US Supreme Court rejects Colorado's ban on LGBT 'conversion' talk therapy

[yankee87]

US Supreme Court rejects Colorado's ban on LGBT 'conversion' talk therapy. The justices, in a 8-1 ruling, reversed a lower court's decision that had upheld the law in a case brought by Kaley Chiles, who argued that it violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protections against government abridgment of free speech.

The ruling, authored by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, rejected Colorado's argument that its law regulated professional conduct, not protected speech. The court held open the possibility that the law could apply to certain forms of conversion therapy, including so-called "aversive" physical interventions, but not to Chiles' speech at issue here.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-supreme-court-rejects-colorado-s-ban-on-lgbt-conversion-talk-therapy/ar-AA1ZPFFD?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=69cbe0096382417ea65d6ce25ec37a47&ei=37

SCOTUS is okay regulating women's bodies, transgender people, but still want to make life worse for our transgender youth. We need to expand the Court also.
I HATE SCOTUS.

[Johonny]

1. Its junk science, all of it.

[yankee87]

3. Suicide the final outcome?

I believe MAGA wants out transgender youth to commit suicide or put them in camps.

[Initech]

2. We need to fire all of Rupert Murdoch's clowns at every level.

Fox News is poisoning this country.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Weird ruling. Free speech behind a closed door medical treatment.

Regulating speech that's not public. Hmmm. Advertising it might be free speech, but not inside an office under HIPAA. IMHO.

Looking at it in another way, did they just legalize hate speech in private?

I so disagree that therapy is a free speech issue. A persuasive therapist could convince a client of anything. Mind control kind of stuff.

[pcdb]

12. Was hate speech ever illegal?

Considering this was 8-1, it sounds like both liberal and conservative justices agreed the law violates the first amendment.

[tritsofme]

28. There is not a "hate speech" exception to the First Amendment.

It has never been “illegal”

[Sympthsical]

6. It was pretty clear cut in this instance

A little bit of an eyebrow raise that Kagan took a shot at Jackson in her concurrence.

As a matter of pure speech, the Colorado law was a very clear violation.

Now, that said - and this is important - the decision is in regards to speech and talk therapy. It does not cover nor grant constitutionality to other forms of conversion therapy including physical punishment, duress, or aversion "therapies" (think your Christian camps we hear about).

I'm a gay man. I loathe conversion therapy with my whole being. I would like to see a lot of this bullshit banned across the board.

However, in this instance, the Colorado law was an overreach. The way it was structured could've made my own therapy while I was working through my orientation illegal. I would not want to have my professional conversations in that area constrained, even if it is by well-meaning law.

[EdmondDantes_]

7. The law protects abhorrent speech too

[dsc]

8. Except they clearly don't believe that

and I know that because they required abortion providers to read state written speech about the consequences of abortion.

[yankee87]

10. Perfect answer

Thank you for reminding this to me.

[Jose Garcia]

13. Sotomayor and Kagan didn't cocur with that decision

[dsc]

14. No they didn't but Alito, Thomas, and Roberts surely did

and I strong suspect that none of Coney Barret, Kavanaugh, or Gorsich have any problems with that decision either.

[Celerity]

15. But they both did concur with the cons in this case.

US Supreme Court strikes down Colorado law banning conversion therapy for gay, transgender minors

https://coloradosun.com/2026/03/31/conversion-therapy-supreme-court-ruling/

A Colorado law banning so-called conversion therapy to “cure” minors of being gay or transgender was struck down Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court, which determined that the law violates the First Amendment.

“Consider a hypothetical law that is the mirror image of Colorado’s. Instead of barring talk therapy designed to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity, this law bars therapy affirming those things,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a concurring opinion. “Because the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward.”

