The US Supreme Court appeared poised on Tuesday to back a challenge by a Christian therapist to a Colorado law that bans “conversion therapy” for minors who are questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation.
The case was brought by Kaley Chiles, a licensed mental health counselor who argues that the prohibition from holding such conversations with minors is a violation of her First Amendment free speech rights.
Colorado’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law, passed in 2019, prohibits licensed mental health professionals from trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of their patients under 18 years old.
Conversion therapy is banned in more than 20 US states and much of Europe, with both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association opposed to its use.
“Miss Chiles is being silenced and the kids and families who want her help are unable to access it,” James Campbell, her lawyer, told the conservative majority court during 90 minutes of oral arguments.
“She’s discussing concepts of identity and behavior and attractions and how they fit together,” Campbell said. “That absolutely has to be protected by the First Amendment.”
Campbell, a lawyer with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy group, dismissed studies showing conversion therapy can be harmful, saying they “treat voluntary conversations the same as shock therapy.”
Chiles brought her case before the nation’s top court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority, after two lower courts ruled in favor of Colorado.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, asked Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson, who was defending the law, to point to the “best evidence” that talk therapy causes harm to minors.
“All of the theories underlying conversion therapy have been debunked,” Stevenson said, adding that there is “not a single expert, not a single study, not a single mental health professional willing to endorse conversion therapy.”
“People have been trying to do conversion therapy for 100 years with no record of success,” she said.
“The harms from conversion therapy come from when you tell a young person you can change this innate thing about yourself and they try and they try and they fail,” she said.
“And then they have shame and they’re miserable and then it ruins their relationships with their family.”
Justice Samuel Alito, an archconservative, pushed back, saying medical consensus is “usually very reasonable” but there have been occasions when it “has been politicized, has been taken over by ideology.”
Alito cited “a time when many medical professionals thought that certain people should not be permitted to procreate because they had low IQs” or recommended that children with Down Syndrome be institutionalized.
After taking office for his second term in January, President Donald Trump said the US government would henceforth only recognize two genders — male and female — and signed an executive order restricting gender transition medical procedures for people under the age of 19.
In June, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold a Tennessee state law banning hormone therapy, puberty blockers and gender transition surgery for minors.
The court is expected to rule on the conversion therapy case in June and its decision could impact more than 20 other states with similar bans.
The Supreme Court will also hear a challenge this term to state laws in Idaho and West Virginia that ban transgender girls from taking part in girls’ sports — another issue at the heart of the American culture wars.
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