In a unanimous ruling, the United States Supreme Court has decided in favour of a pro-life pregnancy centre in its fight against a hostile New Jersey state attorney general.

First Choice Women’s Resource Centers has been providing free services to pregnant women since 1985, including counselling, ultrasounds, parenting support, and material assistance. It has served over 36,000 women.

In November 2023, then-Attorney General and vocal critic of pro-life organisations, Matthew Platkin, issued a sweeping subpoena on First Choice, demanding 10 years’ worth of internal documents, donor identities, personnel records, and more, without citing a single complaint or supplying evidence of any legal violation.

The organisation was almost certainly targeted because of its pro-life, faith-based mission.

Alliance Defending Freedom argued the AG’s demands were unlawful, not least because First Choice needed to maintain the anonymity of its donors to protect them from potential retaliation, while seeking to protect the freedom of First Choice and other pregnancy centres to operate according to their beliefs.

ADF appealed to the Supreme Court after lower federal courts wrongly ruled that the pregnancy centre could not pursue the matter in federal court before exhausting state court proceedings.

The Supreme Court’s 9-0 ruling confirms that First Choice has the right to bring its federal constitutional claims in federal court.

That procedural question matters enormously in practice. Requiring a plaintiff to litigate in the very courts of the state whose officials are allegedly targeting them – before federal rights can be vindicated – creates a significant barrier to justice.

As Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote: “Since the 1950s, this Court has confronted one official demand after another like the Attorney General's. Over and again, we have held those demands burden the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

The broader picture is worth noting. New Jersey's attorney general ran a $5 million grant programme to expand abortion provision while simultaneously declaring pro-life centres guilty of providing false information – citing no evidence – and delivered via a statewide ‘consumer alert’ co-authored by Planned Parenthood.

That is not a regulatory posture. It is discrimination dressed up as consumer protection.

Australia has no First Amendment and no equivalent constitutional protection for freedom of association. That makes decisions like this one instructive rather than binding.

The legal tools available here are narrower. Nonetheless, the principle holds: governments should not be permitted to weaponise regulatory or investigative powers against organisations they find politically inconvenient.

HRLA monitors these patterns closely. When institutions face administrative pressure designed to silence rather than regulate, the rule of law demands a response. A unanimous Supreme Court provided one.