Supreme Court weighs bans on 'conversion therapy' for LGBTQ+ kids. Live coverage.

WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court is diving back into the culture wars, debating whether states can block licensed therapists from attempting to change a young person's sexuality or gender identity.

The court on Oct. 7 is considering a Christian counselor's claim that Colorado's ban on "conversion therapy" violates her free speech rights.

Colorado officials argue the state's 2019 law − which is similar to restrictions in about half the states − is needed because of “overwhelming evidence” that conversion therapy harms young people, including by increasing the risk of depression and suicide.

The case comes months after the high court ruled in June that states can ban gender affirming care for minors. And the justices will consider later this term whether states can prevent transgender girls and women from playing on female sports teams.

Follow along for updates of today's arguments.

Colorado lawyer calls conversion therapy ‘ineffective, harmful’

Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson said courts have long upheld the government’s power to regulate healthcare, particularly against “ineffective, harmful treatment” at stake in the conversion therapy case.

“Colorado’s law lies at the bulls-eye center of this protection,” Stevenson said. “This treatment does not work and carries great risk of harm.”

Stevenson said Chiles provided no expert, no studies and no medical health professional endorsing conversion therapy. Stevenson said the treatment isn't protected by the First Amendment just because the therapy was talking.

“A healthcare provider cannot be free to violate the standard of care just because they are using words,” Stevenson said. “A state cannot be required to let its vulnerable young people to waste their time and money on an ineffective, harmful treatment because that treatment is delivered through words.”

--Bart Jansen

Thomas asks about state’s exception for non-licensed counselors

Justice Clarence Thomas asked Colorado’s lawyer about the law’s exception for non-licensed therapists. Why is the counseling different if it’s provided by a minister− who is not covered by the law, he asked.

Shannon Stevenson, Colorado’s solicitor general, said patients have a different expectation when they’re seeing a therapist licensed by the state.

“You’re expecting information that is complying with the standard of care,” she said.

--Maureen Groppe

DOJ: Malpractice laws are different from Colorado’s conversion therapy ban

Hashim Mooppan, the attorney for the Justice Department, said malpractice laws function differently than the kind of regulation Colorado has imposed on therapists.

Under the First Amendment, he said, it’s very important to let someone speak first before challenging what they’ve said, rather than categorically banning certain speech.

--Maureen Groppe

Barrett asks whether Supreme Court should resolve case itself

Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked a Justice Department lawyer whether the high court should resolve the case itself or send it back to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for more review.

Hashim Mooppan, the principal deputy solicitor general, said the Supreme Court should resolve the case itself because the evidence is clear that the Colorado law “can’t satisfy” the court’s review.

“There is ongoing irreparable harm to” Chiles, Mooppan said.

--Bart Jansen

Justice Department lawyer urges justices to scrutinize Colorado law

Hashim Mooppan, a lawyer at the Justice Department, argued in an opening statement for the U.S. government that the Colorado law is restricting speech based on the content of the speech and the viewpoint of the speaker. Mooppan said that means the Colorado law should face a high constitutional hurdle.

His argument echoes the argument the DOJ made in a brief it submitted to the Supreme Court ahead of oral arguments.

"Colorado is muzzling one side of an ongoing debate in the mental-health community about how to discuss questions of gender and sexuality with children," the Justice Department said. "Under the First Amendment, the State bears a heavy burden to justify that content-based restriction on protected speech."

--Aysha Bagchi

DOJ points to past consensus that homosexuality was a mental illness

One problem with Colorado’s position, an attorney for the Justice Department argued, is that the medical community has changed its position on homosexuality.

As recently as the 1970s, it was the professional consensus that being gay was a mental illness, said Hashim Mooppan, principal deputy solicitor general.

Under Colorado’s logic, Mooppan said, states in the 1970s could have made it illegal to counsel someone that it was OK to be gay.

The American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973.

