Colorado Conversion Therapy Ban Under Threat
The US Supreme Court has ruled against a Colorado state law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ minors, siding with a Christian therapist who challenged it on the grounds of the First Amendment.
A 2019 Colorado law prohibiting licensed practitioners from conducting “conversion therapy” on patients under 18 is on the chopping block. Proponents of the treatment claim to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ people—especially those actively wanting to change.
Conversion therapy has been discredited by major medical organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American Medical Association (AMA), and is banned in more than 20 US states—and most of Europe.
The UK government has committed to banning “conversion practices”—aimed at changing or suppressing sexual orientation or gender identity—but a final law is still pending, with a draft bill promised for future parliamentary sessions.
Broadly, research has shown that conversion therapy is ineffective and even harmful, leading to depression and suicidal thoughts.
But in an 8-1 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Kaley Chiles, a licensed mental health practitioner who invoked her Christian faith and challenged the law, arguing that it violated her right of free speech.
“Colorado’s law addressing conversion therapy does not just ban physical interventions. In cases like this, it censors speech based on viewpoint,” wrote conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch in the decision on behalf of the majority of the Court.
“As applied to Ms. Chiles, Colorado’s law regulates the content of her speech and goes further to prescribe what views she may and may not express, discriminating on the basis of viewpoint,” he argued.
The First Amendment, Gorsuch wrote, is a “shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.” As a result, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower courts to review their decisions in light of this ruling.
Only the liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed dissent, accusing her colleagues of opening “a dangerous can of worms” by undermining states’ ability to regulate medical practices that “risks grave harm to Americans’ health and wellbeing.”
Equality California, an LGBTQ civil rights organization, condemned the ruling, saying in a statement, “The Supreme Court is moving our country backward and into dangerously uncharted territory.”
The group also warned that the ruling could have a “far broader” impact if “extended to vaccines, psychiatric medicine, and abortion and contraception.”
Here are the top LGBTQIA-welcoming hotels in Colorado.
