The Supreme Court has agreed to review a Colorado therapist’s challenge to her state’s law banning mental health care providers from treating minors with unwanted same-sex attraction, a.k.a. “conversion therapy.”
“Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, challenged the law in 2022, claiming it interfered with her ability to treat individuals with ‘same-sex attractions or gender identity confusion’ who ‘prioritize their faith above their feelings,’” per The Hill.
“The court’s decision to take up her challenge comes after the justices previously turned away opportunities to weigh in on conversion therapy bans. The case is set to be heard during the Supreme Court’s next annual term, which starts in October,” it added.
Chiles has claimed she only uses talk therapy on adults seeking counseling for unwanted same-sex attraction and minors “who are internally motivated to seek counseling.” LGBTQ activists have said that such counseling causes psychological harm to minors and should be banned. The state of Colorado has maintained its regulation only extends to professional conduct and in no way violates free speech.
“A professional’s treatment of her patients and clients is fundamentally different, for First Amendment purposes, from laypersons’ interactions with each other,” Colorado officials said.
A federal district court denied Chiles’ previous request when she sued in 2022, which she then appealed to the Supreme Court. Though the Supreme Court denied her initial request in 2023, Conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said they would have consider the case.
“[Under the state law] licensed counselors cannot voice anything other than the state-approved opinion on minors with gender dysphoria without facing punishment,” Thomas wrote in the five-page opinion at the time, per CNN.
“Although the court declines to take this particular case, I have no doubt that the issue it presents will come before the court again,” he added. “When it does, the court should do what it should have done here: grant certiorari to consider what the First Amendment requires.”
Justice Alito said in a brief dissent that the higher court needed to address an issue that lower courts were divided on.
“In recent years, 20 States and the District of Columbia have adopted laws prohibiting or restricting the practice of conversion therapy,” Alito wrote. “It is beyond dispute that these laws restrict speech, and all restrictions on speech merit careful scrutiny.”
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