Unknown (Guest / Erin Hawley)

So I'll have to paraphrase an old boss of mine.

And after arguing, he would say, you know, I would rather be our side than their side.

And I think that's definitely true after this oral argument.

If you think about some of the questions the justices were asking, Justice Barrett, for example, pointed out the hostility that New Jersey has shown toward pregnancy care centers.

Justice Jackson seemed very concerned about this idea that you never get into federal court.

Not only does it shut you out initially, but even once you go to state court because of various legal doctrines, you can never come back to federal court.

Justice Kagan took a really practical view of the case.

She's not one that you would maybe expect to be ideologically aligned with first choice.

And yet she made the common sense point, if I receive a subpoena that demands donor names, like A, I don't want my name and address and phone number out there.

And so she was saying that this is going to chill the First Amendment rights of recipients in sort of a common sense way.

And it seemed like a majority or certainly several members of the court were really understanding the effect the subpoena had both on First Choice Women's Resource Center as well as its donors.

So one kind of highlight of the oral argument was the fact that the New Jersey attorney general has never said that he received a single complaint against first choice by anyone.

And so Justice Thomas really leaned into that and asked the New Jersey attorney.

So there is.

So there's a case called Americans for Prosperity, and this case protected the donor information.

of a California regime that required all charities to disclose their donors to the California Attorney General.

And the court in that case said, no, that's protected information under the First Amendment.

In addition, there are other cases that sort of talk about the over breadth of the subpoena.

You can't serve a subpoena for retaliatory reasons.

And here, if you don't have any reason at all, then that makes one think, you know, maybe it's because the Attorney General didn't like the viewpoint.