Morning Wire
Weaponizing Government Against Pro-Lifers? Supreme Court Presses New Jersey
06 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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The Supreme Court heard arguments this week on a case involving a state allegedly intimidating and harassing a pregnancy center for not conducting abortions.
The case pits First Choice Women's Resource Centers against New Jersey's Democrat Attorney General Matt Platkin. First Choice alleges that Platkin selectively targeted the Christian nonprofit based on its religious speech and pro-life views.
Plotkin issued a wide-ranging and intrusive subpoena that requires the organization to hand over extensive records, including donor information, and it does so without the AG actually providing any substantive evidence of wrongdoing. The case could set precedent on states' ability to similarly target pregnancy centers and pro-life organizations.
In this episode, we sit down with one of the attorneys arguing on behalf of First Choice Alliance Defending Freedom General Counsel Aaron Hawley, who unpacks what's at the heart of the case and what we've learned from the response of the high court. I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
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Chapter 2: What case is the Supreme Court hearing involving a New Jersey Attorney General?
You had this project strike on the pregnancy centers. You know, the attorney general had essentially, you know, what your friends on the other side would say, declared war on pregnancy centers. So if it is true that the non self-executing subpoena is enough, if it's in the context of other government statements, why wouldn't that be satisfied here?
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.
In cases like Whole Woman's Health, for instance, this court noted that there may not always be available a federal forum for a federal constitutional claim challenging. So you're not saying they wouldn't be precluding, you're just saying there are times when it's too bad.
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.
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Chapter 3: What allegations are made against New Jersey's Attorney General Matt Platkin?
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 that seems pretty promising for First Choice. Were there any particularly surprising moments to you in the arguments, anything you weren't anticipating?
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.
Did you have complaints that formed the basis of your concern about justice? the fundraising activities here. We certainly had complaints about crisis pregnancy centers. No, about this crisis pregnancy center. So I think we've been clear from the outset that we haven't had complaints about this specific. So you had no basis to think that they were deceiving any of their contributors.
So I would think that if there weren't complaints in advance, these kinds of severe actions by an attorney general would be overthrown. Is there a precedent that would apply to these kinds of sort of unprompted subpoenas like New Jersey issued here?
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Chapter 4: How does the subpoena issued by Platkin affect First Choice Women's Resource Center?
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.
In addition, one of the interesting things about the argument here is the way the New Jersey Attorney General was presenting the case is that you never, as Justice Jackson picked up on, get into federal court. And that's just contrary to how the federal courts treat federal rights.
Under a reconstruction statute known as Section 1983, when a state or local official allegedly violates your constitutional rights, you get to go to federal court. So this would be that the attorney general of New Jersey was really seeking to create an exception for subpoenas from, from ordinary rules that apply to other cases.
OK, so the decision could have sort of an ancillary protection by highlighting this issue of harassment based on viewpoint discrimination. Is that what you're arguing?
Yes. And just the fact if the Supreme Court points out the harassment and shows that it is an element of considering whether there's an objective chill, I would expect that that would sort of back some of these attorney generals off the plate. They're going to be more cautious before, you know, handing out subpoenas willy nilly asking for things like donor names.
Now, your team at ADF has been obviously defending a lot of clients that have experienced some sort of persecution for being Christians, for being pro-life. Is this part of a larger pattern in terms of AGs, people in official positions of power in states, figuring out ways to target specifically pro-lifers?
You know, it does appear to be that.
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Chapter 5: What precedent could be set by this case regarding state targeting of pregnancy centers?
In the state of California, the state of New York, those attorney generals actually filed suit against pregnancy care centers trying to prohibit them from sharing information about progesterone that can be administered after you take the first abortion drug.
That decision, we actually got a decision from the Second Circuit finding that the New York attorney general could not squelch that sort of speech, that she had to allow pregnancy centers to tell women about APR. And so that's just one example.
I mentioned the state of Washington, but the Washington Attorney General also issued a sweeping subpoena to a pregnancy center demanding 10 years worth of documentation on all sorts of things, also requesting donor names. We finally were able to get that case settled. The AG dropped that investigation. But again, this takes a tremendous amount of resources on behalf of pregnancy care centers
And as someone has said, sometimes the process is part of the punishment. The first choice litigation has been going on for two years. There have been over 50 something briefs filed in the case between the New Jersey Attorney General and us. And that is a ton of burden on a nonprofit, which seems to be part of the point.
So Planned Parenthood has come up a couple of times in this discussion. I wanted to ask you about them. They were consulted by the AG to come up with this, as we've characterized it, a sort of harassment policy. But we've also seen headlines that Planned Parenthood is closing up shop in some states, that they've suffered a lot of setbacks recently.
Do you feel like they're on the wane or are they still a major force to be dealt with?
So there's certainly a major political force that I think we need to shed light and truth that every child matters is inherently valuable to God and to society. But I would urge your listeners, if they happen, to look at the New York Times report. Really, it's an expose on Planned Parenthood.
It talks about the terrible conditions, not only for women who are coming for abortions, bad health care, bad decision making. but also for the employees, just an organization that is not well run.
I can't say I'm surprised to learn those details. Final question. You say we saw some positive signs here for your case in the oral arguments. Do you feel in general that there's momentum on the side of pro-lifers in terms of constitutional and legal protections? Or have we seen some setbacks in recent years?
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