WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Supreme Court indicated Tuesday it is not inclined to affirm Colorado’s ban on therapy for unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion, with several justices discussing the issue as one of free speech and viewpoint discrimination.
As LifeSiteNews reported last December, Colorado Democrat Gov. Jared Polis signed the “Minor Conversion Therapy Law” in 2019. It “prohibits a licensed physician specializing in psychiatry or a licensed, certified, or registered mental health care provider from engaging in conversion therapy with a patient under 18 years of age,” according to the bill summary. “Conversion therapy” is defined as “efforts to change an individual’s sexual orientation, 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 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier in 2024 that the law is legal because it regulates “professional conduct.” But opponents Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of Chiles v. Salazar, which concerns the First Amendment rights of counselors like Kaley Chiles.
The nation’s highest court announced in March it had agreed to take up the case after rejecting multiple similar cases in the past, and oral arguments began this week.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito suggested the law constituted “viewpoint discrimination,” expressing skepticism that it merely enforced the “professional standard of care” as defenders argued. Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the defendants’ attempt to distinguish between speech and conduct did not get the law off the hook, as “just because they’re engaged in conduct doesn’t mean that their words aren’t protected.”
READ: LGBT activists praise Spanish bishops for rejecting ‘conversion therapy’
“There have been times when the medical consensus has been politicized, has been taken over by ideology,” Alito noted. “Once was there a time when many medical professionals thought that certain people should not be permitted to procreate because they had low IQ?” he asked.
“Let’s say that you have some medical experts that think gender-affirming care should be — is dangerous to children and some that say that this kind of conversion talk therapy is dangerous,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked. “Can a state pick a side?” Even left-wing Justice Elena Kagan appeared to recognize a double standard, asking about a doctor who counsels accepting homosexual feelings and another who supports trying to change them: “And one of those is permissible, and the other is not?”
At the same time, left-wing Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested that Chiles lacked standing to sue, as Colorado had not attempted to enforce the ban against her.
However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not ask questions during the hearing, and Barrett left open the possibility of sending the case back to the lower court for reconsideration instead of the Supreme Court resolving it for themselves.
WATCH: ADF’s Jim Campbell delivers remarks to the press after Oral Arguments in Chiles v. Salazar.
Read more about the case at https://t.co/OzAPmIn5l9 pic.twitter.com/UUM4NMWDkm
— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) October 7, 2025
WATCH: Kaley Chiles delivers a statement to the press outside the Supreme Court.
Read more about Chiles v. Salazar at https://t.co/OzAPmIn5l9 pic.twitter.com/rpUpAhZg1G
— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) October 7, 2025
Opponents of conversion therapy commonly elicit opposition to the practice by invoking fringe, abusive practices such as electric shock and other forms of physically harmful junk science. But in reality, modern reparative treatment consists largely of simple counseling, the effectiveness of which is backed by studies as well as testimony from those who have benefited.
Liberals have long opposed conversion therapy as a harmful, activist influence on impressionable children. In recent years, however, conservatives say their opposition has taken on a particularly hypocritical quality given left-wing activists’ widespread embrace of not only actively encouraging transgenderism in gender-confused children but also subjecting them to potentially irreversible surgical and chemical transition procedures.
