At first glance, the United States Supreme Court’s decision to hear First Choice Women’s Resource Center v. Platkin doesn’t seem so bad. The question presented to the nation’s highest court is a narrow, technical one regarding whether an individual who receives a subpoena in a state investigation and alleges that the demand chills their free speech rights can challenge that subpoena in federal court.
Okay—so far, so boring, so what? Well, what if the case is actually about so-called crisis pregnancy centers, which are really just fake clinics designed to deceive people seeking abortion care? And what if the clinic is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, the notorious conservative Christian law firm dedicated to eradicating reproductive rights, which also just happens to get the Court to take its cases again and again? And what if you know that Erin Hawley, wife of Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and terrible person in her own right, will be arguing the case? And what if you know that the Supreme Court has shown a remarkable tenderness toward protecting the free speech rights of these fake clinics, including letting them spew medical disinformation? Suddenly, the case doesn’t look so harmless.
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Let’s jump back to what kicked off this case. In 2023, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin began an investigation into First Choice, which runs five fake clinics in the state. Platkin’s concern is that First Choice may have “misled donors and potential clients” that they were “providing certain reproductive health care services.” As part of that investigation, Platkin subpoenaed First Choice, asking for advertisements and donor solicitations, the identification of medical personnel providing services at the clinics, and donor lists.
It’s no surprise that First Choice just refused to answer the subpoena, instead launching a years-long scheme to get the case to federal court. President Donald Trump isn’t able to appoint anti-choice hard-liners to state courts, but he stuffed the federal system full of them during his first term and is busy doing more of the same during his second term. And of course, almost any federal case involving abortion seems to inevitably land in front of the resolutely anti-choice conservatives on the Supreme Court.
Much of First Choice’s argument in the lawsuit is over New Jersey ostensibly targeting these fake clinics out of hostility, and how they can’t possibly reveal their donor names because of all the violence perpetuated against fake clinics. That’s nicely vague—and it has to be, because there is only one side of the abortion fight perpetually engaging in violence against abortion providers and supporters. From 1977 to 2022, there have been 11 murders, 42 bombings, 200 arsons, 531 assaults, 492 clinic invasions, and 375 burglaries, all carried out by anti-choice zealots. Following the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, violence against reproductive health clinics where abortion remained legal spiked sharply.
It’s honestly impossible to get any hard data on how many attacks there were on fake clinics. Numbers range from a claim of 40 from Sen. Chuck Grassley to over 100 from Fox News, and an amorphous statistic of attacks “in 24 states” from Christianity Today.
First Choice is also unhappy that anyone would say that their free speech is a bunch of lies, but there’s no question that fake clinics like these deceive clients. It’s their entire business model. They lead people to believe that they are medical clinics and their personnel have medical training. They disguise their intentions by offering “pregnancy help,” a vague term that definitely does not include abortion. They also refuse to refer people to abortion resources and lie about the dangers of sexual activity generally and abortion specifically. They target lower-income pregnant people and people of color who think they are at a real clinic that would provide abortion care. They tell people they are farther along in pregnancy than they really are, so they will believe it is too late to get an abortion. They spread long-debunked medical misinformation, such as saying it is possible to “reverse” a medication abortion.
It would seem self-evident that a state attorney general has every right and duty to look into organizations that routinely scam and lie to people, particularly given that the consequences of those lies prevent people from obtaining a perfectly legal medical procedure. But the conservatives on the Supreme Court have shielded fake clinics, ruling in 2018 that it violates their First Amendment rights even to have to post a notice that abortion is available elsewhere in the state. That, declared Justice Clarence Thomas, is government-controlled speech and therefore unconstitutional.
But what about medical professionals who do not want to offer state-mandated lies about abortion to their patients because doing so requires them to engage in actions and speech that they morally and medically oppose, such as being forced to describe ultrasounds to pregnant patients even when the patients don’t want to hear it? That’s not government-compelled speech for … reasons, and it’s just fine if a state makes doctors lie about medical services.
With all that in mind, the court taking up another fake clinic case, even under the fiction that it is just a dispute over which court should hear the case, is not great for abortion rights.
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And there’s an additional reason it’s not great that the court agreed to hear this case, and it has nothing to do with abortion as such. First Choice’s argument relies heavily on a 2021 Supreme Court decision that said California could not ask charities operating in the state to report the identities of big donors. Anti-choice groups need to keep their donors secret not for the reasons First Choice alleges—that they will be subject to violence from rabid anti-choicers—but because the anti-abortion movement is filled with dark money, and any inquiry into funding would illuminate those corners very quickly. We can’t have that, obviously, because secretly manipulating elections with cash behind the scenes is now a hallmark of America’s disintegrating democracy.
You can count on the Supreme Court’s conservatives to protect the free speech rights of evangelical Christians and the identities of those people who fund them. Too bad none of the rest of us are graced with such tender solicitude for our rights.