The challenge to Colorado law could set the stage to overturn restrictions on the discredited practice in over 20 states
The Supreme Court will take up a challenge to a Colorado law banning the use of conversion therapy — a discredited practice that seeks to change the gender or sexual identity of LGBTQ+ individuals — on minors.
Kaley Chiles, a Colorado-based professional counselor, challenged the state’s law banning conversion therapy in 2022, on grounds that it violated her religious liberties. In a filing to the Supreme Court, attorneys for Chiles — two of whom work for the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom — wrote that the court needs to decide “whether a law that censors certain conversations between counselors and their clients based on the viewpoints expressed regulates conduct or violates the Free Speech Clause.”
If the court rules in Chiles’ favor, the decision could be the basis for overturning similar laws banning or restricting conversion therapy in over 20 states.
The Supreme Court has previously rejected efforts to overturn such laws, including in 2015, 2016, and 2019. Yet under the conservative Supreme Court assembled by President Donald Trump, the justices have indicated an interest in overturning years of precedent. In 2023, the court declined to hear a challenge to a similar law in Washington state. In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the challenge “asks us to consider whether Washington can censor counselors who help minors accept their biological sex.”
“Because this question has divided the courts of appeals and strikes at the heart of the First Amendment, I would grant review,” he added at the time. Thomas has also suggested that he would be open to receiving challenges to laws protecting same sex marriage and access to contraception.
The American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry writes that so-called conversion therapies “are provided under the false premise that homosexuality and gender diverse identities are pathological. They are not; the absence of pathology means there is no need for conversion or any other like intervention. Further, there is evidence that ‘conversion therapies’ increase risk of causing or exacerbating mental health conditions in the very youth they purport to treat.” The organization adds that the supposed therapies “lack scientific credibility and clinical utility.”
In January, after Chiles petitioned the Supreme Court, the office of Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser wrote that “more than 20 states have similar laws banning conversion therapy, and no court has invalidated any of them. In fact, a federal district court in Denver and a panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Colorado’s law because it is consistent with the First Amendment and past Supreme Court decisions. Supreme Court precedent makes clear that the First Amendment allows states to reasonably regulate professional conduct to protect patients from substandard treatment, even when that regulation incidentally burdens speech.”
