Colorado passed a law telling Christian counselors what they're allowed to say to children who come to them voluntarily for help.
Eight Supreme Court justices – including the two liberals – looked at that law and said it's unconstitutional.
Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only one who thought it was fine.
The Law Colorado Wrote and the Court Just Torched
Colorado's 2019 law didn't just ban electroshock therapy or aversive physical treatments.
It went further.
A licensed counselor who helped a minor client grow comfortable with their biological sex faced $5,000 fines per violation and license revocation.
That same counselor could legally push the child toward gender transition – hormones, surgeries, the full agenda – without a scratch.
One direction was state-approved speech.
The other was a crime.
Kaley Chiles is a licensed counselor and practicing Christian in Colorado who wanted to help young clients who voluntarily came to her seeking exactly that – alignment between their identity and their biological reality.
Colorado told her she couldn't.
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She sued, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom – the same legal powerhouse that won 303 Creative v. Elenis and National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra before the same court.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion and identified what Colorado actually did: "Colorado's law addressing conversion therapy does not just ban physical interventions. In cases like this, it censors speech based on viewpoint."
That's not a close call in First Amendment law.
Viewpoint discrimination – where the government picks winners and losers in a debate and silences one side – has never once been upheld by the Supreme Court.
What Jackson Got Wrong and Why the 8-1 Score Matters
Jackson stood alone.
Her dissent warned that the ruling "opens a dangerous can of worms" and argued states have broad authority to regulate licensed medical professionals – invoking a 1926 case to make the point.
The other eight justices chose the First Amendment instead.
What makes the 8-1 margin notable is where it came from.
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Justices Kagan and Sotomayor – both liberals, both appointed by Democrat presidents – refused to join Jackson's dissent and filed their own concurrence.
Kagan's reasoning was sharp: because Colorado suppressed one side of the debate while permitting the other, the constitutional problem was straightforward.
She even noted the ruling cuts both ways – a state could equally ban counselors from pushing a minor toward gender transition under the same logic.
Colorado had built a one-way ideological gate inside the counseling room, and eight justices recognized it for exactly what it was.
Every Law Like Colorado's Is Now on the Clock
The ruling doesn't technically strike down Colorado's law outright.
It sends the case back to lower courts under strict scrutiny – the highest constitutional bar the government must clear to defend a speech restriction.
Colorado's law won't survive that test.
Neither will the laws in more than 20 other states and over 100 localities that wrote the same statute.
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What the left spent a decade building – a nationwide ban on any licensed counselor helping a child make peace with their biological sex – is now functionally over.
The ADF, which has now won multiple landmark First Amendment cases at the Supreme Court in just a few years, isn't finished.
The Court is also expected to rule this term on whether biological males can compete in women's sports.
Transgender activists spent years using professional licensing boards as a weapon – threatening careers, writing laws, enforcing ideological conformity one counseling session at a time.
One Christian woman from Colorado, willing to fight, just dismantled the architecture.
Sources:
- Jim Campbell, "US Supreme Court Condemns Colorado's Unconstitutional Censorship," Alliance Defending Freedom, March 31, 2026.
- Katherine Hamilton, "Supreme Court Rules 8-1 Against Colorado Law Banning So-Called 'Conversion Therapy,'" Breitbart, March 31, 2026.
- Amy Howe, "Supreme Court Sides with Therapist in Challenge to Colorado's Ban on 'Conversion Therapy,'" SCOTUSblog, March 31, 2026.
- Chiles v. Salazar, No. 24-539, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center.