https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5543054-colorado-conversion-therapy-ban-supreme-court/amp/The Supreme Court appeared open to a Christian counselor’s free speech challenge to Colorado’s conversion therapy ban for minors during oral arguments Tuesday. Several members of the court’s conservative majority expressed concern about accepting the blue state’s assertion that it is regulating professional conduct, not speech. “Just because they’re engaged in conduct doesn’t mean that their words aren’t protected,” Chief Justice John Roberts said.“It looks like blatant viewpoint discrimination,” Justice Samuel Alito quipped at one point.Not all the conservative justices were so vocal, including Justice Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s second appointee to the court, who remained quiet Tuesday. The court’s liberal wing, meanwhile, questioned whether the counselor had the right to bring the challenge.The case is set to have national implications, with more than 20 states having enacted similar bans to the one in Colorado. A decision is expected by next summer. In 2019, Colorado prohibited licensed mental health counselors from engaging in “any practice or treatment” that “attempts or purports to change” a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Violations can carry $5,000 fines, and counselors can be suspended and stripped of their license. Colorado contends it is a lawful regulation of health care treatment, pointing to major professional medical associations that suggest conversion therapy is ineffective and can be harmful to minors. “Every theory that it’s relied on has been debunked and debunked and debunked,” Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson told the justices.Alito questioned that assertion, pointing to when many medical professionals once believed people with low intelligence shouldn’t be permitted to procreate.
“The medical consensus is usually very reasonable, and it’s very important. But have there been times when the medical consensus has been politicized, has been taken over by ideology?” Alito pressed the state.It’s a sentiment advanced by Kaley Chiles, the counselor, who argues Colorado’s law is trying to control her conversations with patients to suppress disfavored views on LGBTQ rights.“This law prophylactically bans voluntary conversations, censoring widely held views on debated moral, religious and scientific questions,” said James Campbell, Chiles’s attorney. The Trump administration supports her lawsuit.“There is no separate nonspeech conduct being regulated here, and professional medical treatment is not exempt from the ordinary First Amendment rule,” said Principal Deputy Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan. If the high court agrees, it has long held such laws to be presumptively unconstitutional by holding them to a demanding test known as strict scrutiny.A district judge and a divided panel on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, upholding the law and spurring Chiles to petition the high court. Even if the Supreme Court applies the stricter test, it remains to be seen whether the justices will outright strike down Colorado’s law or send the case back to the lower courts to apply the more demanding standard.The court has a pathway to resolve the case without delving into those weighty issues, however. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s most senior liberal jurist, in particular questioned whether Chiles faced an imminent enough threat of enforcement to bring the case.“This is an unusual case, because we have basically six years of no enforcement of this law, three before this lawsuit, three since,” Sotomayor said.The Williams Institute estimates that 698,000 U.S. adults have received conversion therapy, including 350,000 who did so as adolescents.
Tuesday’s arguments follow a series of challenges the Supreme Court has taken up concerning Colorado’s broad LGBTQ protections. In 2018, the court ruled 7-2 that Colorado violated cake baker Jack Phillips’s First Amendment rights by prohibiting him from refusing to bake for same-sex couples’ weddings. Two years ago, the court ruled against Colorado again when website designer Lorie Smith appealed to the court in a bid to refuse designing websites for same-sex weddings. Chiles is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian legal powerhouse that represented both Phillips and Smith in the earlier cases. Chiles’s challenge was supported by outside briefs filed by Christian counseling and medical groups, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Catholic University of America, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and 20 Republican state attorneys general. Meanwhile, Colorado’s defense was supported by The Trevor Project, PFLAG, the American Psychological Association, nearly 200 Democratic members of Congress and 20 Democratic state attorneys general. It’s the first of several cases implicating LGBTQ protections at the court this term. The justices are also set to rule on whether states can ban transgender girls from competing on girls school sports teams. Last term, the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on transgender health care for minors in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines.Though that case implicated different constitutional issues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raised it at Tuesday’s argument.“But the regulations work in basically the same way, and the question of scrutiny applies in both contexts,” Jackson said. “So, it just seems odd to me that we might have a different result here.