--Maureen Groppe

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asks how case fits under First Amendment

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked how Chiles, who simply talks to clients, was different from medical professionals who might prescribe medicine and whom the state regulates.

“It’s just a little puzzling to me that she would stand in a different position than a medical professional who has exactly the same goals and exactly the same interests and would be prescribing medication for that rather than her talking with the client,” Jackson said.

Jim Campbell, who represents Chiles, said one-on-one conversation counts as speech protected under the First Amendment.

“This is an ongoing, active dialogue,” Campbell said. “That absolutely has to be protected by the First Amendment.”

--Bart Jansen

Sotomayor probes what proof of harm Colorado must show

Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned whether Colorado has to prove that talk therapy is harmful.

The state, she said, wouldn’t have to produce a study to back up the fact that anorexics shouldn’t be encouraged to restrict their food.

Jim Campbell, the attorney for the therapist, said that’s a different situation. While encouraging an anorexic to eat less is clearly harmful, he said, there is “debated science” about how best to help people with gender dysphoria, he said.

--Maureen Groppe

Sotomayor considers pathway to avoid free speech ruling

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the state of Colorado has disavowed prosecuting Chiles, and that may mean Chiles isn't injured in the type of way that legally allows her to sue. If that were the case, the Supreme Court could decide to dismiss the case without ruling on whether Colorado's law is constitutional.

Sotomayor highlighted that Chiles' therapy doesn't involve encouraging a client to vomit or to undergo electric shock treatment in order to change sexual orientation or gender identity. The justice characterized those tactics as the typical types of conversion treatments that, under the Colorado law, are banned.

"The state is actively investigating our client," Jim Campbell, Chiles' lawyer, responded. He suggested that shows Chiles could be prosecuted, and that the language of Colorado's ban applies to the type of therapy Chiles performs.

--Aysha Bagchi

Barrett asks if therapist is vulnerable to malpractice lawsuit

Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Chiles’ lawyer whether she would be vulnerable to a malpractice lawsuit.

“She would have the protection of the rigorous elements of malpractice,” Campbell said. “She would be able to show that she is not violating the standard of care,” he added. “She would be able to show that there is no harm and no causation.”

Barrett said that could lead to a battle of experts over the appropriate standard of care for Chiles’ patients. Campbell said a malpractice lawsuit would generally protect Chiles’ First Amendment right to free speech, which is what she’s arguing for in the Supreme Court case.

“The elements of malpractice are generally sufficient to protect free speech,” Campbell said.

--Bart Jansen

Freedom of speech and religious liberty top of mind for opponents of Colorado law

Several people who waited in line to hear oral arguments in person opposed Colorado’s ban and similar measures in others states.

Kevin Watchman, 23, said Colorado’s conversion therapy ban is one sided and infringes on religious freedom. “As a Christian, this is concerning for me,” he said.

Nate Oyloe, who filed an amicus brief in support of Chiles, said the case is about freedom of speech and religious liberty. “The church should have the freedom to speak what they believe to be true,” he said.

Oyloe said he struggled with his sexuality as a teenager and was helped by conversion therapy.

“I wanted my sexuality to be in agreement with my faith,” he said. “Thirty years later I’m married and I have three kids − all through the help of qualified mental health caregivers.”

--Christopher Cann

Chief Justice Roberts asks about treatments that go beyond talk

Chief Justice John Roberts asked the therapist’s lawyer if he would still have a challenge if the treatment involved something in addition to speech, such as administering medication.

The attorney, Jim Campbell, responded that the analysis changes when speech is incidental – not central – to the treatment. And it depends how closely the two are connected.

“Here, we’re just in First Amendment land where there is full, robust protection,” he said.

--Maureen Groppe

Therapist’s lawyer says Colorado is censoring speech it opposes

Colorado is trying to ban “voluntary conversations censoring widely held views on debated moral, religious and scientific questions,” the lawyer representing counselor Kaley Chiles said in his opening argument.

