Federal judge bans Letitia James 'Ministry of Truth' from censoring NY pro-life pregnancy centers

The First Amendment does not allow the United States to adopt "Oceania's Ministry of Truth." 

That line from George Orwell's dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" opens U.S. District Judge John Sinatra's order Thursday imposing a preliminary injunction on New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is threatening pro-life pregnancy centers for telling women about so-called abortion pill reversal, as their lawsuit proceeds.

Her office may not enforce state consumer fraud laws against the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), Gianna's House and Options Care Center, which sued in May, for referring to APR, calling it safe and effective or directing people to the APR Hotline and website in their ads, social media and promotional materials. 

The injunction is limited to the plaintiffs, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom.

“Women in New York have literally saved their babies from an in-progress chemical drug abortion because they had access to information through their local pregnancy centers" about the protocol, ADF senior counsel Caleb Dalton said.

ADF told Just the News this was the "first substantial ruling" in the recent spate of Democratic Attorneys General threatening pregnancy centers and chilling their speech, and said it provides a template to other courts hearing similar challenges.

One of the more notable conclusions by Sinatra, nominated by President Trump: He'd issue the injunction even if James were correct that the centers were practicing "commercial speech," a category that receives less constitutional protection.

The Thomas More Society preemptively sued James in upstate Monroe County on behalf of Heartbeat International, CompassCare and members of a "pregnancy help collective" after the AG sent intent-to-sue letters. James then followed through with her own suit in Manhattan.

The state trial judge in the centers' preemptive suit approved their motion to consolidate the two cases in their backyard June 12, previously telling James they would suffer "avoidably unfair logistical disadvantage" in a Manhattan transfer. Her office has appealed.

Blue-state AGs on both coasts have charged hard against the shoestring nonprofits for allegedly misleading women by saying that taking supplemental progesterone, a natural pregnancy hormone, after mifepristone can counteract the abortive effects of the latter – before taking misoprostol to complete the chemical abortion – and save their pregnancies.

The protocol "makes biological sense," an Ivy League reproductive research chief told The New York Times seven years ago.

The counteroffensive by pro-life activists and their attorneys may be giving the Democratic elected officials pause, however.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul agreed to a permanent injunction against enforcement of its coerced-speech abortion law after another Trump nominee, Judge Iain Johnston, called it "stupid and very likely unconstitutional."

Washington AG and gubernatorial nominee Bob Ferguson, who just pulled out a planned debate with Republican nominee and former Rep. Dave Reichert, confirmed this spring his office closed a consumer fraud investigation against Obria Medical Clinics PNW after its insurer refused to renew its policy because of the investigation, which would aid a lawsuit against him.

The centers face extralegal threats for their speech as well. After the Democratic National Convention in Chicago closed Thursday night, the Aid for Women clinic three miles away was vandalized, board member Mary FioRito said on X.

Her photos show the spray-painted message "fake clinic the dead babies are in Gaza" on a window and what looks like epoxy or caulk on the door lock to prevent a key from opening it.

For the past 25 years, it’s been my privilege to be a volunteer and board member at Aid for Women, a nonprofit that runs maternity homes and pregnancy services throughout Illinois.

Last night, after the closing of the DNC, vandals attacked one of AFW’s Chicago locations. pic.twitter.com/yieCfi3XqE

— Mary H. FioRito (@maryfiorito) August 23, 2024

This would be the 93rd physical attack on a pregnancy center or pro-life group since the leak of the Supreme Court's then-unreleased Dobbs opinion that later overturned national abortion rights, according to CatholicVote's tracker.

"While the Department of Justice continues to mercilessly target peaceful pro-lifers, violent activists like those who vandalized Aid for Women, escape relatively unpunished," the group said in a press release Friday.

It pointed to Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act statistics obtained by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, which he says show only six of 211 prosecutions were against abortion-rights protesters. Roy's legislation with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, would overturn the 1994 law.

Seven pro-life activists, including 89-year-old "Yugoslavian death camp survivor" Eva Edl, face more than a decade in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines after their FACE Act conviction Tuesday for a Michigan abortion clinic sit-in, The Daily Wire reported.

Recent SCOTUS decisions have disappointed First Amendment advocates, especially its refusal to block the feds from pressuring social media platforms to suppress disfavored content.

Three days before suspending his presidential campaign Friday and endorsing GOP nominee Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got good news in the fallout from that ruling: U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty ruled RFK Jr. and his Children's Health Defense had legal standing to sue the White House and federal agencies for "direct censorship" of their social media accounts.

In May, SCOTUS also refused to force a federal judge to let New Jersey pregnancy centers sue AG Matthew Platkin before he enforces civil investigative demands in state court.

But the high court's 2018 precedent NIFLA v. Becerra, preventing California from forcing pregnancy centers to promote abortion, provided a roadmap for lower courts on pro-life speech.

The high court ruled that "professional speech" does not generally enjoy less constitutional protection and that California didn't show more than hypothetical risks if pregnancy centers weren't forced to tell women where to get abortions.

Similarly, James' office didn't explain how silencing the centers on APR, abortion pill reversal, was "actually necessary" to her stated objective, Sinatra wrote: protecting the Empire State's consumers and the public from the "harms false and/or misleading business and advertising practices cause."

Even if progesterone "presents a risk of harm to a pregnant woman, the treatment can only be obtained through a prescription from a doctor," so APR promotion "would – at most – encourage a woman to speak with her doctor about her treatment options," the judge wrote.

James also "conceded that no one has been harmed" by the centers' promotion of APR, meaning the suppression is "merely convenient" for the state's objectives, Sinatra said.

"Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment Free Speech claim, and they are suffering irreparable harm each day that their Constitutional freedoms are infringed," he wrote, noting James' state lawsuit against the Thomas More Society's clients and her refusal to "disavow enforcement" of the same kind in Sinatra's case.

The centers' constitutional harms "are sufficiently 'actual and imminent' to constitute an injury in fact," making them "ripe for adjudication" as well, the judge said.

Because each federal plaintiff "seeks to vindicate its own First Amendment rights" rather than stop James' enforcement in state court, the Supreme Court's precedent on federal courts abstaining when state courts are already involved doesn't apply, Sinatra said.

He cited NIFLA v. Becerra, in which the high court said "the government, even with the purest of motives, may not substitute its judgment as to how best to speak for that of speakers and listeners," particularly "in the fields of medicine and public health, where information can save lives."