On Tuesday, International Transgender Day of Visibility, the Supreme Court justices ruled against a law that banned “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ minors in Colorado in an 8-1 majority after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the law. In their ruling, they write, “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.”
In 2022, an Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorney filed a suit on behalf of Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, over Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy.” Chiles argued that the law violated her First Amendment right to talk therapy by prohibiting licensed counselors from engaging in counseling conversations surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation.
In today’s ruling, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that a state could similarly not ban talk therapy designed to affirm a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity. “Once again, because the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward,” she wrote.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court, arguing that the Colorado law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” He stated that the First Amendment “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
Colorado disagrees, stating that its law allows a wide-range of conversations about gender identity and sexual orientation and exempts religious ministries. Colorado affirms that the law simply bars using therapy to try to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations. The practice of “conversion therapy”, sometimes called “reparative” or “reorientation” therapy, stems from the scientifically discredited belief that being LGBTQ+ is a curable mental illness.
Colorado argued that the law doesn’t violate the First Amendment because therapy is different from other forms of speech. They state that talk therapy is a form of healthcare that the state has a responsibility to regulate.
In Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s solo dissent, she writes, “[Petitioner Kaley Chiles] does not dispute that conversion therapy can be harmful to minors in certain circumstances. Nor does she contest that Colorado has a significant interest in protecting minors from harm. Chiles complains nevertheless that, because the particular form of conversion therapy she wants to offer clients utilizes only speech, the First Amendment prevents Colorado from prohibiting that treatment. But ‘[t]he power of government to regulate professions is not lost whenever the practice of a profession entails speech.’”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also writes that the majority decision “opens a dangerous can of worms” that “threatens to impair states’ ability to regulate the provision of medical care in any respect.”
After today’s ruling, the conservative Christian law firm ADF wrote in a revised article on its website, “Praise God, in March 2026, the Supreme Court gave a decisive win for free speech, families, and common sense, ruling 8-1 in favor of Kaley.”
Todays ruling is expected to eventually make similar laws in other states unenforceable. According to the Movement Advancement Project, there are currently 23 states barring health care providers from offering “conversion therapy” for minors, and four other states have some restrictions.
