The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a case from Colorado to decide whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning conversion therapy for 2SLGBTQ+ children.
The conservative-led court is taking up the case amid actions by President Donald Trump targeting transgender people, including a ban on military service and an end to federal funding for gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
The justices also have heard arguments in a Tennessee case over whether state bans on treating transgender minors violate the Constitution. But they have yet to issue a decision.
Colorado is among roughly half the states that prohibit the practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through counselling. The discredited practice has been denounced in the fields of psychology and counselling in Canada and the United States.
The issue is whether the law violates the speech rights of counsellors. Defenders of such laws argue that they regulate the conduct of professionals who are licensed by the state.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the state law. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has struck down local local bans in Florida.
In 2023, the court had turned away a similar challenge, despite a split among federal appeals courts that had weighed state bans and come to differing decisions.
At the time, three justices, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, said they would have taken on the issue. It takes four justices to grant review. The nine-member court does not typically reveal how justices vote at this stage of a case so it’s unclear who might have provided the fourth vote.
The case will be argued in the court’s new term, which begins in October. The appeal on behalf of Kaley Chiles, a counsellor in Colorado Springs, was filed by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative legal organization that has appeared frequently at the court in recent years in cases involving high-profile social issues.
Chiles has had to turn away clients because of the law, ADF lawyer Jim Campbell said Monday on a conference call for reporters, though he declined to say how many.
Chiles said the law, with potential fines of $5,000 US and licence suspension or even revocation, “interferes with my ability to serve my clients with integrity.”
MPs shared a moment of solidarity after unanimously passing a bill that would ban conversion therapy, a practice meant to change an individual’s sexual orientation.
One of ADF’s earlier cases was a 5-4 decision in 2018 in which the justices ruled that California could not force state-licensed anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centres to provide information about abortion.
Chiles’s lawyers leaned heavily on that decision in asking the court to take up her case. They wrote that Chiles doesn’t “seek to ‘cure’ clients of same-sex attractions or to ‘change’ clients’ sexual orientation.”
In arguing for the court to reject the appeal, lawyers for Colorado wrote that lawmakers acted to regulate professional conduct, “based on overwhelming evidence that efforts to change a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity are unsafe and ineffective.”
Victor Szymanski looked like he had everything. But starting the summer after Grade 11, he was coerced into ‘reparative therapy’ sessions aimed at ‘curing’ his homosexuality. Now he’s pushing for legislation that ‘rightfully addresses conversion therapy as a form of emotional and psychological abuse.’
