First Choice Women's Resource Centers v. Platkin (24-781)
- Term
- OT2025
- Argued
- 2025-12-02
- Decided
- 2026-04-29
- Vote
- 9-0 for First Choice
- Opinion
- Justice Gorsuch
- Majority
- Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Jackson
The case in brief
Facts
First Choice Women's Resource Centers is a religious nonprofit in New Jersey that counsels pregnant women and, because it believes life begins at conception, does not provide or refer for abortions. New Jersey's Attorney General served the group with a subpoena, an official demand for documents, that sought the names, addresses, phone numbers, and employers of most of its donors. The Attorney General said the group's fundraising materials might mislead donors into thinking it provides abortions. First Choice sued in federal court, arguing that the demand violated its First Amendment right of association because it could not promise donors anonymity, which scared them away. The federal trial court dismissed the case, ruling that First Choice had no injury yet because no state court had ordered it to hand over anything, and a divided federal appeals court agreed.
Question
When a group shows that a state's demand for its donor information is already discouraging its supporters, can it challenge that demand in federal court, or must it first fight the demand in state court?
Conclusion
First Choice won in a unanimous 9-0 decision written by Justice Gorsuch. The Court held that First Choice has "standing," meaning it has a real enough injury to bring its lawsuit, because the demand for donor information is already harming its First Amendment right to associate with supporters. The Court said this harm begins when the demand is made, not only when a court enforces it, and it rejected the Attorney General's arguments that the subpoena could not be enforced on its own, that one donation website was exempt, and that a protective order would keep donor information confidential. The Court did not decide whether the subpoena actually violates the First Amendment; it only ruled that the lawsuit may go forward and sent the case back to the lower courts.
Holding
Justice Gorsuch delivered a UNANIMOUS opinion for the Court. The Court held that First Choice has established a present injury to its First Amendment associational rights sufficient to confer Article III standing.
Pre-decision prediction
First Choice 7-2 (78% confidence, raw).
Opinion of the Court
Authored by Justice Gorsuch (7,924 words total).
FIRST CHOICE WOMEN’S RESOURCE CENTERS, INC. v. DAVENPORT, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF NEW JERSEY CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT No. 24–781.
Argued December 2, 2025—Decided April 29, 2026
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.
FIRST CHOICE WOMEN’S RESOURCE CENTERS, INC. v. DAVENPORT Syllabus 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.
Held: First Choice has established a present injury to its First Amendment associational rights sufficient to confer Article III standing. Pp. 5–22. (a) Article III’s “standing” requirement consists of three elements: “injury in fact, causation, and redressability.” Diamond Alternative Energy, LLC v. EPA, 606 U. S. 100, 110–111. This case centers on the injury-in-fact element, which requires “an injury that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent.” Id., at 111. Here, the Attorney General’s subpoena has caused First Choice to suffer an ongoing injury to its First Amendment rights. Pp. 5–13. (1) The First Amendment guarantees all Americans the rights to speak, worship, publish, assemble, and petition their government freely. Each of these rights necessarily carries with it “ ‘a corresponding right to associate with others.’ ” Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, 594 U. S. 595, 606. Associational rights carry special significance for political, social, religious, and other minorities, protecting “dissident expression” from marginalization or outright “suppression by the majority.” Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609, 622. This 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, NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U. S. 449, 462, and thus has repeatedly subjected demands for private donor or member information to heightened First Amendment scrutiny. Throughout, the Court has recognized the critical role privacy plays in preserving protected association, and it has acknowledged that official demands for private donor information “inevitabl[y]” carry with them a “deterrent effect on the exercise of First Amendment rights.” Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 65. Pp. 6–10. (2) Against this backdrop, First Choice has established a present injury to its First Amendment associational rights and therefore has standing. An injury in fact arises when a defendant burdens a plaintiff’s constitutional rights, and government demands for a charity’s private donor information have just that effect. 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. All this occurs not just when a
Syllabus demand is enforced but when it is made and for as long as it remains outstanding. Pp. 10–13. (b) The Attorney General’s three reasons why First Choice has not suffered any injury sufficient to maintain this lawsuit each fails. Pp. 13–22. (1) It does 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. Whether the subpoena’s demands and penalties were immediately enforceable or contingent on future court action, donors would reasonably fear disclosure and hesitate to associate, and a reasonable recipient of the Attorney General’s subpoena would be induced to trim its protected advocacy knowing it now stands in the government’s crosshairs. This Court’s precedents do not impose—and in fact foreclose—a rule that would nonetheless require First Choice to await a state court order enforcing the subpoena before the group could challenge the Attorney General’s demands in federal court. Pp. 15–19. (2) It is of no moment that the subpoena allows First Choice to solicit funds through one specific website without disclosing the identities of those who donate through it. 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 and achieve exactly what the First Amendment forbids. Pp. 19–21. (3) It makes 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. Putting aside the uncertainties about any prospective protective order, demands for private donor information burden First Amendment rights “[e]ven if there [is] no disclosure to the general public.” Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479, 486. An official demand for private donor information is enough to discourage reasonable individuals from associating with a group and to discourage groups from expressing dissident views. So long as the demand remains outstanding, “the pressure” to avoid ties and speech that “might displease” officials demanding disclosure can “be constant and heavy.” Ibid. Pp. 21–22. Reversed and remanded. GORSUCH, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
Opinion of the Court NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.
FIRST CHOICE WOMEN’S RESOURCE CENTERS, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF NEW JERSEY ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT [April 29, 2026]
Excerpt of 8 of 51 paragraphs. Full opinion available on the interactive page or in the official PDF.
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