The Supreme Court on Monday added two new cases to its docket for the 2025-26 term, both involving efforts to litigate disputes in federal rather than state courts. In a list of orders released from the justices’ private conference last week, the court announced that it will hear arguments next term in cases arising from New Jersey’s attempt to investigate a group of crisis pregnancy centers and from efforts to hold oil companies responsible for production of crude oil in Louisiana more than 80 years ago.
In First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, the court agreed to decide whether a group of crisis pregnancy centers – faith-based nonprofits that hold themselves out as healthcare clinics and often provide material support to pregnant women, but try to persuade them not to have an abortion – can go to federal court to challenge the constitutionality of a subpoena from a state attorney general, or whether they must instead pursue those claims in state court.
Under New Jersey law, the attorney general can issue subpoenas to investigate (among other things) misleading practices by charitable organizations. But to enforce those subpoenas, the attorney general must go to state court.
This case arose from an investigation by the state’s Division of Consumer Affairs into whether First Choice Women’s Resource Centers was misleading donors and potential clients – by, for example, omitting information about its mission on its client-facing websites and by indicating that ultrasounds are “generally required” before a medication abortion, although they are not.
The division issued a subpoena on Nov. 15, 2023, setting a deadline of Dec. 15, 2023. But before that deadline expired, First Choice went to federal court to block the subpoena, arguing that the subpoena violated the First Amendment by chilling the group’s rights to free speech and its associations with donors, who were scared off by the prospect that their identities would be revealed.
The district court dismissed the case, concluding that First Choice’s claims were not ripe – that is, not a concrete dispute ready for the court to adjudicate – “because no actual or imminent injury has occurred.” It reasoned that under state law, only the state court has the power to enforce or quash a subpoena. And after a state court ruled that the subpoena could be enforced, the district court still ruled that the case would not be ripe until a state court ordered it to respond under “threat of contempt.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit upheld that decision, prompting First Choice to come to the Supreme Court earlier this year. After considering the case at nine consecutive conferences, the justices agreed to weigh in.
And in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, La., the Supreme Court agreed to hear a long-running lawsuit brought by Louisiana and two of its parishes, attempting to hold oil companies liable for their production of crude oil in the state during World War II. The question that the court agreed to decide arises from the oil companies’ latest efforts to transfer the cases from state court, where they were filed, to federal court.
The oil companies relied on a federal law that gives federal courts the power to hear civil actions against “any officer (or any person acting under that officer) of the United States” “for or relating to any act under” the authority of that office. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that although the oil companies may have been “acting under” an officer of the United States when they fulfilled contracts to supply the federal government with gasoline for aviation, their production of crude oil did not “relat[e] to” their contracts to refine the oil into gasoline because the contracts did not specifically address oil production.
The oil companies came to the Supreme Court earlier this year, asking the justices to review the 5th Circuit’s decision and weigh in on the scope of the removal provision. After considering the oil companies’ petition at their conference on June 5 and again last week, the justices on Monday agreed to take up the case.
The justices will meet for another private conference on Wednesday. They will release orders from that conference on Monday, June 23, at 9:30 a.m.
Posted in Featured, Merits Cases
