WASHINGTON — Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sat with a lawyer from New Jersey’s Attorney General’s Office and admitted on Tuesday that the state had launched a “fishing expedition” against a pro‑life group even though no specific complaints had been filed about it. The conversation unfolded while Thomas was interrogating the AG’s probe of the First Choice Women’s Resource Centers during oral arguments over a subpoena the group received from the general’s office.
“Did you have any reason to suspect that they were misleading their donors?” Thomas asked chief counsel Sundeep Iyer. Iyer initially referenced general grievances about crisis pregnancy centers before conceding that none of those complaints actually applied to First Choice, a faith‑based nonprofit that operates five centers in the Garden State to discourage abortion.
“I had no complaints,” Iyer replied. “But state and federal governments routinely launch investigations when they suspect legal non‑compliance, even in the absence of formal complaints.” He added that the basis for the inquiry involved concerns over misleading donors, unlicensed medical practices, patient‑privacy violations, and possibly false medical statements.
“Seems like a heavyhanded way to sort out a confusing website,” Thomas remarked.
The subpoena, issued in 2023 by AG Matthew Platkin, asked First Choice to disclose its donors under the claim that the organization might be defrauding them. First Choice sued, arguing the order infringed on its First Amendment rights. The AG’s team countered that the group was not yet obligated to provide the requested information, yet most justices did not deem this argument sufficient to halt the litigation.
Chief Justice John Roberts pressed Iyer on whether revealing donor details would deter future supporters. Iyer insisted it would not; he noted that the only evidence First Choice presented was a donor statement suggesting that donors might be “less likely to give if they knew such information could be disclosed,” which the AG’s office dismissed as a retrograde claim.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch scoffed at the argument, asking, “Really? Are we going to nitpick the tense of the verb they chose?”
First Choice’s counsel, Erin Hawley, stressed that smaller donors—some contributing as little as $10—could be unnerved by a subpoena, asserting that the organization’s website was not deceptive. She said, “Those folks will be worried that the state attorney general could use their personal details to target them over the donor site.”
Iyer clarified that subpoenas in this context are administrative, not grand‑jury, and that courts generally view them as requests without an inherent duty to comply. Hawley countered that any subpoena still carries a chilling effect, noting that the language of the subpoena appeared to carry punitive threats: “We could take your business license or bring contempt charges if you refuse.”
Even Justice Elena Kagan expressed empathy for this concern. “An ordinary person, a funder of this or a similar organization, confronted with a subpoena that’s not court‑stamped doesn’t find it reassuring,” she stated.
The court is expected to issue its ruling on First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin by the end of June.
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