Even one of the most liberal justices on the Supreme Court appeared very unimpressed with California’s law forcing crisis pregnancy centers to provide information on abortion – a reaction that many say could spell doom for the ill-fated law.

According to Amy Howe, reporting for ScotusBlog.com, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, a case which concerns whether or not a California law that directs “crisis pregnancy centers” to provide their patients with information about abortion violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause.

“After roughly an hour of oral argument, the law appeared to be in some jeopardy, not only among the court’s more conservative justices but also perhaps at least with Justice Elena Kagan, one of the more liberal justices,” Howe reports.

Kagan spoke up after Justice Samuel Alito raised concerns about how the law might be unfairly singling out anti-abortion facilities while exempting other kinds of health-care providers from providing the same information.

“If you have a law that’s neutral on its face” but then contains “a lot of crazy exemptions  . . . isn’t it possible to infer intentional discrimination?” Alito asked.

He then added, “When you put all this together, you get a very suspicious pattern.”

Kagan seemed to agree and suggested that California might have “gerrymandered” the law – that is, drawn it to target crisis pregnancy centers. If so, she declared, “that’s a serious issue,” Howe reports.

When Joshua Klein, the deputy state solicitor general for the state of California tried to reassure the Court that the law applies to a “significant” number of clinics that are not opposed to abortion, he said the statute was created to address the problem of pregnant women not getting enough information about their options.

This argument didn’t sit well with Justice Neil Gorsuch who asked why the state couldn’t use other methods to get this information to women rather than free-riding “on a limited number of clinics” to do so. “If you’re trying to educate a class” of people ‘about their rights, it’s pretty unusual to force a private speaker to do that for you under the First Amendment," Gorsuch said.

Arguing on behalf of the centers, attorney Michael Farris of Alliance Defending Freedom, was also peppered with some tough questions from Justice Stephen Breyer who wanted to know why, if the state can require a doctor who performs abortions to tell a pregnant woman about the possibility of adoption, why can’t it require a doctor to tell a pregnant women about the availability of free or low-cost abortion?

Farris and Jeffrey Wall, the deputy U.S. solicitor general who argued on behalf of the federal government, responded by pointing out that requirements to inform pregnant women about alternatives only come into play when medical procedures are being provided, something that the clinics do not provide.

“By the time the oral argument ended this morning, California’s law seemed like it could be in real trouble,” Howe concluded.

“And although we normally think of the Roberts court as being closely divided on high-profile cases, today’s argument suggested that the ruling might not necessarily be a close one. The justices could ultimately decide to strike down part or all of the Reproductive FACT Act, while leaving open the possibility that a more generally applicable law might pass constitutional muster. We’ll know more by the end of June.”

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