Far-Right Christian Group Gets the Supreme Court to Greenlight Gay Conversion Therapy

Happy Transgender Day of Visibility! To celebrate, the Supreme Court delivered a resounding “fuck you” to LGBTQ+ youth in Colorado with a scratch-your-eyeballs-out 8-1 decision ruling that the state’s ban on conversion therapy for minors violates free speech. The lone dissenter, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, warned the fallout from today’s ruling “could be catastrophic.” 

“Today’s reckless decision means more American kids will suffer,” Kelley Robinson,  the president of Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “The Court has weaponized free-speech in order to prioritize anti-LGBTQ+ bias over the safety, health and wellbeing of children.”

Colorado banned conversion therapy for minors by licensed therapists (not family members or religious organizations) in 2019. Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., currently have similar laws. Conversion therapy is designed to convince kids they’re not gay or trans through both physical and psychological torment, which can include hypnosis, electric shock, and masturbation “reconditioning.” The United Nations considers it torture, and every major medical group in the U.S.—including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association—agrees it doesn’t work and actually causes more harm. Research repeatedly shows it’s ineffective and can increase the risk of depression, PTSD, and suicide. 

But God forbid a Christian in this country feels like they can’t preach that God hates gay people. In September 2022, conservative Christian counselor Kaley Chiles sued Colorado over the ban, claiming it violated her right to free speech. She says she only uses talk therapy in her gay conversion therapy, not physical interventions—so, I guess, if you want your kid to suffer through conversion therapy without electric shock or starvation methods, Chiles is your go-to. Sick country. 

Representing Chiles is—drumroll please—Alliance Defending Freedom, the far-right Christian legal organization behind the Mississippi abortion ban SCOTUS used to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. ADF is listed on Project 2025’s advisory board, and, in recent years, has argued cases seeking to ban the abortion pill, prevent women from accessing abortions in ERs, and defend the predatory, anti-abortion centers known as crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs. Erin Hawley, the wife of anti-abortion Slenderman Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), is an ADF lawyer. 

ADF first filed Chiles v. Salazar on Chiles’ behalf in September 2022, arguing that the ban regulates speech, not just conduct. ADF Chief Legal Counsel Jim Campbell presented oral arguments to the court in October. The state argued that it wasn’t regulating speech but merely protecting patients from substandard medical care. Colorado noted that no one had ever been disciplined under the law, which could have resulted in a therapist losing their counseling license or paying a penalty of up to $5,000. 

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch delivered the majority opinion, writing, “the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.” But while SCOTUS ruled that the ban does violate free speech, instead of striking it down, they punted it back to a lower court—which will likely be the one to officially overturn it. The ruling also doesn’t affect laws banning conversion therapy in other states…at least not yet. 

“Under our precedents, bedrock First Amendment principles have far less salience when the speakers are medical professionals,” Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent. “Chiles is not speaking in the ether; she is providing therapy to minors as a licensed healthcare professional.” She also read it aloud from the bench—a rare move signaling how pissed off a Justice is over a decision.