>>1445569>“It looks like blatant viewpoint discrimination,”They literally torture these kids at these camps. Fuck off.
>>1445572>They literally torture these kids at these campAs a camp counselor for one of these camps, we do not torture the kids. We simply put the fear of God into them that they will go to hell if they engage in these twisted abhorrent behaviors
>>1445604that is religious torture. also, does your boss know you use 4chan?
>>1445569Of course they did. It's why there are 6 Catholics on the court now.
>>1445604>Be gay>Spend life sucking dick>Ask for forgiveness last minute>Get into heavenEz. No need to torture kids.
>>1445570>“The medical consensus is usually very reasonable, and it’s very important. But have there been times when the medical consensus has been politicized, has been taken over by ideology?”These freaks seriously could not project harder if they tried. I can't believe this shit works.
>>1445571>Chiles is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian legal powerhouse that represented both Phillips and Smith in the earlier cases.These people are behind most of the christian nationalist bullshit in the last 20 years. They are funded by a select group of far right fossil fuel billionaires.
>>1445645My question is, if being gay is a sin, and sinning is a matter of free will... why do you need conversion camps? Shouldn't people just pray the gay away?All this religion rights bullshit assumes the state needs to shove religion down every throat. If we don't have the ten commandments in every classroom, kids will exercise their free will differently? Are people going to hell because they weren't forced to pretend to pray in schools?
>>1445569Good
>>1445569Wouldn't that be classified as gender affirming care? Why are MAGAts such hypocrits?
>>1445604And then you fuck em?
>>1445731If MAGA didn’t have double standards then they wouldn’t have any standards at all.
If conversion therapy for minors should be legal, then so should intensive LGBT education for minors.
>>1445569Another W to throw on the (increasingly large) pile.
>>1445749>Another WDo you run a conversion camp?
>>1445765NTA, but you don't have to run a conversion camp to think of putting LGBT back in its place as mentally ill society-destroying inhuman reprobates as a W. That's a win for all normal people and a loss for LGBT. Good for humanity at large.
>>1445569Good now they need to outlaw gay adoption sexual torture rape and legalize gay bashing and fag hunting.
>>1445569If it is legal to torture people until they aren't gay, then it is legal to torture people until they are gay.
>>1445918>then it is legal to torture people until they are gay.Yes, that's why I said they need to outlaw gay adoption.
>>1445919Tell me you haven't read the constitution, bill of rights, and the Bible without saying you haven't read the constitution, Bill of Rights, and bible.
>>1445569>Children can't consent to being allowed to experiment with their gender!>but they can consent to being forced to a camp against their will, kept there against their will, and verbally harassed and tormented against their will
>>1445604I hear that electrocution + waterboarding + hotbox therapy is very effective at conversions. Is this true?
>>1445961Dont forget good ole guillotine
>>1445746lol already done tho
>>1445648>648â–¶>>>1445645Yeah but those Christians up in Ivory towers wouldnt like you to question their faith honestly they need to stop forcing it down everybodys thoats
>>1445638Boom sinfulness solved
>>1445606>>>> Anonymous 10/07/25(Tue)15:44:39 No.1445638â–¶>>1445990>>>1445604>>Be gay>>Spend life sucking dick>>Ask for forgiveness last minute>>Get into heaven>Ez. No need to torture kids.If his boss did that'd be crazy ya know just scrolling Cute Male for the 45th time today
The Supreme Court was the Right’s lap dog since the 2006 ruling for campaign money - until today.
>>1445935>reads all that shit>fags aren't mentioned positively>assumes fags aren't people and don't have rightsDie, faggot.
>>1445988>honestly they need to stop forcing it down everybodys thoatsAnd you're complaining about it interrupting your faith, so who's the better of the two?
>>1445993Citizens United was the right decision. You may not understand why but I assure you that not letting the government ban political speech is a good thing.
