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Them Before Us Podcast #095 | Defending Pro-Life Speech at the U.S. Supreme Court
00:26:20
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- [00:07]
A
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Them Before Us podcast. I'm Jen Friesen, the host training director for Them Before Us, and we have a really interesting conversation for you all today. This is a really important court case we want all of you to know, and it's very timely because the time that you all are hearing this, this court case will be heard in front of the Supreme Court, I think, just a few days later. So we are talking with Amy Huber and an attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom named Gabby, and we're talking about a case that's called First Choice Women's Resource Centers versus Plotkin. And we're going to get into it. But first, Gabby and Amy, thanks so much for being here.
- [00:43]
B
Thanks for having us.
- [00:45]
A
Amy, before we start, can you just share a little bit about what First Choice Women's Resource Centers do or, you know, the company that you work for and what you're representing? Just tell us a little bit about it.
- [00:56]
C
Sure, I would be glad to. We are a nonprofit organization in New Jersey, and we serve women in unplanned pregnancies. So women who are scared and vulnerable and think that abortion is their only option can come to us for professional services and compassionate care, all free of charge. And in the 40 years that we have existed, we have served over 36,000 women and their families.
- [01:21]
A
That's awesome. We have featured some other pro life pro family resources on the. On our show, and we're always thankful to promote the people who are doing pro life work. We talk about there's pro life before babies are born, there's pro life work after babies are born to support mothers and families. And anyone who follows the news or is familiar at all with the pro life movement is very aware of how deeply hated the work that you do is, especially by those big companies like Planned Parenthood. Right. All of the big abortion companies hate the work that folks like Amy are doing because they are trying to help, but it's taking away from sort of that bottom line for abortion. So whether it's maybe Gabby or Amy, do you want to describe just that first little bit of what happened where you decided to take some legal action in New Jersey?
- [02:14]
C
Sure. Well, it started with us receiving the subpoena from the Attorney General's office. A representative came to my office, asked for me, and the subpoena commanded us to release up to 10 years of documentation on our donor communications, our advertising, our statements about abortion, bill reversal, and even our donor identities. So it was a sweeping, very broad subpoena, and that led to the legal battle that we are facing now and the federal lawsuit that we filed, what.
- [02:48]
A
Was their reasoning for why they would need to know all this information about a family resource center, a pregnancy center?
- [02:57]
C
Well, really, their animosity to us began many months and even years before that, and not specifically perhaps to First Choice, but to pregnancy centers in general. Because the Division of Consumer affairs that is overseen by the Attorney General's office issued a consumer alert warning the public about, quote, unquote, deceptive crisis pregnancy centers. And it was four pages, and it came out later that they had issued that to Planned Parenthood to make their edits and had incorporated their edits before it was released. So this was released by a state government that doesn't just advocate for abortion or support abortion, but they promote abortion. So a pregnancy center like First Choice has a different viewpoint, obviously, and doesn't support their viewpoint. And so that makes us likely to be bullied in this way. But it's important, I think, to realize that the Attorney General did not cite one complaint against First Choice by a client, by a donor, nothing. So I guess the consumer alert was his grounds for coming after us, but there was nothing personal to us at all that was disclosed.
- [04:18]
B
When we're talking about, too, the Attorney General's arguments for why, in particular, he issued the donor disclosure demand, he cites the absurd notion that there may have been donors who didn't realize when they were giving to First Choice that they were giving to a pro life organization, which I say that's absurd because First Choice is very clear and very transparent all over its webpage and in the public that it does not perform or refer for abortions.
- [04:47]
A
It's fascinating to me that the Attorney General in New Jersey is collaborating with Planned Parenthood for its language, for the. For basically to come and attack, which is funny, even if you just thought about it as businesses. These are competing businesses. One makes money killing babies. One makes money, quote, unquote, because you're getting donations supporting babies, keeping them alive, supporting families. These are competitors, and they went to a competitor and asked them for language about how to attack a competitor in the marketplace if they just want to go off Consumer Reports and things. Can you speak a little bit about why? What, what do they, you know, kind of this other side, the Attorney General or Planned Parenthood, what do they mean when they accuse pro life organizations of being deceptive? What do they mean by that?
