CNN
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The Supreme Court on Monday said it would review a Colorado law that bars mental health professionals from practicing “conversion therapy” for minors, a discredited practice that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor and practicing Christian, challenged that law under the First Amendment, claiming that her patients voluntarily seek out her services.
Chiles, who was represented by the religious group Alliance Defending Freedom, argued that the laws enacted in Colorado and more than 19 other states “silence counselors’ ability to express views their clients seek.” But state officials countered that they may regulate the medical treatment of patients.
“A professional’s treatment of her patients and clients is fundamentally different, for First Amendment purposes, from laypersons’ interactions with each other,” Colorado officials said.
The case, similar to one the Supreme Court rejected in late 2023 from a licensed marriage and family counselor in Washington state, echoes another high profile case pending on the docket. In US v. Skrmetti, Tennessee is defending a ban on puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender youth on the grounds that the state had broad power to regulate medicine.
In that case, the court’s conservatives signaled during oral arguments in December that they were prepared to defer to state lawmakers on such bans. A decision is expected by July.
Critics say conversion therapy – which attempts to convert people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning – into straight or cisgender people, causes serious emotional harm and can have deadly results.
Chiles sued over the Colorado law in 2022. A federal district court denied her request to temporarily suspend its enforcement and the Denver-based 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision. Chiles appealed to the Supreme Court in November.
In a similar appeal rejected by the high court in 2023, three conservative justices – Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas – said they would have considered the case.
Under the state law, Thomas wrote in five-page opinion, “licensed counselors cannot voice anything other than the state-approved opinion on minors with gender dysphoria without facing punishment.”
“Although the court declines to take this particular case, I have no doubt that the issue it presents will come before the court again,” he wrote at the time. “When it does, the court should do what it should have done here: grant certiorari to consider what the First Amendment requires.”
Alito said in a brief dissent in 2023 that the court should have taken up the case to address an issue that lower courts have been divided on.
“In recent years, 20 States and the District of Columbia have adopted laws prohibiting or restricting the practice of conversion therapy,” Alito wrote. “It is beyond dispute that these laws restrict speech, and all restrictions on speech merit careful scrutiny.”
CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.
