In a Win for Free Speech, Supreme Court Rules Therapists Can Discuss Biological Reality With Confused Children

In an 8-1 decision released today (March 31, 2026), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Chiles v. Salazar that Colorado’s 2019 ban on “conversion therapy” for minors violates the First Amendment. The Court struck down the state law as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech, reversing a lower-court decision that had upheld the ban.

I’ll attempt to break down what happened in the case but please know — I’m not a lawyer. This is my layman’s attempt at explaining it all. Read Scotusblog.com for legal analysis

Who Brought the Case and What’s at Issue

• Plaintiff: Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor (therapist) in Colorado Springs who is a practicing Christian. She was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom. (Full disclosure: this is the law firm representing XX-XY Athletics in our case against the state of Colorado regarding the state’s misgendering laws.)

• The law: Colorado’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law (HB 19-1129) made it illegal for licensed mental-health professionals to engage in what the state calls “conversion therapy” — with minors. The statute defined that term broadly to include any talk therapy that “attempts or purports to change” a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity — including efforts to change behaviors, gender expressions, or to reduce same-sex attractions or feelings of gender dysphoria. So basically if a patient told a therapist he was “trans” and the therapist didn’t automatically say “Congratulations!” . . . it was against the law in Colorado.

To be clear, this is not about preventing electric-shock “therapy” or any coercive attempt to “turn gay people straight.” It is exclusively about voluntary talk therapy/counseling sessions.

Under the Colorado law, if a gender-confused child (for example, a boy who said he thought he was a girl) came to a therapist, the therapist was prohibited from asking basic exploratory questions such as:

• “What makes you think you’re a girl?”

• “Have you considered that it might be okay to be a boy who likes stereotypically ‘girl’ things and still be a boy?”

• “Can we explore whether you might be able to accept the body you have? Behave however you want, but accept the body you were born with?”

Any counseling that encouraged alignment with biological sex or questioned a child’s self-identified “gender” or general confusion about their own sex was automatically treated as illegal “conversion therapy.”

Chiles wanted to offer clients the option of exploratory, non-affirming talk therapy consistent with her clients’ and her own religious worldview. The state’s ban prevented her (and every other therapist) from having those conversations.

I’d like to say that while Kaley Chiles challenge to the Colorado law was rooted in her Christian world view, this is a case rooted in free speech not religious freedom. It’s perfectly reasonable to allow that a therapist who isn’t Christian might (and should) explore these same questions with their clients who come in thinking they are the opposite sex.

In short, despite the fact that Chiles in a Christian, the case is about free speech.

Why This Is a Free-Speech Case (Not an Anti-LGB Decision)

The Supreme Court’s opinion (written by Justice Neil Gorsuch) held that the Colorado law regulates speech based on its viewpoint. It allows therapists to affirm a child’s transgender identity or encourage transition, but forbids them from expressing the opposite viewpoint — i.e., that it may be healthy to feel comfortable in one’s biological body. Viewpoint-based restrictions on speech trigger strict First Amendment scrutiny, which the law could not survive.

The majority emphasized that the First Amendment protects the right of licensed professionals to engage in candid, client-driven conversations — even (and especially) when the state disagrees with the content of that speech. This is not a ruling about whether conversion therapy is good medicine; it is a ruling that the government cannot gag therapists and turn them into mouthpieces for the state’s preferred ideology. The decision protects free speech for everyone — therapists, clients, and families — who want open dialogue instead of state-mandated affirmation.

Colorado’s 0-for-3 Record at the Supreme Court

This is the third straight loss for Colorado in high-profile cases involving “LGBTQ” issues and free speech:

• Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018): the cake-baker case.

• 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023): the wedding-website designer case.

• Chiles v. Salazar (2026): now, the therapist case.

In each instance the state tried to force expressive professionals to convey messages they disagreed with; the Court ruled that the First Amendment does not allow it.

The Dissent

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only dissenter with an opinion that essentially asserted: a law cannot be unconstitutional if I like it!

She wrote a 35-page dissent (longer than the majority opinion and all concurrences combined) and took the rare step of reading portions of it aloud from the bench. She argued that the ruling interferes with states’ traditional power to regulate medical professions and could expose minors to harmful practices.

The other eight justices (including the Court’s three liberals) rejected that view and sided with the free-speech argument.

Bottom line: Today’s decision is a clear win for free speech.

Therapists in Colorado (and potentially in the roughly two dozen states with similar laws) can now have honest, exploratory conversations with confused children instead of being forced by the government to affirm one side of a delusional ideology. Families and clients — not the state — get to decide what kind of counseling best serves the child.

This is a win for children. And a win for the First Amendment.