Two Liberal SCOTUS Justices Rule to Overturn Conversion Therapy Ban

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down Colorado’s ban against so-called “conversion therapy,” finding that it was discriminatory to the viewpoints of people who want to torment LGBTQ+ people.

In an 8-1 ruling in Chiles v. Salazar, the court sided with Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor who claimed that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy violates her First Amendment rights to free speech.

“Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy, as applied to Ms. Chiles’s talk therapy, regulates speech based on viewpoint, and the lower courts erred by failing to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny,” the ruling, written by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, stated.

Gorsuch argued that Chiles’s talk therapy was not subject to restrictions on conduct, and claimed that the law’s targeting of health care professionals “changes nothing.”

“Her speech does not become conduct just because the State may call it that. Nor does her speech become conduct just because it can also be described as a ‘treatment,’ a ‘therapeutic modality,’ or anything else. The First Amendment is no word game,” he wrote.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed the lone dissenting opinion, in which she argued that the court had ignored the context in which Chiles was practicing speech. “Chiles is not speaking in the ether; she is providing therapy to minors as a licensed healthcare professional,” Jackson wrote. Therefore, Chiles was subject to the same regulation that any state exercises over medical practices.

“In concluding otherwise, the Court’s opinion misreads our precedents, is unprincipled and unworkable, and will eventually prove untenable for those who rely upon the long-recognized responsibility of States to regulate the medical profession for the protection of public health,” Jackson wrote.

Speaking from the bench Tuesday, Jackson called the decision “wrong as a matter of precedent, first principles, and history.”

More than 20 states have enacted some form of ban on so-called “conversion therapy.” Major medical organizations have unanimously said that these “therapies” are not only ineffective and unsupported by scientific evidence, but can do immense psychological harm to gay and transgender patients.

The high court’s ruling could have broader implications. By siding with Chiles, the court has suggested that sexual orientation and gender identity are mutable traits, setting them apart from other protected “suspect classifications” such as race and religion that receive the highest judicial scrutiny when challenged in court. This could signal significant reversals for LGBTQ+ rights in future cases.

This story has been updated.