The Supreme Court handed a Colorado counselor a victory over the state’s “conversion therapy” ban, after she alleged the law infringed on her First Amendment rights.
The justices ruled 8-1 that Colorado’s conversion therapy law regulates speech based on viewpoints, and that the lower courts therefore failed to hold it to heightened First Amendment scrutiny, dealing state officials a major loss in their bid to uphold the law. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenting justice.
The dispute in Chiles v. Salazar centers around Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor in Colorado, who claims that the state’s law banning “conversion therapy” unlawfully censors her ability to speak with children and families who seek her out by prohibiting her from trying to dissuade children from changing their gender identities or sexual orientations.
The case was brought to federal court by Chiles in 2022, but at both the federal district court and appeals courts, Chiles’s argument — that the law violates the First Amendment — was unsuccessful. The Supreme Court agreed in March 2025 to hear Chiles’s case and heard arguments during the first week of its term last October.
Chiles argued to the high court that the law violates her free speech rights, while Colorado defended it as a law regulating healthcare. During oral arguments in October 2025, the justices appeared skeptical of Colorado’s arguments defending the law.
SUPREME COURT SKEPTICAL OF COLORADO’S ‘CONVERSION THERAPY’ BAN
The ruling comes after several cases in the past decade, involving Colorado laws the state claims protects LGBT rights, have been put under Supreme Court scrutiny. In those cases, Colorado’s track record at the Supreme Court, where its laws have been accused of violating personal freedoms, has been poor.
The state has lost cases involving Jack Phillips’s refusal to bake a cake for a gay wedding, something the state attempted to force him to do, and Lorie Smith’s refusal to create same-sex wedding websites, which Colorado also attempted to force her to do. Colorado lost both legal battles on First Amendment grounds.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.