The Supreme Court has recognized that government requests for donor lists are sufficient to raise First Amendment concerns.
getty
A recent US Supreme Court ruling suggests that sensitive donor information may be protected—for now.
On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Davenport that a New Jersey nonprofit had standing to challenge a state subpoena seeking information from its donors. The nation’s highest court overturned a lower court ruling that said the group had to wait until the subpoena was actually served.
The Court held that the nonprofit did not have to wait for the government to compel it to comply before it could challenge the subpoena. Simply being asked to hand over sensitive donor information—especially because it could scare people away from donating—is enough to constitute a legal injury.
Importantly, the Court did not decide whether the subpoena itself is unconstitutional. He only ruled that the nonprofit has the right to challenge it now, not later.
Justice Gorsuch wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court.
First choice background
First Choice Women’s Resource Centers is a faith-based non-profit organization operating in New Jersey since 1985, providing counseling and resources to pregnant women. The organization believes that life begins at conception and, in accordance with this belief, does not provide abortions or refer clients to abortion providers.
In 2022, then-New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin launched a “Reproductive Rights Strike Force,” which issued a consumer alert accusing organizations like First Choice of misleading women about their access to reproductive health care. Notably, the state had received no complaints from the public about First Choice.
However, in 2023, the Attorney General issued First Choice with a subpoena directing it to produce 28 sets of documents. Most importantly, the subpoena sought the names, addresses, phone numbers and places of employment of donors who had contributed to the organization—except those who donated through a specific website. The request covered donations dating back to Jan. 1, 2021, and warned twice that failure to comply could result in contempt of court and other penalties.
The Attorney General later explained that his office intended to contact a sample of donors to determine whether they had been misled about First Choice’s mission.
The First Choice Lower Court
Two days before its compliance deadline, First Choice filed suit in federal district court, arguing that the donor information requirement violated its First Amendment rights, particularly its right to freedom of association. The organization claimed it had promised donors anonymity and that forced disclosure would deter people from contributing.
Supportive statements from anonymous donors indicated that they would be less likely to donate if they knew their information could be disclosed to a government they perceived as hostile to pro-life organizations. The group’s executive director similarly warned that the subpoena threatened to reduce fundraising and harm the organization’s mission.
The district court dismissed the case, ruling that First Choice lacked standing – the legal capacity to sue. To proceed in federal court, a plaintiff must show that he has suffered or is likely to suffer a specific injury caused by the defendant that the court can recover from. Without a trial, a court will dismiss the case without reaching the merits because there is no justiciable controversy.
Here, the government argued that because no state court had yet ordered First Choice to comply with the subpoena, the agency had suffered no injury. The Third Circuit affirmed in a split decision, with one judge dissenting on the grounds that the issuance of the subpoena itself burdened First Choice’s current cooperative rights.
First Choice then applied to the Supreme Court for review. Most cases reach the Supreme Court this way. The losing party asks the Court to take over the case by filing an application for a writ of certiorari. If the Court agrees to hear the case, it grants that application — and that’s what happened here.
The Supreme Court favors the first option
The Supreme Court heard the case on a very narrow issue: not whether the subpoena violated the First Amendment, but whether First Choice could bring the challenge to that point.
Writing for the unanimous Court, Justice Gorsuch began by reviewing the Court’s long line of First Amendment cases on the right of association, stretching back to NAACP v. Alabama (1958). In that case, the Court held that requiring groups to disclose their membership can be as effective a restriction on freedom of association as more direct forms of government repression. This principle has been repeatedly affirmed—in campaign finance disclosure cases, legislative investigations, and, most recently, in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta (2021), where the Court rejected California’s request for lists of major donors from nonprofit charities.
Against this background, the Court held that the Attorney General’s subpoena caused First Choice a gift, continuing injury to its First Amendment rights. Government demands for private donor information, the Court explained, inherently discourage individuals from associating with advocacy groups and pressure those groups to curtail protected speech. This chilling effect doesn’t just occur when a court issues the subpoena—it begins when the request is filed and lasts as long as it remains pending.
Dismissal of the arguments of the Attorney General
The Attorney General advanced three main arguments as to why there was no actual injury here, and the Court rejected all of them.
Specifically, he said his subpoenas are “non-self-executing”—in other words, they don’t compel anyone to act unless a court steps in to enforce them. Thus, in his view, First Choice could not claim damages unless and until a court ordered compliance. The Court disagreed. Justice Gorsuch relied on the classic idea of the “sword of Damocles”: the power of a threat lies in the fact that it hangs over you, not in whether it has already fallen. Even without direct enforcement, such a requirement would reasonably make donors think twice about making a donation and could prompt the organization to change its behavior.
The Court also set aside lower courts’ reliance on earlier cases such as Reisman and Claire Furnace. In these cases, the Court explained, those involved were concerned about potential future harm. This case is different, Gorsuch wrote, because the evil — people’s cold willingness to mingle — was already happening.
What follows for the first choice
The Court ultimately reversed the Third Circuit and sent the case back for further proceedings. The Court did not rule on the merits of the case, but ordered the lower court to hear them.
The decision makes clear that the government cannot avoid First Amendment challenges simply by calling its requests “preliminary” or saying they can be implemented later. When government officials demand donor information from an advocacy organization, damage isn’t something that can happen along the way. It happens instantly. And that means the courts can step in and hear the case.
What about other nonprofits?
Most nonprofits do not have to publicly disclose their donors on reporting forms such as Form 990. Organizations described in Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code are generally required to report major donors to the IRS on a supplemental schedule (Schedule B), but this information is kept confidential. When these forms are made public, donor names and identifying information are redacted. The main exception is political organizations, such as 527 groups, which are subject to separate disclosure rules and must publicly report their contributors.
This distinction explains why donor information can be so sensitive in cases like First Choice. While nonprofits are used to confidentially sharing donor data with the IRS, a government demand outside of that system—especially tied to an investigation—raises different concerns. Even without public disclosure, the prospect that officials could have access to donor identities can discourage people from giving to or associating with a group, which is exactly the kind of “chilling effect” that the Supreme Court treats as a First Amendment concern.
The case is First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Davenport.
