The U.S. Supreme Court decided on March 10 to hear a First Amendment challenge to a Colorado law that prohibits counseling for minors that aims to turn patients away from same-sex attraction.
Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia ban conversion therapy for minors, according to a report by the Movement Advancement Project.
The petitioner, Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor, says the state law violates her constitutionally protected free speech rights. She argues that the law encourages young people to change their sexual orientation or gender identity away from the heterosexual norm and prohibits the provision of counseling for same-sex desires or identification with the opposite gender.
“Many of her clients seek her counsel precisely because they believe that their faith and their relationship with God establishes the foundation upon which to understand their identity and desires. But Colorado bans these consensual conversations based on the viewpoints they express.
“[Colorado’s] content- and viewpoint-based Counseling Restriction prohibits counseling conversations with minors that might encourage them to change their ‘sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions,’ while allowing conversations that provide ‘acceptance, support, and understanding for ... identity exploration and development, including ... assistance to a person undergoing gender transition.’”
U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney denied Chiles’s motion for a preliminary injunction blocking the state law on Dec. 19, 2022.
Sweeney noted that Chiles, whose clients “include minors who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or gender nonconforming,” argues that the state’s “regulation of specific therapeutic practices unlawfully abridges what she can say to her minor clients.”
The judge said she disagreed. Children “are entitled to treatment—regardless of its outcome—that does not take a cavalier approach” to their “dignity and worth,” Sweeney said.
“And at the bare minimum, they are also entitled to a state’s protection from therapeutic modalities that have been shown to cause longstanding psychological and physical damage,” she added.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld the Colorado law “as a regulation of Chiles’s conduct, not speech.”
The ruling “deepened a circuit split between the Eleventh and Third Circuits, which do not treat counseling conversations as conduct, and the Ninth Circuit, which does,” the petition says.
Jim Campbell, chief legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Chiles, hailed the Supreme Court’s decision to accept the case.
“Colorado has yet to grasp the fundamental truth that the government cannot censor free speech, especially when doing so harms counselors and the clients they are seeking to help. There is a growing consensus around the world that children experiencing gender dysphoria need love and an opportunity to talk through their feelings and their struggles,” Campbell said during a media teleconference after the court issued its new decision.
“The language of the statute is very clear in its one-sided censorship—it says that you can only counsel kids struggling with these issues in one direction.”
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson but received no reply by publication time.
In a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Jan. 6, Stevenson wrote that Chiles’s claim would “undercut states’ longstanding ability to protect patients and clients from harmful professional conduct.”
The case is expected to be heard in the Supreme Court’s next term, which begins in October.
