Supreme Court Strikes Down Colorado Conversion Therapy Ban, 8-1

In an 8-1 decision that could render conversion therapy bans in more than 20 states unenforceable, the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado's 2019 prohibition on the practice for minors violates counselors' First Amendment free speech rights, sending the case back to a lower court to determine whether the law survives strict scrutiny, a standard few statutes pass.

The case, Chiles v. Salazar, was brought by Christian counselor Kaley Chiles, who challenged a Colorado law barring licensed mental health clinicians from engaging in conversion therapy with patients under 18. The 2019 statute carries penalties including fines and license suspension, but no licensed professional had been sanctioned under it before Tuesday's ruling.

Chiles, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as a hate group, argued the law wrongly barred her from offering voluntary, faith-based therapy for minors. Her court papers characterized such sessions as "vital speech that helps young people better understand themselves," and her attorneys argued the ban made it difficult for parents to find therapists willing to discuss gender identity with children unless the counseling affirmed transition. Chiles also distinguished her methods from older, discredited practices like shock therapy.

The Trump administration backed Chiles' position. Hashim Mooppan argued before the Court on the administration's behalf, telling the justices that the First Amendment would bar not only conversion therapy bans but also their counterparts: state laws prohibiting therapy that encourages youths to embrace LGBTQ identities or orientations. That framing drew a direct question from Justice Amy Coney Barrett: "Can a state pick a side?" Justice Neil Gorsuch, who coined the "mirror-image" label during oral argument, pressed the same structural concern.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, defended the law on the grounds that therapy constitutes health care subject to state regulation, not ordinary private speech. The state argued the statute leaves room for wide-ranging conversations about gender identity and sexual orientation, exempts religious ministries entirely, and targets only practices that major medical associations have described as ineffective and harmful. Weiser warned in court papers that a ruling against Colorado would imperil not just conversion therapy bans but other longstanding health care regulations governing treatments experts consider unsafe or ineffective.

The decision fits a pattern the Court has established in recent terms, consistently backing claims of religious discrimination while taking a more skeptical view of laws affecting LGBTQ rights. ADF previously won a challenge before the Court to Colorado's own anti-discrimination law on behalf of a Christian website designer.

Colorado's statute defines conversion therapy broadly, covering any attempt to "change an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex." The law applies only to licensed mental health professionals; it does not reach religious ministers or govern practitioners' conduct outside their professional work.

The case reached the Supreme Court after a federal district court refused to block the law in 2022, finding no First Amendment infringement while acknowledging conversion therapy's documented harm to minors, and after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld that ruling on appeal.

The lower court's forthcoming strict-scrutiny analysis will determine whether Colorado's law can survive at all, and its outcome will set the constitutional template for the more than 20 other states that have enacted similar protections for LGBTQ minors.