States can’t transform counselors into “mouthpieces for the government,” attorney Jim Campbell said.

And he told the justices that Colorado hasn’t proven the type of talk therapy that Chiles wants to engage in is harmful.

--Maureen Groppe

Clash of visions over what's right for young patients

Colorado argues that states have long had the ability to protect patients by regulating health care professionals. State officials also say the evidence shows trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity doesn’t work and can lead to depression, anxiety, loss of faith and suicidal thoughts.

Kaley Chiles, the counselor challenging the ban said she’s engaging in voluntary “conversations” with clients and there’s no evidence that her approach is harmful.

Chiles says that current Colorado law allows her to support an adolescent who wants to transition to another gender but bars her from helping them to accept their assigned sex at birth.

--Maureen Groppe

Supporters of 'conversion therapy' ban rally at Supreme Court

Outside the Supreme Court, groups of LGBTQ+ advocates demonstrated against conversion therapy.Some held signs that said the practice “hurts kids, hurts family, hurts faith.”

Mathew Shurka, 37, said the outcome of the case is “life and death.”

The founder of Born Perfect − an organization that advocates for conversion therapy bans − said he was subjected to conversion therapy when he was a teenager and that it led him to contemplate suicide.

He said he founded the group to ensure no other LGBTQ+ children experience what he did.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher for kids,” he said.

Colorado law signed by nation’s first openly gay elected governor

The state regulation being challenged was signed into law in 2019 by Gov. Jared Polis, the country's first openly gay elected governor.

“In just 27 years, we’ve had a remarkable transformation from what was derogatorily called the ‘hate state’ to a place where the rights of all Coloradans are respected,” Polis said, according to NPR.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is defending the law, is among the candidates running in next year’s election to succeed Polis.

Past decisions on speech and health care could influence conversion therapy ruling

Previous high court decisions about free speech in the health care context could come up in the conversion therapy debate.

In 2018, the court said a California law requiring anti-abortion pregnancy centers to inform women about publicly funded abortion and contraception services had First Amendment issues.

“Speech is not unprotected merely because it is uttered by ‘professionals,’” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra.

But the court acknowledged that states can regulate professional conduct even it if “incidentally” involves speech.

Thomas pointed to the court’s 1992 decision upholding a Pennsylvania law requiring doctors to provide certain information to patients before they could perform an abortion.

--Maureen Groppe

Court sidestepped issue two years ago

In 2023, the Supreme Court rejected a similar challenge to Washington state’s law brought by a Christian marriage and family counselor.

Three conservative justices − Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh − said they would have granted that appeal. It takes four justices to agree to hear a case.

Thomas said the Washington law was "is viewpoint-based and content-based discrimination in its purest form."

Who is defending Colorado's `conversion therapy' ban?

Shannon W. Stevenson, Colorado's chief appellate lawyer, is defending the state's ban.

She was appointed solicitor general in 2023 by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is running for governor.

Who is arguing against Colorado's `conversion therapy' ban?

Jim Campbell, the chief legal counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, is representing Kaley Chiles, the Colorado counselor challenging the state's conversion therapy ban.

Alliance Defending Freedom is a conservative legal organization that has appeared frequently at the court in recent years in cases involving high-profile social issues. Those included a successful 2023 case brought by a Colorado web designer who said having to create websites for same-sex weddings would violate her free speech rights.

Is the Trump administration involved in the case?

Although the case is about a state – not federal – law, President Donald Trump's Justice Department has gotten involved. At the department’s request, Justice Department attorney Hashim M. Mooppan will get time during oral arguments to support the counselor’s challenge.

The Justice Department has already told the justices that Colorado is “muzzling one side of an ongoing debate in the mental-health community about how to discuss questions of gender and sexuality with children.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court weighs bans on 'conversion therapy' for LGBTQ+ kids. Live coverage.

Reporting by Maureen Groppe, Bart Jansen, Aysha Bagchi and Christopher Cann, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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