The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a legal challenge to Colorado’s law prohibiting licensed counselors from providing sexual orientation change efforts therapy for clients seeking their help.
In an orders list released Monday morning, the high court agreed without comment to hear the case of Kaley Chiles v. Patty Salazar et al., which challenges Colorado’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious freedom legal nonprofit representing Chiles, celebrated the court’s decision to hear oral arguments in the case.
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ADF CEO Kristen Waggoner said in a press release on Monday that she believes state officials have “no business censoring private conversations between clients and counselors.”
“Colorado’s law prohibits what’s best for these children and sends a clear message: the only option for children struggling with these issues is to give them dangerous and experimental drugs and surgery that will make them lifelong patients,” stated Waggoner.
“We are eager to defend Kaley’s First Amendment rights and ensure that government officials may not impose their ideology on private conversations between counselors and clients.”
In 2019, Colorado passed the Minor Conversion Therapy Law, which prohibits what critics derisively call “gay conversion therapy” for minors, after multiple similar bills had failed in past years.
Daniel Ramos, executive director of the LGBT advocacy group One Colorado, released a statement at the time claiming that the new law was a “significant step in protecting our LGBTQ youth.”
“No young person should ever be shamed by a mental health professional into thinking that who they are is wrong. Mental health care should be ethical and affirming for all people — including LGBTQ young people,” stated Ramos. “I applaud the Colorado General Assembly for their bipartisan support of this measure. Protecting our LGBTQ youth is not a partisan issue.”
In September 2022, Chiles filed a legal challenge against the law, claiming that it violated the Free Speech Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against Chiles last September, upholding an earlier district ruling in favor of Colorado’s therapy ban.
Circuit Judge Veronica Rossman, a Biden appointee, wrote in the majority opinion that “Chiles had not met her burden of showing a likelihood of success on the merits of her First Amendment free speech and free exercise claims.”
“By regulating which treatments Ms. Chiles may perform in her role as a licensed professional counselor, Colorado is not restricting Ms. Chiles’ freedom of expression,” she added in the ruling. “In other words, Ms. Chiles’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech is implicated under the MCTL, but it is not abridged.”
Circuit Judge Harris Hartz, a George W. Bush appointee, dissented, arguing that the panel majority failed to explain why “talk therapy is to be afforded lesser First Amendment protection than speech in general.”
“Is the majority stating that professional speech should be treated differently under the First Amendment from identical speech by a nonprofessional? That would fly in the face of what the Supreme Court has recently told us,” wrote Hartz.
Last November, the ADF filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on behalf of Chiles, urging the high court “to clarify that the First Amendment applies in the counseling room.”
