The Supreme Court seemed sympathetic on Dec. 2 to a pro-life pregnancy center group’s attempt to sue New Jersey for allegedly chilling its First Amendment rights through a subpoena.

The case focuses on a group of faith-based pregnancy centers known as First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, which alleged that the state of New Jersey was chilling their rights to free association by requesting information about their donors.

The group sued under a law known as 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, which allows entities to sue governments over alleged violations of civil rights. New Jersey has attempted to argue that First Choice’s fears were speculative and the organization therefore didn’t have the type of injury that would provide a legal basis for suing in court.

Sundeep Iyer, an attorney with the state of New Jersey, told the justices that the state didn’t intend to release donor information to the public. Rather, he said, the state simply sought to use the information in determining whether First Choice had misled people in violation of the law. The subpoena came as part of a broader effort by the state, which accused pregnancy centers of misleading the public.

But during oral argument, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Elena Kagan suggested that a “common sense” view of the subpoena would indicate a chilling effect on the donors.

“I’m an ordinary person, and I think, ‘Okay, these subpoenas—they’re pretty regularly issued, and maybe this one will be denied, but, you know, maybe it won’t, and ... I’m fearful of that, I don’t want my name being given. So why isn’t that enough?” Kagan asked.

Other justices asked questions that indicated that they were skeptical that First Choice had suffered the kind of injury that would give it a legal basis for challenging New Jersey’s subpoena.

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin had argued that the subpoena itself was non-self-executing and therefore hadn’t yet inflicted any harm.

Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested that more needed to happen in the lawsuit in order for them to challenge the subpoena in court.

Roberts, for example, suggested that First Choice would first need to face some kind of legal penalty.

Erin Hawley, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom and representing First Choice, argued that the subpoena was mandatory and its mere issuance chilled the organization’s rights.

Justice Clarence Thomas questioned what the subpoena had forced First Choice to do.

Thomas also pressed Iyer on the basis for the subpoena. After Iyer acknowledged that the state hadn’t received any complaints about First Choice, Thomas repeatedly suggested the state had no basis to think that First Choice was engaged in wrongdoing.

Iyer maintained that authorities could bring an investigation based on suspicions outside of complaints. He also told Thomas that the subpoena was different from a mere request in that it gave the state a predicate to go into court.

At one point, Kagan pressed Iyer on the nature of the subpoena and why it treated it as non-self-executing.

Wouldn’t they want their subpoenas to be self-executing? she asked.

In speaking with Hawley, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she was sympathetic to the idea that the mere issuance of the subpoena carried some kind of consequence for First Choice but suggested that she needed to give some weight to the idea that the subpoena was non-self-executing.

Federal judges have repeatedly dismissed First Choice’s claims on the basis that the judges saw the lawsuit as not ready for adjudication.

One of the federal court’s dismissals said the case wasn’t ready for adjudication because a state court judge hadn’t yet threatened contempt for not complying with the subpoena.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said the state court could also handle First Choice’s constitutional claims and, therefore, they didn’t need to be raised in federal court.

First Choice has argued that this is incorrect and that it shouldn’t have to wait for a state ruling to bring a challenge under Section 1983, a federal law over which federal courts have jurisdiction.

That law was also the subject of a Supreme Court decision earlier this year involving Planned Parenthood and is expected to come up in another case on Dec. 3.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed skeptical of First Choice’s case, suggesting that its legal theory was lowering standards for the types of lawsuits that could be brought.

Jackson, meanwhile, seemed to give weight to First Choice’s argument that it should be able to bring the case in federal court.

First Choice previously told the Supreme Court that this created a “Catch-22” because of a legal doctrine known as res judicata, which prevents the relitigation of an issue that was already decided by another court.

“Once a state court adjudicates First Choice’s federal constitutional claims, res judicata will almost certainly bar First Choice from ever having those claims decided by a federal court,” the group said in a briefing to the Supreme Court.

During oral argument, Jackson asked Iyer, “I mean, you’ve sort of made it impossible for them to make their claim in federal court, right?”