Colorado spent seven years threatening to destroy a Christian therapist's career for saying the wrong thing to her own patients.
The Supreme Court just told Colorado exactly where to go.
And when the vote came down, even the liberals on the Court abandoned the one justice who thought government should control what a counselor says in her own office.
Colorado's One-Sided Gag Order on Therapists
Kaley Chiles holds a master's degree in clinical mental health and a Colorado counseling license.
Her approach is simple: she sits down with clients, asks them what they want, and helps them get there.
Some of her young clients are struggling with gender dysphoria and want help feeling at peace with their bodies – not hormones, not surgery, just talk therapy aimed at the goal the client actually chose.
Colorado's 2019 Minor Conversion Therapy Law made that a punishable offense.
Under that law, a counselor who helped a minor grow more comfortable with their biological sex faced fines up to $5,000, suspension, and the permanent loss of their license.
The same law explicitly allowed counselors to push gender transition on those same minors.
Chiles sued in 2022, arguing Colorado had walked into her counseling room and told her which thoughts she was permitted to share.
The district court said no. A Biden-appointed Tenth Circuit panel said no.
The Supreme Court said both of them got it completely wrong.
Gorsuch Calls Colorado's Law What It Is: Censorship
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the 8-1 majority opinion and did not mince words.
Colorado's law, he wrote, "does not just ban physical interventions. In cases like this, it censors speech based on viewpoint."
The First Amendment, Gorsuch continued, "stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country."
The lower courts had tried to call Chiles's conversations "professional conduct" rather than speech – a legal maneuver that would have let Colorado regulate what she said without triggering First Amendment review.
Gorsuch demolished that argument.
"Her speech does not become 'conduct' just because a government says so," he wrote.
Colorado's law permitted therapists to affirm one viewpoint on gender identity while silencing the other – and the Court saw it for exactly what it was: the government picking a side in a debate and using licensing power to destroy the loser.
The Court sent the case back to lower courts with orders to apply strict scrutiny – the highest constitutional standard, the one almost no government restriction survives.
Jackson Stood Alone While Even Kagan Walked Away
Every justice joined the majority except one: Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Jackson read her dissent from the bench – a rare move reserved for decisions a justice considers particularly outrageous.
She warned that her colleagues were "playing with fire" and that she feared "the people of this country will get burned."
Jackson argued states have always held authority to regulate licensed medical professionals and that Colorado's law regulated treatment, not speech.
Eight of her colleagues disagreed.
Including Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – the two liberal justices Biden banked on – who signed onto the majority without hesitation.
Colorado AG Phil Weiser called the ruling "a setback for Colorado's efforts to protect children" and promised to keep fighting.
He can fight all he wants. The Supreme Court just told him his law censors speech based on viewpoint – and that it must now survive the strictest constitutional test in existence.
It won't.
Democrat AGs in 20 States Just Got Very Bad News
The implications of Chiles v. Salazar extend far beyond Colorado.
More than 20 states – including California and New York – have passed nearly identical laws threatening licensed counselors who help minors grow comfortable with their biological sex.
Every one of those laws now faces the same constitutional buzzsaw.
ADF Chief Legal Counsel Jim Campbell, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, was direct: "States cannot silence voluntary conversations that help young people seeking to grow comfortable with their bodies."
Chiles herself said she looks forward to helping clients "when they choose the goal of growing comfortable with their bodies" – not the goal Colorado decided was acceptable, but the goal the child and family actually came in requesting.
That's what Colorado banned.
A mother bringing her struggling teenager to a licensed Christian counselor and asking for help – and a therapist who could lose everything for having that conversation.
Democrat governors and AGs across two dozen states spent years telling Christian counselors and the families who sought them out that the government would decide what was best for their kids.
Gorsuch just told every single one of them that they absolutely do not have that power.
Sources:
- Supreme Court of the United States, Chiles v. Salazar, No. 24-539, March 31, 2026.
- Alliance Defending Freedom, "US Supreme Court Condemns Colorado's Unconstitutional Censorship," March 31, 2026.
- Fox News, "Supreme Court Blocks Colorado's So-Called 'Conversion Therapy' Ban on First Amendment Grounds," March 31, 2026.
- Daily Wire, "Supreme Court Hands Down Major Conservative Win in Near-Unanimous Decision," March 31, 2026.
- Daily Caller, "Supreme Court Sides With Christian Counselor Who Challenged Law That Requires Affirming Kids' Gender Confusion," March 31, 2026.
