Locke CEO praises SCOTUS ruling upholding donor privacy

The head of the John Locke Foundation praised the nation’s highest court Wednesday for its unanimous decision in a donor privacy case from New Jersey.

In First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Davenport, the high court ruled that a faith-based pregnancy center had legal standing to make a First Amendment challenge to a subpoena from the New Jersey attorney general.

When the case started in 2023, then-AG Matthew Platkin sent a subpoena seeking First Choice’s donor lists and other information.

“Today’s unanimous Supreme Court decision is a major victory for donor privacy and freedom of association,” said Locke CEO Donald Bryson. “The Court made clear that government demands for private donor information can chill First Amendment rights even before those demands are enforced.”

“North Carolina lawmakers understood this principle when they enacted the Personal Privacy Protection Act over Governor Stein’s veto in July 2025,” Bryson added. “That law protects the privacy of nonprofit donors, members, volunteers, and supporters from government overreach.”

“Donor privacy is not a partisan issue; it is a constitutional safeguard for every American who wants to support a cause without fear of intimidation or retaliation,” Bryson said.

“A federal law — 42 U. S. C. §1983 — authorizes suits against any person who, under color of state law, deprives another of his federal constitutional rights,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the unanimous Supreme Court. “First Choice filed a complaint under that statute, arguing, among other things, that the Attorney General’s demand for information about its donors violated its First Amendment rights.”

“Specifically, First Choice observed that the First Amendment ‘prohibits the government from discouraging people from associating with others’ ‘in pursuit of many political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends,’” Gorsuch added. “And, First Choice alleged, the Attorney General’s subpoena had just that impermissible effect. For its donors, the group represented, ‘anonymity is of paramount importance,’ and its inability to guarantee that anonymity in the face of the Attorney General’s demands injured the group by discouraging donors from associating with it.”

First choice sought a preliminary injunction blocking the subpoena. A federal judge rejected the injunction and dismissed First Choice’s lawsuit against Platkin. The trial court focused on the fact that the subpoena itself did not compel the production of the disputed donor lists.

“Given the absence of any state court order compelling production, the district court reasoned, First Choice had yet to suffer any injury from the subpoena and thus lacked Article III standing to challenge it in federal court,” Gorsuch wrote.

The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals split when upholding the trial judge’s decision.

“We are not asked to decide the merits of First Choice’s federal lawsuit, only whether it may proceed,” Gorsuch wrote.

To have legal standing, First Choice needed to show it had suffered an “injury in fact,” he explained.

“Before us, First Choice advances two arguments for why it can satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement,” Gorsuch wrote. “First, the group submits that the Attorney General’s subpoena itself — and specifically its demand for donor information — has caused it to suffer an actual and ongoing injury to its First Amendment rights by deterring donors from associating with it. Second, First Choice contends that it faces an imminent future injury because with the subpoena came a credible threat that the Attorney General would seek to enforce it in state court if the group failed to comply. For our purposes, it suffices to address only the first theory as it is enough to carry the day.”

“The First Amendment guarantees all Americans the rights to speak, worship, publish, assemble, and petition their government freely,” the Supreme Court opinion explained. “Each of these rights, this Court has ‘long understood,’ necessarily carries with it ‘a corresponding right to associate with others.’”

“Without such a right, no two men could safely share the same soapbox, no two women the same church,” Gorsuch wrote. “The government could reduce any assembly to a party of one, and the right to petition would amount to nothing more than the power to sign one’s own name alone. Appreciating all this, we have held that government actions tending to ‘curtail the freedom to associate’ warrant ‘the closest scrutiny’ under the First Amendment.”

“From its allegations and declarations, and given our many and longstanding precedents in the area and reasonable inferences about third party behavior, First Choice has established that the Attorney General’s demand for private donor information injures the group’s First Amendment associational rights,” Gorsuch added.

The court rejected each of the attorney general’s arguments in the case.

“Since the 1950s, this Court has confronted one official demand after another like the Attorney General’s,” Gorsuch wrote. “Over and again, we have held those demands burden the exercise of First Amendment rights. Disputing none of these precedents but seeking ways around them, the Attorney General has offered a variety of arguments. Some are old, some are new, but none succeeds.”

“Locke CEO praises SCOTUS ruling upholding donor privacy” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.