further support for its decision, the Court pointed to a friend of the court briefs from an array of organizations. “Groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have filed briefs in this case explaining that, ‘[e]ven if a subpoena targeting First Amendment activity is never enforced in court, [it] will give its targets a very good reason to clam up [and] give the target organization’s members and supporters a very good reason to abandon the cause,’” Justice Gorsuch wrote.

The Supreme Court went on to reject the Attorney General’s three reasons why First Choice has not suffered any injury sufficient to maintain the suit. First, the Court determined that it did not matter that subpoenas issued by the Attorney General are purportedly “non-self executing” such that any legal duty to produce records arises only when a state court agrees to enforce the subpoena.As Justice Gorsuch explained:

Whether that command and those penalties were immediately enforceable or depended on subsequent court action, the most First Choice could say to existing and prospective donors after receiving Mr. Platkin’s subpoena was that their privacy might be protected—or it might not…An objectively reasonable recipient of a demand like that would be induced, as well, to trim its protected advocacy knowing it now stands in the government’s crosshairs.

The Court also found it inconsequential that the subpoena allowed First Choice to solicit funds through one specific website without disclosing the identities of those who donate through it. According to the Court, by restricting how First Choice may interact privately with its donors, the Attorney General’s subpoena burdened First Choice’s associational rights. “Were the rule otherwise, the government could channel the ability of disfavored groups to associate through narrow and state-preferred forms,” Justice Gorsuch wrote. “In doing so, it could achieve exactly what the First Amendment forbids, marginalizing dissident voices and reshaping the marketplace of ideas to its pleasure, all while evading any legal challenge to its actions.”

Finally, the Court determined that it made no difference that a state court may soon, and with the Attorney General’s assent, issue a protective order requiring the Attorney General to keep confidential any documents First Choice produces pursuant to the subpoena. As Justice Gorsuch emphasized, demands for private donor information burden First Amendment rights “[e]ven if there [is] no disclosure to the general public.”