In WLF Victory, Unanimous Supreme Court Reverses State Effort to Close Federal Courts to First Amendment Claims

“Federal courts exist to vindicate federal rights—full stop, end of story.”

—Zac Morgan, WLF Senior Litigation Counsel

Click here to read WLF’s brief.

(Washington, DC)—Today in First Choice v. Platkin, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed an appellate court decision that denied a nonprofit targeted by a state attorney general from having its First Amendment defense heard in federal court. The Court’s reversal was a victory for WLF, who filed an amicus brief in support of First Choice.

The case arises from the New Jersey attorney general’s investigatory demand for the identities of donors to First Choice, a nonprofit crisis pregnancy center. Donor privacy has been acknowledged as a First Amendment right by the Supreme Court since 1958’s NAACP v. Alabama, but the court of appeals barred the federal courthouse door to First Choice’s constitutional claim. What happened to First Choice is a widespread problem beyond the nonprofit sector. Business interests deemed unpopular or “on the wrong side” by politically ambitious AGs have also been hit with similarly unconstitutional demands and then shunted to state court.

The Court’s reversal was a victory for WLF, whose amicus brief argued that bottling up this demand would violate section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act, burden First Amendment rights, and incentivize lawfare. The Court agreed—noting that Congress enacted section 1983 “with the express goal of ensuring a federal forum to citizens who claim that state actors have violated their constitutional rights” and concluding that “the Attorney General’s demand for private donor information injures the group’s First Amendment associational rights.”