Opinion Summary: Chiles v. Salazar | Conversion Therapy Talk Therapy Ban Falls

Chiles v. Salazar | Case No. 24-539 | Argued: 10/7/25 | Decided: 3/31/26 | Docket Link: Here

Question Presented: Whether the First Amendment permits Colorado to ban licensed talk therapists from expressing viewpoints that attempt to change a minor's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Overview: Colorado's conversion therapy ban prohibited licensed counselors from saying anything designed to change a minor's sexual orientation or gender identity while expressly permitting affirming speech — a textbook viewpoint-based restriction on professional speech.

Posture: District court and Tenth Circuit denied preliminary injunction applying rational basis review; Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve circuit split.

Holding: 8-1 decision reversed the Tenth Circuit and remanded for further proceedings. Justice Gorsuch authored the majority opinion joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

Majority Reasoning: (1) Colorado's law regulated the content of Chiles's speech and discriminated based on viewpoint — permitting affirming speech while forbidding speech designed to change a client's sexual orientation or gender identity; (2) licensed professionals retain full First Amendment protection and professional speech does not occupy a lesser-protected constitutional category; (3) Colorado's analogies to licensing, informed-consent, and malpractice traditions failed to establish a historical basis for suppressing professional viewpoints.

Separate Opinions:

Justice Kagan (concurring, joined by Sotomayor): Agreed Colorado's law constituted viewpoint discrimination; reserved for another day whether content-based but viewpoint-neutral laws regulating therapist speech would warrant strict scrutiny, signaling a potential path for states to regulate therapeutic speech without running afoul of the First Amendment.

Justice Jackson (dissenting): Argued Colorado's law incidentally restricted speech as a byproduct of regulating a harmful medical treatment; contended states retain traditional police power to set standards of care for licensed providers even when those standards restrict treatment-related speech, and warned the majority's ruling threatened broad categories of healthcare regulation.

Implications:

• Every state conversion therapy ban covering talk therapy now faces strict scrutiny — the Constitution's most demanding standard.
• Talk therapists, psychiatrists, and other speech-based healthcare providers across approximately 26 states gain powerful new First Amendment arguments against professional discipline.
• States seeking to regulate therapeutic speech may pursue viewpoint-neutral restrictions, though that question remains open.
• The ruling leaves undisturbed conversion therapy bans targeting physical or aversive techniques.
• Future litigation will test where the line falls for viewpoint-neutral medical speech regulation.

Oral Advocates:

• Petitioner (Chiles): James A. Campbell
• United States (Amicus Curiae): Hashim M. Mooppan, United States Department of Justice
• Respondent (Colorado): Shannon W. Stevenson, Colorado Solicitor General

The Fine Print:

• Colo. Rev. Stat. § 12-245-202(3.5)(a): "any practice or treatment . . . that attempts . . . to change an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity," 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."
• First Amendment, U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech."

Primary Cases:

• National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra (2018): Professional speech does not occupy a separate, lesser-protected constitutional category; states cannot compel or restrict professional speech without satisfying ordinary First Amendment standards.
• Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of University of Virginia (1995): Viewpoint discrimination represents an egregious form of content-based regulation from which governments must nearly always abstain; the First Amendment forbids government from favoring one perspective over another on a given subject.