- [05:38]
C
Well, it's. It's an interesting claim to me, honestly, and a ridiculous claim. On every page of our website, it states that we do not perform or refer for abortions. So. And it's also important to realize that whenever a woman calls us or texts us or comes to us, she's told that we don't perform or refer for abortions. And it's in our written materials. It's just all over the place. So that's what the attorney general claims, that we're not being upfront about our services, but in fact, we are and are very transparent about the services that we do provide and the services we do not provide.
- [06:18]
A
And what's interesting about that is Planned Parenthood has been, you know, specifically as a company that promotes abortion, provides abortion, has been caught many times being deceptive. We've had undercover. I was thinking about Lila Rose, who's a well known pro life advocate. I believe she started her career going undercover with, you know, hidden camera sort of things into Planned Parenthoods where they're willing to lie about the age of babies in the womb. They're willing to basically help collude with what they think are pimps. Bringing in a girl that they're pimping out who's pregnant. They're willing to do those sorts of things. These things have been caught on hidden camera. But. But then accusing, projecting that onto pro life organizations. I think too, some of the ways that they claim pro life organizations are deceptive is, oh, they're lying about what the baby looks like at different ages, or they're lying about the side effects of the abortion pill or things like that. So tell us what happened when the government comes to you, the state government comes and says, we demand you give us all these things. That's very scary for, for most of us. Right. We don't necessarily know. I can't go call the president. Help bail me out of this. So what is your next step after they request all this information from you?
- [07:36]
C
Well, my first feeling was being completely overwhelmed. You know, we're a small nonprofit, so how in the world am I going to find 10 years worth of documentation that's just going to take me forever? And the subpoena gave us a month to do it. So it was just crazy to even consider how that could be humanly possible. Not to mention, as you said, being scared about being targeted by the government. That's very unsettling. So my first response was to scan the subpoena and I sent it to a pro life attorney in New Jersey that we had worked with in the past and asked her what I should do. And she called me and she said, amy, with your permission, I would like to contact alliance defending Freedom and ask if they would be interested in representing you. And when she mentioned adf, we were part of their church and ministry alliance. I heard heard of them before and I just remember thinking, oh my goodness, this just got bigger than me. It just got bigger than us. If this could even be brought to them. And this is an even bigger deal than I realized. And that was two years ago. And it has definitely become a bigger deal than I realized that first day.
- [08:52]
A
Right. Gabby, can you share with our listeners a little bit about what Alliance Defending Freedom is? And then maybe just how did you get connected to Amy's case?
- [09:01]
B
Yeah, so we are a Christian legal organization. So we advocate for the right to life, parental rights, academic freedom, the First Amendment, religious freedom. And we really are here to lift up and help come alongside our clients who are so courageously fighting these battles both in the courts and also in the courts of public opinion. So we are here to represent clients like Amy and First Choice when these sorts of things come up. And I work in the center for Life. And our big focus over the last couple of years, especially after the Dobbs decision came out, has been to come alongside Pregnancy Resource Centers, these vital resources that are helping families, women facing unplanned pregnancies in their community with all of these free resources and supporting them, but also facing this hostility not only by members of the public and extreme pro abortion advocates who are threatening even their lives after the Dobbs decision, but also from these hostile state government actors who are trying to weaponize their power and their authority against their ideological opponents. So our main goal here is to ensure that First Choice gets its day in federal court as it has a right to do.
- [10:15]
A
And how did you specifically get to sign? Because you're in the center for Life, you said.
- [10:19]
B
Yeah, so we were connected with Amy from the very beginning and we've been walking through this battle with her from the very beginning, both in the district court and then once this also went to the state courts as well. It's been quite a fierce legal battle in many different forums and we're just really excited that the Supreme Court is going to weigh in on this very, very weighty and hugely important issue.