Only one of the justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. The court has a 6-3 conservative-majority. Justice Neil Gorsuch, formerly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit based in Denver, wrote the majority opinion.

snip

During the October hearing, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that Colorado, six years since passing the law and three years since the legal challenge was filed, had not enforced it, and questioned whether the type of talk therapy Chiles provides would even be prohibited by the state ban. In response, Chiles’ attorney said Colorado was investigating anonymous allegations against Chiles’ practice. Sotomayor joined in Tuesday’s majority decision overturning the ban.

snip



https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-539_fd9g.pdf

[yankee87]

11. Disagree

With all the power a therapist has a great amount of power over their patients is great. This can be used for good/bad outcomes. This pseudo-science has zero positive aspects and can only hurt the patient.

[Sympthsical]

19. There are a lot of terrible therapists in this world

With all kinds of bad theories, bad practices, and real bad woo.

Ask me how I know. And if personal testimony isn't sufficient, well, *gestures to the entire internet*

But we're talking about discussions during therapy. Orientation is a tricky thing. You very well could have a young gay man - or hell, an older one - in there wondering if they could change, or be more bisexual, or have fewer sexual thoughts, etc. Maybe they're not ready to come out of the closet - to their families or themselves - and they're just trying to find coping mechanisms to make their lives just a little bit easier.

Again, ask me how I know. I was a teenager really going through it, and it was probably the most depressed I have ever been in my entire life. I eventually found a really good therapist who probably saved me from harming myself. And our discussions would've raised some bureaucratic eyebrows under this kind of law, no doubt at all.

Do you really want the government in there? I do not.

People are looking at this ideologically instead of therapeutically.

[Shrek]

27. Kagan touched on this in her concurrence

Of course, it does not matter what the State’s preferred side is. Consider a hypothetical law that is the mirror image of Colorado’s. Instead of barring talk therapy designed to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity, this law bars therapy affirming those things. As s. Chiles readily acknowledges, the First Amendment would apply in the identical way. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 25–26; see also id., at 37–38 (United States as amicus curiae agreeing). Once again, because the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward.

[gulliver]

9. Therapy itself is questionable

I have zero faith in the psychology industry. For every Marcia Linehan you have a thousand "trained" therapists and counselors. I.e., people who couldn't do math in school who are portrayed as sensitive, science-backed clinicians of the mind.

The wonder isn't that they're now free to speak according to their lights as professionals. It's that they're considered professionals at all.

[PeaceWave]

17. Sadly, I have to agree with you. I've met more than my fair share of fucked up therapists...

Their family lives are total disasters and yet they're out there doling out "therapy."

[Torchlight]

23. I've no doubt you've met more than your share n/t

[Cerulean Southpaw]

18. Questionable at its best.

Best case scenario is a therapist can help a person work through their own issues and come to terms with them or develop healthy coping mechanisms.

Worse case is the therapist being a manipulative predatory sociopath.

Some people are drawn to certain positions exactly because of the potential for abuse.

[Sympthsical]

20. There are good and bad therapists

A good therapist can literally save your life. A bad one can ruin it.

Unfortunately, pop therapists and the Internet are giving the practice a real dirty name. And how our culture now kind of talks in this weaponized therapy speak is not great.

I haven't needed therapy in years, but when I did, I was glad I managed to find two good ones. And they weren't the first ones I found. It's a weeding process. You have to look around to find one on your wavelength.

Our society really doesn't teach people how to cope. With stress, anxiety, fear, inferiority, frustration, anger. Any of it. If someone's raised with good support, be that friends, family, or community, they may naturally acquire those skills. But a nice healthy chunk of our society is let out into the world with no idea how to navigate the mental pitfalls. Some are lucky to learn along the way, some are resilient, some adapt, and some crumble.

A good mental health worker should never be discounted.

[gulliver]

24. Your point about the importance of social support...

...is well taken. One issue I have with the psychology industry is that it can supplant social support. The social support from friends, parents, teachers, etc., comes to seem "unprofessional." Even laws can come into play based on the idea that the industry "knows best." There's a simultaneous misconstrual of how science works (contingently, modestly) combined with "worship and preaching of science" (confident, but also often slipshod, desperate, or commercial).

[Sympthsical]

26. Absolutely. Those are the bad ones.

I worked in social services for years. Currently in nursing school and working as a behavioral therapist as my day job (different kind of therapy - I work with kids with autism to help with developmental disability).