>>1446104i understand why you would think that as a foreign shill who shamelessly fellates billionaires cock
>>1446105>During the oral arguments in Citizens United v. FEC (2010), the U.S. government’s lawyer — then–Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart — acknowledged that, under the government’s interpretation of the law, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) could potentially ban a book if it was funded by a corporation and advocated for or against a candidate close to an election.You're in favor book banning?
>>1446106Are you enjoying this bit?
>>1446108>At the time, the government’s argument was based on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), also known as McCain–Feingold. The law prohibited corporations and labor unions (which included both for-profit and nonprofit organizations) from using their general treasury funds to make “electioneering communications” — that is, broadcasts, pamphlets, or other media that expressly advocated for or against a candidate close to an election.>So under the interpretation argued by Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart, that restriction could indeed have applied to nonprofits like the Sierra Club, the NRA, the ACLU, or even small advocacy groups — not just big corporations.Are you in favor of government having the power to ban books by the ACLU or ADL?
>>1446109Are you enjoying this bit?
>>1446110Do you have an argument you want to make or is impotent seethe the best you can come up with?
>>1446111NeitherI'm just asking if you're enjoying being this stupid on the worst board on 4chan
>>1446112You're just going to seethe. Got it.
>>1446113No, seriously. I'm not that anon. But its getting weird you can't answer the question.
>>1446114>say something stupid>get absolutely assblasted when it turns out your position is one that supports the government having the ability to literally ban books>seethe Many such cases.
>>1446115No, I'm still wondering if you're enjoying yourself, and you just seem to be projecting that I'm seething. Do you often make up scenarios like this? Are you always the winner in them?
>>1446116I'm trying to talk about something and the best you can do is seethepost. Quite obviously, I have won. >are you enjoying yourself Yes :)
>>1446117Hey, I'm glad these posts are making you happy at least. And you're not lying for attention anymore, and thats a good thing too.
>>1446118Where did I lie for attention?
>>1446119Don't worry about it, you won. And you're happy I'm still replying to you :)
>>1446120>And you're happy I'm still replying to youI'm wondering why you're derailing the thread. You lost an argument, started hurling insults, lost harder and are now trying to talk to me. Are you lonely?
>>1446121I'm really not that anon>derailedlmaoDon't worry about it, you won. And you're happy I'm replying to you :)
>we on the right preach personal freedom, liberty, and keeping the government out of your life :)>AHH FAGS EXIST ALL THIS IS SODOM THIS IS A FALLEN STATE SAVE ME GOVERNMENT KILL THEM FOR ME
>>1446136>We the fags use the government to enter your lives>You're mad>You want us to dieFags should kill themselves so we don't have to. Sincerely, -The Straights
>>1446146>Enter lives>By literally just making it legal to do everything straight couples doYeah good luck with "We had no choice but to remove your rights". Please face the wall.
>>1446148If it was a right, it couldn't be removed.Good luck making threats when your community is doing shit like this though>https://nypost.com/2024/12/23/us-news/georgia-couple-convicted-for-sickening-sexual-abuse-of-adopted-sons-get-100-years-in-jail-a-house-of-horrors/
>>1446149>Good luck making threats when your community is doing shit like this thoughHey now do catholic priests. Or hell, even straight couples.>https://6abc.com/post/malinda-hoagland-child-abuse-death-lawsuit-parents-murder-chester-county/15186397/>https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/homeschooling-child-abuse-torture-roman-lopez/>https://lynnwoodtimes.com/2025/03/27/white-couple-sentenced-to-hundreds-of-years/Now, the wall please.
>>1446151>Hey now do catholic priests.You mean the gay catholic priests? Talking to gays about pedophilia is like talking to blacks about crime statistics.
>>1446148>Please face the wall.Based on recent trends, who do you think is going to be facing the wall?
As opposed to pro-gay conversion therapy torture for children?Nobody under 18 should be subjected to trannyfication no matter how much their psychiatrist has brainwashed them into believing it.