- [10:45]
A
Like we saw recently and the before us has commented on. The Supreme Court recently declined to hear or revisit the Kim Davis case, which is about her. She, she wanted to refuse to sign same sex wedding. What are they called when Marriage certificates. Okay. So the Supreme Court declined to listen.
- [11:05]
C
So.
- [11:07]
A
So it's a huge deal that your case and maybe you could walk us through A little bit. The process. She. You went to the state courts in New Jersey, then you went maybe a level up to get to the Supreme Court, you kind of have to go through a number of levels. And then it's a huge deal that they agreed to hear the case for people who just aren't very familiar with that legal process. Can you kind of walk us through? And Amy, you said this has been two years, so this is not a quick process by any means. But, Gabby, maybe just from your perspective, tell us a little bit, how do we get from she contacts ADF to now you're talking to the Supreme Court in a few days?
- [11:42]
B
Yeah, well, it's been a very procedurally intense battle for First Choice. So I won't go into too, too much detail. Just it's so much to get into the weeds of where we were and then how we got here. But it is important to note, I think the Supreme Court, it really only takes very, very small percentage of the petitions that it receives every year during its terms to review those cases. And First Choice, being one of them, is a huge deal. You're absolutely right. So this started off in the federal district court where First Choice brought a Section 1983 lawsuit to vindicate their constitutional rights, their federal constitutional rights. In that district court, the district court, without any prompting from the Attorney General, decided to sua sponte, we call that kick the case, basically dismiss the case for lack of ripeness, because they stated that in order for First Choice's constitutional claims to be ripe, they first had to deal with whether the subpoena was enforceable in state court. And so that initiated the Attorney General's state court parallel proceedings. So while we were going up in federal court at the different levels, first we started off at the federal district court, then we went up to the federal circuit court. The next level above that is the Supreme Court. But we also had this parallel state court proceeding going on about the specifics of the subpoena. And the importance of that is that the entire time that this has been going on, the Attorney Attorney General has been attempting to relegate First Choice to that state court proceeding, even though First Choice initiated the lawsuit in federal court. But it's good for everyone when federal courts are able to check state officials who are harassing their ideological opponents. And that ultimately is the question that is going up before the Supreme Court before we even go back down to address the merits in the first place. So it's been a very. A very procedurally heavy proceeding from the very beginning in this case.
- [13:46]
A
And you know, just as lay people listening and we don't know, you know, the average person has no clue about all the different ways that you could be violating a law or not know about it or they could catch you on this thing or the other. And one of the things that I read in kind of the notes about the case was this idea of chilling. So and this has been used in some of the other cases I followed. There's the one in front of the Supreme Court about conversion therapy. So the therapist who wants the right to offer talk therapy that aligns with her clients goals. Right. And their defense, the state's defense, that's Colorado is saying we, well, we haven't even prosecuted you for doing anything wrong yet. But the point ADF is trying to make in that case is no, you're chilling our ability to do xyz. So can you guys help us understand a little bit how does the idea of sort of the government coming against you to chill your, the behavior to like kind of paralyze you and make you afraid to do the behavior is part of the problem. A lot of people are like, well if they haven't done anything to her yet, they're just asking her questions. And we're kind of saying, well no, we're saying the fact that the government is wielding this power to make you afraid to go do anything else or having a chilling effect is the problem. But can you just help explain, you know, how is that happening in this case with Amy?
