Updated October 7, 2025 at 6:31 PM CDT
The Supreme Court seemed ready on Tuesday to side with an Evangelical Christian therapist who objects to a Colorado law that she maintains violates her free speech rights. If the court rules in her favor, the decision could invalidate laws in some two dozen states that bar therapists from practicing a version of talk therapy that seeks to change a teenager's sexual orientation or gender identity.
The case involves a new wrinkle on an old therapy. Specifically, something called "conversion therapy." It's generally defined as a treatment used to change a person's attraction for same-sex individuals and to similarly cure gender dysphoria. In whatever form, the therapy has been forcefully repudiated by every major medical organization in the country on the grounds that it doesn't work and often leads to depression and suicidal thoughts in minors.
But at Tuesday's Supreme Court argument, lawyer James Campbell, representing therapist Kaley Chiles, told the justices that the way his client wishes to practice conversion therapy involves no physical restraints or coercion of any kind. Rather, he said her practice involves only talk therapy, and the state's ban on what Chiles does prevents voluntary conversations with minors seeking her help.
"Ms. Chiles is being silenced. The kids and families who want help — this kind of help that she offers — are being left without any support," he asserted.
Representing Colorado, State Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson replied by noting the high rates of suicide among minors who are questioning their sexual orientation or their sex assigned at birth. Responding to questions from the justices, Stevenson said that under the state's conversion therapy law, therapists may not promise a cure that will transform a gay teenager into a straight teenager. That kind of speech, she conceded, is banned because it is an attempt to change a minor patient's identity.
But she stressed that the law still permits patients to discuss feelings of confusion and uncertainty about their identity with a licensed professional.
After reading excerpts of the law out loud, conservative Justice Samuel Alito chimed in that the Colorado law "looks like blatant viewpoint discrimination." By viewpoint discrimination, he meant that the view the state was supporting is something of a one-way street. It allows therapists who treat minors to deal with sexuality in one way but unconstitutionally silences a different therapy.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had a different take, noting that medical doctors would clearly be liable if they used a medication that the state deemed substandard care.
"It's just very puzzling to me that she [Chiles] would stand in a different position than a medical professional who has exactly the same goals and would just be prescribing medication," Jackson said.
But most of the other justices, including liberal Justice Elena Kagan, didn't seem to see things that way.
"Let's just assume that we're in normal free-speech land rather than in this kind of doctor land. And if a doctor says I know you identify as gay, and I'm going to help you accept that, and another doctor says I know you identify as gay, and I'm going to help you change that, and one of those is permissible and the other is not, that seems like viewpoint discrimination."
Chiles, for her part has not used the therapy on anyone yet because she says she fears losing her license as a therapist or being fined if she did. Her lawyers say that the Colorado law thus unconstitutionally chills her right to free speech.
The state's contrary view is that it must ensure that medical professionals do not engage in debunked and discredited psychological theories that are condemned by organizations as diverse as the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association. But after Tuesday's oral arguments, a clear majority of the justices, across ideological lines, seemed inclined to rule against the Colorado law, and in doing that, they could be upending similar state laws in half the country.
A decision in the case, Chiles v. Salazar, is expected by summer.
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