Breaking: Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Colorado Law Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’ for Minors

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case that could determine if mental health professionals in the United States can legally engage in conversations aimed at helping young clients struggling with their gender identity to accept their biological sex.

The case, Chiles v. Salazar, involves a Christian counselor in Colorado, Kaley Chiles, who sued over a state law that prohibits so-called "conversion therapy" for minors. Her lawyers with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, say the government's one-sided censorship of private conversations between clients and counselors violates the First Amendment's free-speech protections.

Proponents of conversion-therapy bans say that laws like Colorado's shield vulnerable young clients from unscrupulous therapists and ineffective and potentially dangerous practices that can lead to increased psychological suffering and suicide.

But opponents say the bans are typically vague and leave professionals guessing where the legally-enforceable lines are. And they say the laws require counselors to push their clients to accept only government-approved views about gender identity and sexual orientation.

"There is a growing consensus around the world that adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria need love and an opportunity to talk through their struggles and feelings. Colorado's law prohibits what's best for these children and sends a clear message: the only option for children struggling with these issues is to give them dangerous and experimental drugs and surgery that will make them lifelong patients," ADF president and general counsel Kristen Waggoner said in a prepared statement.

Colorado officials have countered that they can legally regulate medical treatments, including talk therapy. "A professional's treatment of her patients and clients is fundamentally different, for First Amendment purposes, from laypersons' interactions with each other," state officials said.

At least 20 states and Washington, D.C., have laws barring conversion therapy for minors. California was the first state to prohibit the practice in 2012.

In 2022, Chiles sued Colorado over its conversion-therapy ban, which Governor Jared Polis signed into law in 2019. Polis, the country's first openly-gay governor, said at the time that the law "will help so many people in Colorado to make sure that no one can be forced to attend a torturous conversion therapy pseudoscience practice."

But according to ADF, many of Chiles' clients, including clients struggling with their gender identity, come to her because they share her Christian worldview and values, and "believe their lives will be more fulfilling if they are aligned with the teachings of their faith."

"The government has no business censoring private conversations between clients and counselors, not should a counselor be used as a tool to impose the government's biased views on her clients," Waggoner said in a press release.

A federal district court rejected Chiles' request to temporarily suspend its enforcement of the law, a decision that was later upheld by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

ADF has fought state laws similarly aimed at censoring client-counselor conversations in states including New York and Washington. In 2023, the Supreme Court declined to hear ADF's  Washington case, though three of the court's conservatives — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh — said they would have considered it.

"It is beyond dispute that these laws restrict speech, and all restrictions on speech merit careful scrutiny," Alito wrote in a dissent.

In his opinion, Thomas wrote that under Washington's law, "licensed counselors cannot voice anything other than the state-approved opinion on minors with gender dysphoria without facing punishment."

In previous rulings, the Third and Ninth circuits, in different free-speech analyses, upheld conversion-therapy laws on the grounds that professional speech made during therapy is less protected by the First Amendment and can be regulated by the states.

The Eleventh Circuit, however, came to a different conclusion, striking down a conversion-therapy ban in Boca Raton, Florida on the grounds that a therapist's speech is speech, not conduct, and has broad First Amendment protections. The Eleventh Circuit leaned on the 2018 Supreme Court ruling in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra that struck down a California law requiring pro-life pregnancy clinic workers to notify clients about low-cost and even free abortion services in the state.