- [15:12]
B
Sure. So we're in the First Amendment context in particular. So these most basic of constitutional rights, free speech, the freedom to exercise your religion, to associate with individuals who are like minded. So in this realm of First Amendment, of the First Amendment rights, we are looking at the fact that you don't have to wait and it's been long recognized in federal court that you do not have to wait until a government official deprives you of your constitutional First Amendment rights in order to bring an action. It's called Article 3 standing. That's the legal doctrine and that's basically what gets you into the federal court in the first place. You have to show certain things in order to show that the, the federal court can hear your case. And one of those things is showing a deprivation of your rights or that you have been harmed. And this certainly the chilling of your First Amendment associational rights, free speech rights. That is a harm in itself. Because if you look at this case in particular the very existence of this subpoena by a hostile state government official who is very well known and has made no secret of his hostility towards pro life organizations and in particular pregnancy resource centers. When you look at that donor demand in particular, if we go even one more level of specificity here, that's going to make the right to associate a pipe dream, right? When you know that there's a hostile state government official who's trying to get your identity and your contact information, intends to potentially reach out to you to question you about why you gave to an organization that you know he is hostile, hostile to just in terms of, of their ideals. So you could see how a chilling, a depriving of that right, that chilling of the First Amendment right is enough to get you into state court. And that's exactly what we have here.
- [16:58]
A
I remember, I think it was called Prop 8 in California that all the donors to that were made public at some level. And that was, I believe Prop 8 was wanting to affirm one man, one woman marriage. And yeah, I mean, then you have people who, well, I was happy to give because I agree with that. But now my entire, my company is being threatened or my family, my address was made public, or all those sorts of things. It makes people very scared to be involved and support the things they want to support in the future. Amy so I actually was wondering this when I was listening to oral testimony from a Supreme Court case. Do you get to go to the Supreme Court? Do you, have you gone to. Do you have to be in court for all of these things? Or is ADF just going on your behalf and maybe what's your experience been like as just a normal person who's then maybe sitting in some of these proceedings and hearing all this, all this information and yeah, just what's the experience been like for you?
- [17:53]
C
I do get to go to the U.S. supreme Court. And that's amazing. Those who know me know that I grew up as a pastor's daughter and my dad preached a message series on the sanctity of human life. And that was what God used as a catalyst to lead me to first choice. But when I first heard his message series, my dream was that I would go to the U.S. supreme Court and argue against abortion. So, of course, the Lord had much, you know, a different plan for my life and it was to serve in pregnancy center ministry. But that little seed that God planted, planted so long ago is taking shape in a new way. And so I do get to go to the U.S. supreme Court. It will be one of the highlights of my life to go and to stand for truth and to stand for not just our pregnancy center, but all the pregnancy centers across the nation who care about this case. I mean, what a privilege and what an honor. So I'm sure it will be a once in a lifetime experience and I'm looking forward to going. I have been to some of the other court proceedings, and since I did have interest in being an attorney at one time, it does interest me to hear our attorneys speak and advocate for us. And I'm just so impressed and amazed by all of them because they're so smart and they represent us so well. And I'm so grateful.
- [19:29]
A
Gabby, do you get to go? Are you representing Amy in front of the Supreme Court?
- [19:34]
B
I am very grateful to be a part of the team. I will be hanging back. I won't actually be at the Supreme Court, but many of my teammates will be, and it's really a cool venue to be in, first of all, because the Supreme Court is just an absolutely beautiful building. If you've never had a chance to sit in on an oral argument, it's a really cool thing you get to, to get to do. If you visit D.C. at some point and folks in the public can actually get in. It's a pretty lengthy line if you, if you try to get in sometimes depending on what they're hearing. But yeah, we're, we're very much looking forward to the justices asking questions about this case and hopefully, you know, ruling in our favor.
