Therapist fighting Colorado’s conversion therapy ban is being supported by anti-LGBTQ+ hate group

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging Colorado’s LGBTQ+ conversion therapy ban.

The therapist challenging the ban “believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex”, as per court documents. She’s being represented by an organisation that the Southern Poverty Law Center have designated as an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.”

SCOTUSblog reported on Monday (10 March) that the court will hear a challenge to the Colorado law prohibiting mental health counselors from practicing the widely criticised form of therapy. The challenge alleges that the ban violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause, with judges expected to hear the case during their next term, which starts in October.

Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, filed the challenge. In 2022, Chiles sued Colorado officials in federal court over the argument that the state conversion therapy ban violated the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment.

Chiles claimed that due to the law, she has “been forced to deny voluntary counseling that fully explores sexuality and gender to her clients and potential clients in violation of her and her clients’ sincerely held religious beliefs”. 

That same year, U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney, appointed by former President Joe Biden, denied Chiles’ request to block enforcement of the law. Sweeney ruled that the ban was a permissible regulation of professional conduct, not free speech. 

Judge Sweeney also found “that conversion therapy is ineffective and harms minors who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or gender nonconforming”.

In a September 2024 2-1 decision, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld the district court ruling on Chiles’ case. Chiles filed an appeal with the Supreme Court in November.

The far-right Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) represents Chiles. The Southern Poverty Law Center considers ADF an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.

Kristen Waggoner, ADF’s CEO, president and general counsel, said, “The government has no business censoring private conversations between clients and counselors, nor should a counselor be used as a tool to impose the government’s biased views on her clients.”

The office of Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser said via a spokesperson, “Colorado’s law protecting young people from unscientific and cruel gay conversion therapy practices is humane, smart and appropriate, and we’re committed to defending it at the Supreme Court.” 

Colorado’s conversion therapy ban

Colorado has banned conversion therapy practices since 2019. It currently bans licensed physicians specialising in psychiatry and licensed, certified or registered mental health care providers from engaging in conversion therapy practices with patients under 18 years old.

The law states that conversion therapy is “efforts to change an individual’s sexual orientation, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex”. 

Conversion therapy is currently prohibited in 23 states and the District of Columbia, as per the Movement Advancement Project. In 2021, The American Psychological Association (APA) officially rejected anti-trans conversion therapy. 

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