The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for a case centering on whether counseling services for minors questioning gender and sexual identity are protected under the First Amendment.
Kaley Chiles, a Christian therapist, argued that conversations with clients fall under the First Amendment’s protection of speech. Colorado, however, views the conversations as professional conduct and is therefore regulated by the government.
“When my young clients come to me for counsel, they often want to discuss issues of gender and sexuality. Yet my home state only allows my clients to pursue state-approved goals like gender transition,” Chiles said in a statement with Alliance Defending Freedom. “Colorado’s law harms kids and censors speech. I’m hopeful the Supreme Court will do the right thing—for me, other counselors, and most importantly, kids everywhere.”
“Colorado’s law allows counselors to push kids down the path of gender transition, often leading to harmful drugs and surgeries. But it doesn’t allow compassionate counselors like Kaley to talk with kids to help them accept their bodies—even when that is their express goal and they have voluntarily sought Kaley out for advice,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Chief Legal Counsel Jim Campbell. “This is censorship, pure and simple. Colorado is picking sides, promoting gender ideology, and banning conversations it dislikes. We are hopeful the Supreme Court will uphold counselors’ freedom of speech and young people’s ability to set their own goals of living at peace with their bodies.”
Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson told the Supreme Court, as per Fox News, that a state “cannot lose its power to regulate the very professionals that it licenses just because they are using words.”
“A health care provider cannot be free to violate the standard of care just because they are using words,” Stevenson argued. “And a state cannot be required to let its vulnerable young people waste their time and money on an ineffective, harmful treatment. Just because that treatment is delivered through words.”