- [20:16]
A
Yeah, that is so amazing, Amy. That's so cool. Just to think about the dream you had as a young person going in front of the Supreme Court. But like you said a lot of times, just from the Christian perspective, God doesn't answer the prayers. We're praying the way we think he's going to do it. And maybe either one of you could speak to this. But we've, we talked about this with them before us a little bit when we talked about, I want to say Jack Phillips is the cake baker out of Colorado. Colorado really picks on people and gets thrown up to the Supreme Court and overturned quite a bit. But, you know, there's, there's been these huge cases where people have had to suffer in a lot of ways, like losing business, people being scared. You're, you know, this consumes your life for many years, I think Jack Phillips, it was even way more than two years. But we just talked about the importance of, like Amy, you being willing to be the person that they say, look, I think this case will be one that we could get, that we could take all the way, that maybe we could get a ruling that Actually helps everyone who comes behind you. We've just thought about how we've needed so many people to be willing to stand up and have to be willing to go through this to go to the Supreme Court. So I'm just thankful that you were willing to do that. But, you know, it's funny, I'm sure about yourself, you're not thinking I'm some crazy pro life hero, you know, and everybody needs to know my name. I just think most people don't think of themselves that way, but they get. They're not willing to just roll over and give the government whatever they want when it comes to their personal convictions. And so we can maybe close with a few thoughts on that of, you know, some people have to be willing to be these test cases that go all the way up and. Yeah. What's kind of your. Your final thoughts on, you know, you and First Choice Women's Resource center being the test case for that?
- [22:12]
C
Well, it's certainly something I never imagined. And I was always the one to fly under the radar, in a sense, with our ministry. I didn't pursue media opportunities. I did not look at legislation much. Our mission was to serve the women, and that's what we were doing. But it became apparent that God had chosen us for something very special and that we needed to pivot and adjust to his plan for our ministry and his plan for my life. And so I see how he prepared me for this moment for years and years and years. I can recite experiences and situations in which I got a front seat to watching him work and show his power and glory. And that's not for nothing. You know, he just has a purpose and he has a plan for everything. And so why we wouldn't have chosen this, he chose us. And it's been our prayer from the start that he would find us faithful and obedient to him, no matter how long it takes or how difficult it is. Because as we've said, this is not just about us. This is about pregnancy centers across the nation and even other Christian ministries who would be harassed and bullied the way we have been. And I can't let that happen and go to sleep tonight and know that I followed God. So it's really not a question for me. And I do see it as an honor and a privilege that he chose me.
- [23:51]
A
It's a good thing to think even people who would think of themselves as more progressive, even for the liberal justices, the problem is if the government can wield this kind of thing against people, they don't Agree with. When it switches, the government can wield this kind of thing against people it disagrees with. So even people who identify as progressive or liberal need to understand things you think are okay because you disagree, it can still be wielded against you. That's why we need to protect the freedom of speech for everyone, even if we disagree with their speech. Right. And, Gabby, I didn't warn you about this, but. And you're not like the financial person for adf, but you know, if people are listening and they want to get involved in some way, they're not a lawyer, they don't want to get sued, but they want to support Alliance Defending Freedom. How can people get involved? Just lay people who are listening to this case and want to support Amy and the other work that you guys are doing.
- [24:44]
B
Yeah. Well, they could go to adflegal.org that's our main page. And we actually have a page on our website specific to this case. If you look up First Choice Women's Resource Centers versus Plattkin, you could see all the information specific to this particular case. We have a case page for each one of our active cases and even some of the cases that have been closed but are very important. And so adflegal.org will have all the information there. And there are places on that website you can go if you're interested in giving and supporting.
- [25:16]
A
Awesome. I will make sure I put that link in our show notes and the link to go give. Yeah. If you're listening to this and you want to support Amy and all the work that ADF is doing, because I believe you guys don't charge Amy for the work you're doing. You guys are supported by people who donate. Is that right?
- [25:35]
B
That's right. Our. Our legal services are pro bono, so that's incredible.
- [25:39]
A
So that means folks listening, like we're the ones who are supporting the work that they're doing to defend all of us. So go to adflegal.org, make a donation, read Amy's page, share it. And this is you. You guys are arguing December 2nd, is that correct? In front of Supreme Court.
- [25:56]
B
Yep, that's right.
- [25:57]
A
Okay, so that's going to be amazing. We will definitely keep our eye on that. Amy and Gabby, thank you so much for joining us and just informing our audience and we wish you guys the best that God be with you in front of the Supreme Court.
- [26:10]
B
Thank you so much.