Supreme Court Rules Colorado Conversion Therapy Law Subject to Strict Scrutiny

In Chiles v. Salazar, 607 U.S. ____ (2026), the U.S. Supreme Court held that Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy, as applied to a therapist’s talk therapy, regulates speech based on viewpoint. Accordingly, the lower courts erred by failing to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny.

Facts of the Case

Petitioner Kaley Chiles holds a master’s degree in clinical mental health and a state counseling license in Colorado. As set forth in the Court’s opinion, Chiles does not begin counseling with any predetermined goals; instead, she sits down with clients, discusses their goals, and then formulates methods of counseling that will most benefit them, seeking throughout to respect her clients’ fundamental right of self-determination. On matters of sexuality and gender, Chiles’s seeks to help them reach their stated objectives via talk therapy.

In 2019, Colorado adopted a law prohibiting licensed counselors from engaging in “conversion therapy” with minors. The statute, Colo. Rev. Stat. §12–245–224(1)(t)(V), defines the term to include “any practice or treatment . . . that attempts . . . to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” as well as any “effor[t] to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions toward individuals of the same sex.” At the same time, the law explicitly allows counselors to provide “[a]cceptance, support, and understanding for . . . identity exploration and development,” and to assist persons “undergoing gender transition.”

Chiles filed suit in federal seeking a preliminary injunction, raising a First Amendment challenge to the law as it applies to her talk therapy. Both the district court and the Tenth Circuit determined that Chiles had Article III standing to pursue her as-applied pre-enforcement challenge. On the merits, however, both courts denied Chiles’s request for a preliminary injunction, reasoning that Colorado’s law is best understood as regulating professional conduct and that it regulates speech only incidentally, thus triggering no more than rational-basis review under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a circuit conflict over how the First Amendment interacts with laws like Colorado’s when those laws are applied to talk therapy.

Supreme Court’s Decision

By a vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court sided with Chiles, holding that that the lower courts failed to apply “sufficiently rigorous” First Amendment scrutiny.Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote on behalf of the majority.

In reaching its decision, the majority emphasized that laws regulating speech based on its subject matter or communicative content are “presumptively unconstitutional,” triggering “strict scrutiny” that requires the government to prove its restriction is “narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.” As Justice Gorsuch noted, “Viewpoint discrimination” represents an even more “egregious form” of content regulation from which governments must nearly always “abstain.”

In this case, the majority found that, 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.

“Colorado’s law addressing conversion therapy does not just ban physical interventions. In cases like this, it censors speech based on viewpoint,” Justice Gorsuch wrote. “Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same. But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

The majority further found that fact that the State’s viewpoint regulation falls only on licensed health care professionals does not change the equation. In support, it cited that the Court has expressly rejected the notion that professional speech is subject to diminished constitutional protection. The majority similarly determined that Colorado could not establish that applying its law to Chiles falls within a long tradition of permissible content regulation.

Dissent

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “Ultimately, because the majority plays with fire in this case, I fear that the people of this country will get burned. Before now, licensed medical professionals had to adhere to standards when treating patients: They could neither do nor saywhatever they want.” But the court “turns its back on that tradition,” Justice Jackson wrote. “And, to be completely frank, no one knows what will happen now.”