The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 on Tuesday that Colorado cannot enforce its ban on conversion therapy as applied to talk-based counseling between licensed therapists and minors, finding the law likely violates the First Amendment. California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded within hours, calling the practice "discredited junk science" and warning the decision "puts vulnerable kids at risk."
The ruling, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch in a 23-page majority opinion, sided with Christian therapist Kaley Chiles, who argued that Colorado's law amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. The decision reverses a lower court ruling and could open the door to challenges against similar laws in more than 20 states.
What makes this case remarkable is not just the outcome but the coalition behind it. Liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor joined the majority. Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, arguing that states should retain authority to regulate harmful medical practices. When eight of nine justices, spanning the Court's ideological spectrum, agree that a law crosses a constitutional line, the losing side has a credibility problem.
The case, identified as Chiles v. Salazar by the Washington Examiner, centered on Colorado's law prohibiting licensed therapists from performing talk-based conversion therapy on minors. Kaley Chiles, a licensed Christian counselor, argued the law prevented her from speaking with minors and families seeking counseling related to gender identity or sexual orientation.
The core constitutional question was straightforward: Does a state law that permits a therapist to affirm a minor's gender identity or sexual orientation, but forbids a therapist from discussing changing it, regulate speech based on viewpoint?
Eight justices said yes.
Gorsuch's opinion drew a sharp line. As Fox News reported, the majority found the law unconstitutional because it allowed one viewpoint while suppressing another. The Court treated the ban not as ordinary healthcare regulation but as a speech restriction that must survive First Amendment scrutiny.
In his opinion, Gorsuch wrote:
"But Colorado's law addressing conversion therapy does not just ban physical interventions. In cases like this, it censors speech based on viewpoint. Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same."
That last sentence carries weight. Gorsuch was not comparing Colorado to authoritarian regimes for rhetorical effect. He was making a constitutional point: governments always believe their censorship serves the public good. The First Amendment exists precisely because that belief is not enough.
The Supreme Court has been an active venue for major constitutional questions this term. The justices have also been weighing whether mail-in ballots received after Election Day should still count, another case that tests the boundaries of state regulatory authority against constitutional limits.
Justice Elena Kagan, no one's idea of a conservative firebrand, wrote separately to reinforce the majority's reasoning. Her concurrence, as Breitbart noted, stated plainly:
"Once again, because the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward."
She also wrote: "If the First Amendment prohibits anything, it is the 'official suppression of ideas.'"
When a liberal justice appointed by President Obama calls a state's speech regulation "straightforward" viewpoint discrimination, the political class should take notice. This was not a narrow 5-4 ruling along partisan lines. It was a near-unanimous repudiation of the legal theory that government can silence one side of a counseling conversation while permitting the other.
Newsom posted on X from the official governor's account, @CAgovernor, on March 31:
"Conversion therapy is discredited junk science that inflicts harm on LGBTQ youth. The Supreme Court's decision is disappointing and puts vulnerable kids at risk."
Notice what Newsom's statement does not address: the First Amendment. He frames the issue entirely as a public health question, "junk science," "harm," "vulnerable kids", without engaging the constitutional reasoning that persuaded eight justices, including three appointed by Democratic presidents.
This is a pattern. When progressive leaders lose on constitutional grounds, they reframe the debate as a moral emergency. The strategy avoids the uncomfortable reality that the Constitution protects speech even when the government disapproves of it.
California became the first state to ban conversion therapy for minors in 2012. The state's law makes it illegal for licensed mental health professionals to try to change a young person's sexual orientation or gender identity. It does not apply to adults and does not regulate religious counseling. The New York Post reported that Newsom has a personal connection to the issue, his transgender godson, designer and activist Nats Getty, publicly came out as a trans man in 2021.
Personal connections to policy are understandable. But personal conviction does not override the Bill of Rights, and a governor's emotional investment in an issue does not change the constitutional analysis.
The decision's reach extends well beyond Colorado. More than 20 states, including California, prohibit licensed therapists from performing conversion therapy on minors. Just The News reported that the ruling could affect similar laws across the country, with the majority holding that Colorado's law, as applied to talk therapy, impermissibly interfered with free speech.
The Court sent the case back to lower courts, but the signal is unmistakable. Laws structured the way Colorado's was, permitting affirmation but prohibiting dissent in the therapist's chair, face a steep constitutional climb. Breitbart noted that the ruling is expected to make similar bans in roughly 23 states difficult or impossible to enforce.
This doesn't mean states have no authority to regulate therapy. The Court's ruling addressed talk-based counseling specifically. Physical interventions were not at issue. But the distinction matters: when the government tells a licensed professional which words she may speak and which she may not, based on the viewpoint those words express, it has crossed from regulation into censorship.
The Court has shown a willingness this term to confront questions about the limits of state power. Observers have noted the justices are also poised to decide whether states can keep counting ballots days after Election Day, another case testing the boundary between state discretion and constitutional constraints.
Newsom's use of "junk science" echoes a broader progressive argument. Major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, have criticized conversion therapy. That medical consensus is real and worth taking seriously.
But the Supreme Court's ruling did not endorse conversion therapy. It held that the government cannot suppress one side of a debate through viewpoint-based speech restrictions. Gorsuch acknowledged the controversy directly:
"We do not doubt that the question 'how best to help minors' struggling with issues of gender identity or sexual orientation is presently a subject of 'fierce public debate.'"
During oral arguments, Gorsuch also countered that scientific understandings change over time, referencing the 1970s, a period when mainstream psychiatry classified homosexuality itself as a disorder before reversing course. The point was not to relitigate old science but to illustrate why the First Amendment does not permit the government to freeze one side of a scientific debate into law while silencing the other.
Jackson, the lone dissenter, argued that states should retain authority to regulate harmful medical practices and warned the decision could weaken protections for patients. Her concern is not trivial. But it was a concern shared by only one of nine justices.
The broader question the Court has been grappling with this term, how far state authority extends before it collides with individual rights, has surfaced in multiple cases on the docket.
Gorsuch's majority opinion contained a line that deserves to be read carefully by every state legislator considering speech-based regulation:
"The First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country."
He also wrote: "However well-intentioned, any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an 'egregious' assault on both of those commitments."
Those words apply far beyond conversion therapy. They apply to campus speech codes, professional licensing regimes that punish dissent, and any government effort to dictate which ideas a citizen may express in a private conversation. The principle is the same whether the speech involves therapy, medicine, education, or religion.
Newsom can call the ruling disappointing. Advocacy groups can warn about harm. Those reactions are their right, protected, ironically, by the same First Amendment the Court just applied.
But when eight justices, liberal and conservative alike, tell a state that its law censors speech based on viewpoint, the proper response is not to attack the Court. It is to ask whether the law was written correctly in the first place.
The First Amendment does not care whether the government's motives are good. That's the whole point.
