{"id":208139,"date":"2025-10-08T03:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T03:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/208139\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T03:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T03:41:08","slug":"supreme-courts-conservative-majority-prepared-to-rule-against-conversion-therapy-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/208139\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court\u2019s conservative majority prepared to rule against conversion therapy ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n A majority of the Supreme Court signaled Tuesday it is prepared to rule against Colorado\u2019s ban on \u201cconversion therapy\u201d<\/a> for minors, with several justices indicating they sympathize with a licensed counselor who says the law violates her First Amendment rights.\n <\/p>\n

\n In one of the most significant cases the high court will address this year, the justices were asked to decide if states may ban the discredited practice<\/a>, which purports to \u201cconvert\u201d gay people to heterosexuality or transgender people to cisgender. The outcome could have sweeping implications: Advocacy groups say roughly half of US states have banned the therapy for minors.\n <\/p>\n

\n During a surprisingly low-key and short 90-minute session, several justices appeared to reject the idea the state can regulate \u201ctalk therapy\u201d the same way it may regulate medical conduct. Much of the debate seemed to focus on how Colorado would lose, rather than whether it would do so.\n <\/p>\n

\n Chief Justice John Roberts pointed to prior Supreme Court decisions in which the court declined to carve out a different First Amendment approach to professional speech. It was a theme several of the court\u2019s conservatives returned to repeatedly.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cJust because they\u2019re engaged in conduct doesn\u2019t mean that their words aren\u2019t protected,\u201d Roberts said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor in Colorado, has challenged the law on those grounds. Her \u201cfaith-informed counseling\u201d would be \u201cspeech only\u201d and she says her clients would voluntarily seek her services. She rejects the term \u201cconversion therapy\u201d and instead describes the work she hopes to do as helping clients who \u201chave a goal to become comfortable and at peace\u201d with their body.\n <\/p>\n

\n Colorado walked into the argument on Tuesday at a disadvantage. The 6-3 conservative Supreme Court has taken an expansive view of the First Amendment and, in recent years, it also repeatedly ruled against LGBTQ rights. Earlier this year, the court upheld a Tennessee law banning puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender<\/a> minors.\n <\/p>\n

\n In that case, US v. Skrmetti, a 6-3 majority ruled that difficult decisions about transgender care would be better left to state legislatures.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI\u2019m wondering why this regulation at issue here isn\u2019t really just the functional equivalent of Skrmetti,\u201d Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed an attorney for the Trump administration, which sided with the therapist. \u201cIt just seems odd to me that we might have a different result here.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Jackson, a member of the court\u2019s liberal wing, said that from a \u201cvery, very broad perspective\u201d she was \u201cconcerned about making sure that we have equivalence with respect to these things.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Hashim Mooppan, arguing for the Justice Department, fired back that from \u201ca very broad perspective, there shouldn\u2019t be equivalence\u201d because the Chiles case involves the First Amendment while Skrmetti did not.\n <\/p>\n

\n The exchange spoke to the rub in the case: Whether therapy is more like medical conduct or speech. Most of the court seemed to agree with Chiles that it was speech likely protected by the First Amendment.\n <\/p>\n

\n Colorado and other states have pointed to research showing that the practice doesn\u2019t work and can be harmful. Some of that research shows it increases a person\u2019s risk of suicide<\/a> and can cause other long-term health problems, such as depression, anxiety and high blood pressure. Children who undergo conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to run away.\n <\/p>\n

\n But Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious law group, has argued those studies conflate \u201caversive\u201d forms of therapy with the kind of \u201ctalk therapy\u201d their client, Chiles, wants to engage with. It\u2019s a point Chiles\u2019 attorney James Campbell included in his opening and closing statement.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cColorado can\u2019t prove harm because it hasn\u2019t cited a study focusing on what\u2019s at issue here \u2013 voluntary speech between a licensed professional and a minor,\u201d Campbell told the justices.\n <\/p>\n

\n It was a point that several justices appeared to zero in on. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed Colorado\u2019s attorney for her best evidence that the practice causes harm.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cPeople have been trying to do conversion therapy for a hundred years with no record of success,\u201d Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson told the court. \u201cThere is no study, despite the fact that people tried to advance this practice, that has ever shown that it has any chance of being efficacious.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The harm, Stevenson said, \u201ccomes from telling someone there\u2019s something innate about yourself that you can change.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Justice Samuel Alito, another conservative, pressed Stevenson on another point: How much stock the court should put into medical consensus. Alito described medical consensus as \u201cvery reasonable\u201d and \u201cvery important\u201d but then pushed Stevenson to acknowledge whether the consensus can change.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cHave there been times when the medical consensus has been politicized \u2013 has been taken over by ideology,\u201d Alito asked. \u201cWas there a time when many medical professionals thought that certain people should not be permitted to procreate because they had low IQs?\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Isn\u2019t that a reason, Alito asked, to apply First Amendment protections rather than deferring to the medical consensus on conversion therapy?\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere is nothing about this statute that stops anyone from sharing any opinion about conversion therapy or about how the consensus on that was reached,\u201d Stevenson responded.\n <\/p>\n

\n Despite the charged nature of the issue, the court\u2019s arguments Tuesday were relatively understated. The justices zipped through the attorneys representing Chiles and the federal government with unusual speed.\n <\/p>\n

\n One surprising dynamic was the silence from one of the most closely watched members of the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Trump-nominee, often viewed as sitting in the court\u2019s ideological center, asked no question of either side.\n <\/p>\n

\n Throughout the course of the argument, there were times when the court\u2019s three-justice liberal wing appeared to be focused mainly on attempting to limit the impact of a ruling against Colorado. The court could apply a heightened form of First Amendment scrutiny to the law and require a lower court to review it again under that standard. That option would not strike down the law \u2013 though it would leave it exceedingly vulnerable \u2013 and Colorado could try to justify the requirement again before a trial judge.\n <\/p>\n

\n A decision in the case is expected before the end of June.\n <\/p>\n

\n CNN\u2019s Jen Christensen contributed to this report.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A majority of the Supreme Court signaled Tuesday it is prepared to rule against Colorado\u2019s ban on \u201cconversion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-208139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}