The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Colorado’s ban on therapists helping gender-confused clients find their way out of radical “transgender” ideology, in an 8-1 opinion Tuesday.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority in Chiles v. Salazar, where Colorado talk therapist Kaley Chiles challenged a law restricting her ability to provide gender-confused clients with care that seeks to resolve such confusion, rather than advance it.
“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,” the court held.
In his opinion, Gorsuch noted that “the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to dissent.
“Conversion therapy” is the leftist term Colorado used to describe any professional medical treatments that seek to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” Essentially, a 2019 law used the state’s licensing power to enact an “affirmation” only approach to gender confusion in minors, instead requiring doctors and therapists to provide “Acceptance, support, and understanding for … identity exploration and development,” and “Assistance to a person undergoing gender transition.”
“The First Amendment stands as a bulwark against any effort to prescribe an orthodoxy of views, reflecting a belief that each American enjoys an inalienable right to speak his mind and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for finding truth,” the court found. “Laws like Colorado’s, which suppress speech based on viewpoint, represent an egregious assault on both commitments.”
Describing a scenario under which Chiles would have been restricted in helping clients, Gorsuch explained:
Colorado seeks to regulate the content of Ms. Chiles’s speech. When it comes to issues of human sexuality, some of her clients “are content with” their sexual identity and orientation and want help only “with social issues [or] family relationships.” But other clients seek her counsel on how to “reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with [their] bod[ies].” And in those cases, Colorado regulates how Ms. Chiles may respond. Under its law, she may not speak in any way that attempts to change a client’s “sexual orientation or gender identity” — including a client’s “behaviors or gender expressions” — or in any way that seeks to “eliminate or reduce” a client’s “sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
Beyond simply regulating Chiles’ speech, Gorsuch says the law “goes a step further, prescribing what views she may and may not express.”
“For a gay client, Ms. Chiles may express ‘[a]cceptance, support, and understanding for the facilitation of … identity exploration.’ For a client ‘undergoing gender transition,’ Ms. Chiles may likewise offer words of “[a]ssistance,’” Gorsuch wrote. “But if a gay or transgender client seeks her counsel in the hope of changing his sexual orientation or gender identity, Ms. Chiles cannot provide it.”
The Trump administration asked the court to rule in favor of Chiles on free speech grounds. The court found that Colorado’s law “as applied” to Chiles regulates speech. However, as Chiles is not licensed in the state to prescribe medications or perform surgeries, Colorado’s forced “affirmation” still applies to medical professionals who can.
“Colorado and the dissent fundamentally misconceive this Court’s speech-incident-to-conduct precedents,” Gorsuch wrote. “The Constitution does not protect the right of some to speak freely; it protects the right of all. It safeguards not only popular ideas; it secures, even and especially, the right to voice dissenting views. Consistent with these principles, our precedents have expressly rejected the State and dissent’s notion that ‘professional speech’ represents some ‘separate category of speech’ subject to ‘diminished constitutional protection.’”
The Supreme Court’s decision in Chiles reverses the judgment of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously ruled against Chiles, and remands the case for “further proceedings consistent with” Tuesday’s opinion. It follows the 6-3 decision last year in Skrmetti, where the court found laws prohibiting “transgender” medical interventions to be constitutional.
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
