8-1 SCOTUS Nukes ‘Egregious’ Colorado Ban On Therapists Helping Gender-Confused Clients

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‘The Constitution does not protect the right of some to speak freely; it protects the right of all. It safeguards not only popular ideas; it secures, even and especially, the right to voice dissenting views.’

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Colorado’s ban on therapists helping gender-confused clients find their way out of radical “transgender” ideology, in an 8-1 opinion Tuesday.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority in Chiles v. Salazar, where Colorado talk therapist Kaley Chiles challenged a law restricting her ability to provide gender-confused clients with care that seeks to resolve such confusion, rather than advance it.

“Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy, as applied to Ms. Chiles’s talk therapy, regulates speech based on viewpoint, and the lower courts erred by failing to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny,” the court held.

In his opinion, Gorsuch noted that “the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to dissent.

“Conversion therapy” is the leftist term Colorado used to describe any professional medical treatments that seek to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” Essentially, a 2019 law used the state’s licensing power to enact an “affirmation” only approach to gender confusion in minors, instead requiring doctors and therapists to provide “Acceptance, support, and understanding for … identity exploration and development,” and “Assistance to a person undergoing gender transition.”

“The First Amendment stands as a bulwark against any effort to prescribe an orthodoxy of views, reflecting a belief that each American enjoys an inalienable right to speak his mind and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for finding truth,” the court found. “Laws like Colorado’s, which suppress speech based on viewpoint, represent an egregious assault on both commitments.”