The Supreme Court ruled for free speech in a case brought by Christian counselor Kaley Chiles, with eight justices finding Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy unconstitutional while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stood alone in dissent.
Eight justices sided with Kaley Chiles in her free speech challenge to Colorado’s ban on so-called conversion therapy, leaving Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the lone dissenter. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, concluding the law targets Chiles’s speech based on her viewpoint and therefore triggers heightened First Amendment scrutiny. That alignment included both conservative and two liberal justices.
The court’s split was striking because Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the majority, leaving Jackson isolated on the other side. For a justice often described as independent, her position here looked more like an outlier than a principled stand. The result is a clear statement that viewpoint-based regulation of licensed speech faces a steep constitutional hurdle.
Colorado’s statute bars licensed counselors from engaging in “any practice or treatment” that “attempts or purports to change” a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The law’s language is expansive, sweeping up ordinary conversations between a counselor and a willing client. That breadth is central to why the majority treated this as a speech case rather than a pure regulation of medical technique.
The majority concluded the statute discriminates on the basis of viewpoint dressed up as professional regulation. A counselor who affirms a minor’s stated gender identity faces no sanction, while one who questions it or offers a faith-based or clinical alternative does. In short, the state regulated a message, not a method.
That distinction matters because states legitimately regulate medical procedures, but they cannot pick which ideas licensed professionals may express. Earning a credential does not erase a person’s First Amendment protections, and the court’s decision reinforced that line. Where speech is the vehicle, constitutional guards remain in force.
Jackson responded with a 35-page dissent that she read aloud from the bench, a rare and dramatic move this term. Her dissent painted a dire picture of what she called the decision’s consequences for health regulation. She warned that the majority’s approach could undermine state oversight of medical care broadly.
“The Court could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care administered by effectively unsupervised healthcare providers.”
“Ultimately, because the majority plays with fire in this case, I fear that the people of this country will get burned.”
Jackson insisted Colorado was regulating professional conduct rather than speech, but that argument depends on a narrow definition of counseling conversations as non-speech. Treating words exchanged in a therapeutic setting as conduct is a legal maneuver that collapses under scrutiny. The majority found the statute’s text itself shows it targets communication.
“Before now, licensed medical professionals had to adhere to standards when treating patients: They could neither do nor say whatever they want. Largely due to such State regulation, Americans have been privileged to enjoy a long and successful tradition of high-quality medical care.”
No reasonable observer denies states can set standards for medical practice and protect patients from harm. The real question is whether a state can outlaw certain viewpoints when they are expressed in speech by a licensed counselor. Jackson’s reliance on tradition did not overcome the constitutional problem of viewpoint discrimination.
Jackson has developed a reputation for dissenting when the Court moves right, and she often writes in vigorous terms. But predictability is not independence; true independence sometimes means joining a pragmatic majority. When Sotomayor and Kagan join an 8-1 decision, it suggests the majority’s reasoning carried weight across ideological lines.
The ruling has real implications for states that have enacted similar bans. Those laws have operated in a constitutional gray zone, labeled as professional regulation but functioning as limits on speech. The Court now clarified that viewpoint-based restrictions on counselor speech must survive heightened scrutiny under the First Amendment.
This is not the end of medical regulation. States can still set licensing requirements, insist on informed consent, and punish malpractice. What states cannot do is criminalize or sanction a licensed counselor for expressing a disfavored perspective on human sexuality and gender. The First Amendment exists to stop the government from deciding which ideas are legal to say.
The left has long defended these bans as protections for minors, but protections that rest on banning speech are coercion, not liberty. Sotomayor and Kagan saw the free speech problem; Jackson did not, even though she was nominated by former President Biden. Eight justices treated this as a free speech case; one treated it like a culture war she would not concede, but she lost it anyway.
