Justices Reject Colorado Law Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’ for L.G.B.T.Q. Minors
“The state and more than 20 others restrict therapists from trying to change the gender identity or sexual orientation of L.G.B.T.Q. clients under the age of 18.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a Christian therapist, rejecting a Colorado law that prohibited mental health professionals from trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of L.G.B.T.Q. minors.
The court’s decision has implications for more than 20 other states that have similar laws barring so-called conversion therapy, which critics say is ineffective and potentially dangerous for young people.
In its decision, the court said the law, as applied to talk therapy, impermissibly interferes with free speech.
“Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote for himself and seven other justices from across the ideological spectrum. “But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, reading a lengthy summary of her opposition from the bench.
Justice Jackson warned of the broader implications for medical care that she said could be “catastrophic” if states cannot regulate some kinds of speech by licensed professionals.
“This decision might make speech-only therapies and other medical treatments involving practitioner speech effectively unregulatable,” she wrote, criticizing her eight colleagues for having made “this momentous decision without adequately grappling with the potential long-term and disastrous implications.”
Colorado’s statute, adopted in 2019, prohibits “any practice or treatment” that tries to change a minor’s “gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
State officials have never enforced the measure, which includes fines of up to $5,000 for each violation and possible suspension or revocation of a counselor’s license. The law includes a religious exemption for those “engaged in the practice of religious ministry.”
Kaley Chiles, an evangelical Christian, sued the state over the law in 2022, contending it prevented her from working with young patients who want to live a life “consistent with their faith.”
In her court filings, Mrs. Chiles said she was not seeking to “cure” clients of same-sex attractions or to “change” their sexual orientation, but rather to help patients with their own stated goals, which sometimes include “seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions.”
Mrs. Chiles’s legal team told the court that the law should be subject to a demanding standard of judicial scrutiny that would require the state to show that its law advances a compelling government interest and is narrowly devised to do so. They say that if the law were subject to that higher standard, known as strict scrutiny, courts would find that it surely violates the Constitution. The therapist's position was backed in court by the Trump administration.
Colorado’s Democratic attorney general, Phil Weiser, defended the law, saying states have long regulated medical practices, including treatments carried out through speech, to protect patients from substandard care. He warned that a Supreme Court ruling against Colorado would undercut the ability of states to regulate other professions and make it harder to sue all kinds of professionals, including doctors and lawyers, for giving bad advice.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions in favor of religious people, notably conservative Christians. In 2023, the court sided with a web designer in Colorado who said the First Amendment allowed her to refuse to design wedding websites for same-sex couples. In 2022, the court said a high school football coach had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games.
The Colorado therapist’s case was heard a few months after the court’s conservative majority upheld a Tennessee law barring certain medical treatments for transgender youths that the state deemed unsafe. In January, the justices also heard challenges to state laws in West Virginia and Idaho prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in girls and women’s sports. A ruling in that case is expected by this summer.
In general, the First Amendment prevents the government from restricting speech because it dislikes the content or message. But the Supreme Court has said certain restrictions aimed at governing a person’s conduct are permissible even if they incidentally burden speech.
In its opinion on Tuesday, the court rejected Colorado’s claim that the law represented the traditional licensing of the practice of medicine and only incidentally prohibited Mrs. Chiles’s speech.
“Instead, the state’s law trains directly on the content of her speech and permits her to express some viewpoints but not others,” Justice Gorsuch wrote.
The majority acknowledged that the question of “‘how best to help minors’ struggling with issues of gender identity or sexual orientation is presently a subject of ‘fierce public debate.’” But it concluded that Colorado’s law clearly censors speech in violation of the First Amendment.
“Every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth,” the opinion said. “However well intentioned, any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.”
The issue had split the lower courts. An appeals court in Florida found a set of similar local laws restricting therapy in the state was unconstitutional. A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit sided with Colorado, finding that talk therapy provided by a mental health professional is a medical treatment that can be regulated as part of the state licensure process.
Ann E. Marimow covers the Supreme Court for The Times from Washington.“
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