A Free-Speech Lesson for J.B. Pritzker

Democrats are eager to make their states havens for abortion, and in Illinois they’re willing to violate free-speech rights along the way. That’s the finding of a federal judge who has enjoined a law to silence groups that run pregnancy help centers.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently signed a law amending the state’s Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act to sweep in pregnancy centers that counsel women against abortion. The law, drafted by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, regulates the antiabortion groups on grounds they engage in “deceptive business practices.”

The law “is both stupid and very likely unconstitutional,” federal Judge Iain Johnston wrote in an Aug. 4 order granting a preliminary injunction. “It is stupid because its own supporter admitted it was unneeded” and had no evidence supporting its claims of deception,” he wrote. “It is likely unconstitutional because it is a blatant example of government taking the side of whose speech is sanctionable and whose speech is immunized.”

The speech of abortion providers is “specifically excluded from being sanctioned under the Consumer Fraud Act,” Judge Johnston wrote. Regulating pregnancy centers for deceptive practices while exempting abortion providers is viewpoint discrimination. In Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015), the Supreme Court held that laws regulating speech based on content are “presumptively unconstitutional” and violate the First Amendment.

The law was challenged by the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates and others. John Jansen, a project coordinator for Pro-Life Action League, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the AG’s office seeking information about what fraudulent or misleading conduct by pregnancy centers had prompted the AG’s crackdown.

His declaration to the court says the FOIA found no patient had “ever lodg(ed) an actual complaint with the Attorney General against an Illinois pregnancy help ministry, much less for a violation of the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practice Act.”

Messrs. Raoul and Pritzker know that the sidewalk counselors and pregnancy centers aren’t engaged in commercial transactions. Sidewalk counselors are typically volunteers and often from religious organizations. “There is no remuneration of any kind and there is no economic motivation of any kind,” the judge noted in his order.

Mr. Pritzker is gaining a reputation as a hard-left culture warrior who is happy to silence political opponents. He told CNN that the law is “just like the case against President Trump. You have a right to free speech, but you don’t have a right to lie.”

But special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment specifically says Mr. Trump has a right to lie. Mr. Pritzker apparently thinks that invoking the name Trump is a justification to get away with saying or doing anything. Not under the U.S. Constitution.