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Supreme Court will review Colorado ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ minors

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 10, 2025, 1:38 pm CDT

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether a Colorado ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ minors—which aims to change sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling—violates the First Amendment.

The high court agreed to hear a case challenging a Colorado law that imposes professional discipline on licensed counselors who engage in such therapy, report SCOTUSblog and Law.com.

At issue is whether the ban censors counseling based on the viewpoint expressed in violation of the free speech clause or whether it is a permissible regulation of conduct, as the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Denver held in the case.

The plaintiff challenging the law, licensed counselor Kaley Chiles, is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group, according to a March 10 press release. She is a counselor with “Christian worldview” who helps clients with gender-identity issues, the press release said.

“Though Chiles never promises that she can solve these issues,” the cert petition said, “she believes clients can accept the bodies that God has given them and find peace.”

The press release said it is significant that the Colorado law “only prohibits counseling conversations in one direction. For example, it allows counseling conversations that aim to steer young people toward a gender identity different than their sex but prohibits conversations that aim to help them return to comfort with their sex when they desire that.”

Circuits are split on whether bans on conversion therapy regulate speech or conduct, according to the cert petition. The 11th Circuit at Atlanta and the 3rd Circuit at Philadelphia have ruled that the laws regulate speech, while the 10th Circuit and the 9th Circuit at San Francisco have determined that the laws regulate conduct.

Colorado’s brief opposing cert said its law was “based on overwhelming evidence that efforts to change a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity are unsafe and ineffective.”

The state argues that Supreme Court precedent “makes clear that the First Amendment allows states to reasonably regulate professional conduct to protect patients from substandard treatment, even when that regulation incidentally burdens speech.”

The case is Chiles v. Salazar.

The SCOTUSblog case page is here.

See also:

9th Circuit upholds ban on conversion therapy for minors in First Amendment challenge

Supreme Court declines to consider challenge to conversion-therapy ban; 3 justices would have heard case

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