The Supreme Court may have overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent, but the left’s campaign to silence opponents of abortion shows no sign of abating. The good news is that the federal courts are emerging as a bulwark for the free speech rights of religious Americans who are pro-life. At the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the Justices seemed sympathetic to arguments against an intrusive probe by New Jersey into faith-based pregnancy clinics. 

We don’t want to get ahead of our constitutional skis, but the tenor of the questioning by the high court’s conservative wing — and even at least one liberal justice — suggests that the clinics could be vindicated. That would echo the victory scored on Monday in the Second Circuit in another case testing the free expression rights of pro-life advocates. A unanimous ruling by a panel of judges amounts to a rebuke of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.

The Supreme Court dispute centers on a legal demand in 2023 by the Garden State’s Democratic attorney general, Matt Platkin, that a chain of faith-based, pro-life clinics turn over records, including donor information. Requests of that ilk have been, going back to the Civil Rights era, used as a tactic against advocacy groups. In 1958 the Supreme Court ruled against Alabama in a dispute with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The Cotton State, aiming to halt the group’s activism, had sought to force the Naacp to turn over its membership lists. The high court, in a unanimous decision by Justice John Harlan, rejected the state’s demand, holding that “compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy” is a de facto “restraint on freedom of association.” That decades-old precedent didn’t seem to deter New Jersey’s attorney general, though.

On the contrary, Mr. Platkin in earlier court pleadings argued with a straight face that New Jersey’s legal demand to the pro-life clinics was merely a “request” for information. New Jersey’s lawyer, Sundeep Iyer, disputed today that “anyone actually has been or is objectively likely to be chilled by this subpoena.” Justice Clarence Thomas took exception to that blithe mischaracterization, explaining that “I’ve never heard the term ‘subpoena request.’”

Even a liberal justice, Elena Kagan, noted that “an ordinary person, one of the funders for this organization,” when “presented with this subpoena and then told, but ‘Don’t worry, it has to be stamped by a court,’ is not going to take that as very reassuring.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh, noting that the American Civil Liberties Union is siding with the clinics in this case, called it “just obvious” that there is an “objective chill from a subpoena on speech.”

The probe into the New Jersey clinics is of a piece with efforts in liberal states “to investigate and regulate crisis pregnancy centers,” Politico reports, “as part of Democrats’ national efforts to shore up access to” abortion in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That agenda animates Ms. James’ attempt to deploy anti-fraud and consumer protection laws against several faith-based pro-life pregnancy clinics in the Empire State.

The clinics, per the Second Circuit, promote “abortion pill reversal,” which can “counteract the effects of an abortion induced via oral medication.” Alliance Defending Freedom challenged what it calls Ms. James’s “speech-intimidation effort.” The circuit riders found that the clinics “will likely establish that they have suffered a constitutional injury.” It could well serve as a reminder for pro-choice activists to respect free speech and religious rights.