The first thing we ask, across all three areas, is what kind of support structures they have. Family, friends, community. Any health care worker, mental or physical, who isn't including support structures isn't doing their job. We can only do so much. At the end of the day, the success of interventions is frequently heavily dependent on whether or not someone has adequate social support. Be that addiction, mental illness, developmental disability, poor physical health, etc.

First question a nurse asks, "Do you have anyone at home?" Not only does lack of support make success less likely, it makes a healthcare worker's job indescribably more difficult.

Any so-called professional who stands there telling you they - and they alone - have all the answers and will fix you is selling something.

[luv2fly]

25. In every profession there are the good and bad

Good lawyers, bad lawyers, good therapists, bad therapists, good plumbers, bad plumbers... and so on and so on.

It's more about good therapy methods and bad therapy methods. Quality research supports good therapeutic methods and exposes the frauds.

[NEOH]

16. I Wonder if this will Pave the Way...

I wonder if this will pave the way for the Trump family to open up a chain of conversion "therapy" centers.

[yankee87]

21. Sad, but true

I didn't think of that. tRump family would supply the gas for the showers.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

22. Deadline Legal Blog-Supreme Court sides with Christian counselor over Colorado on 'conversion therapy' for minors

Medical groups warned that efforts to change sexual orientation and gender identity are illegitimate, ineffective and can be especially harmful to minors.

Deadline: Legal Blog - Supreme Court sides with Christian counselor over Colorado on ‘conversion therapy’ for minors

Medical groups warned that efforts to change sexual orientation and gender identity are illegitimate, ineffective and can be especially harmful to minors.

— Lola Gayle (@lolagaylec.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T15:45:12.868Z

https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-conversion-therapy-colorado

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a Christian counselor over Colorado in her challenge to the state’s ban on so-called conversion therapy for minors.

In an 8-1 ruling by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court said that the state’s law, as applied to talk therapy provided by the counselor, Kaley Chiles, conflicts with First Amendment principles because it regulates speech based on viewpoint. Gorsuch wrote that the amendment “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

About half the states in the country have banned or restricted the practice that aims to change a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.....

Focusing in on Chiles’ claim, Gorsuch called the question before the court a narrow one. “Ms. Chiles does not question that Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy has some constitutionally sound applications,” the Trump appointee wrote. He noted that she doesn’t take issue with the state’s effort to prohibit physical interventions, but rather, she only provides talk therapy.

The problem, she argued, is that because the state’s law strikes at the heart of First Amendment speech protections, the lower courts didn’t provide rigorous enough scrutiny against the state in her legal challenge. ....

Upholding the district court’s ruling against Chiles, a divided appellate panel said the law only “incidentally” involves speech because counseling necessarily involves speech, but that the state isn’t restricting her constitutional expression.

“In other words, Ms. Chiles’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech is implicated under the MCTL [Minor Conversion Therapy Law], but it is not abridged,” the panel majority said, over dissent from a judge who said the majority’s “wordplay” in distinguishing speech from conduct posed “a serious threat to free speech.”

The panel majority noted that Chiles remained free to share her views on conversion therapy, sexual orientation and gender identity; that she can criticize Colorado for restricting her administration of conversion therapy; that she can refer clients to other service providers, like religious ministers; and that she can provide conversion therapy to adult clients.

I feel a little better. Talk therapy is not the same as the torture methods used in many forms of conversion therapy. Other forms of conversion therapy are still illegal.

[markpkessinger]

29. I am EXTREMELY disappointed that Justices Kagan and Sotomayor went along with this . . .

. . . I mean, if conversion therapy is to be protected in the name of "freedom of speech," what's to prevent any manner of medical/psychological quackery from being protected on the same grounds?

I understand that Justices Kagan and Sotomayor may have thought they were creating space to argue for other forms of medical counseling down the line (such as, for example, abortion counseling), however, I fear that what they have actually done is to open the door to protecting all sorts of dubious medical and psychotherapeutic practices. Their concurrence with this opinion will stand as a black mark on both of their legacies!