Colorado parents, LGBTQ advocates, and mental health counselors are scrambling to understand what a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the state's conversion therapy ban will mean for families, clinics, and kids.
On Tuesday, the court ruled 8-1 in favor of Colorado counselor Kaley Chiles, who said the state's 2019 Minor Conversion Therapy Law violated her First Amendment rights because it limited what she could say to young clients about sexual orientation and gender identity.
The law prohibits licensed mental health professionals from using practices or treatments that try to change a child's sexual orientation or gender identity, while allowing religious ministry to continue such practices, according to CBS News.
The justices said Colorado's rules regulate speech more than medical conduct when applied to talk therapy, and ordered lower courts to re‑examine the law using the toughest constitutional test, known as strict scrutiny.
For now, the ruling does not immediately erase Colorado's ban, but legal experts say it makes the law, and similar bans in more than 20 other states, much more vulnerable.
The Supreme Court rejected earlier decisions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which had treated the statute as a basic regulation of professional conduct that only incidentally involved speech.
By reframing the issue as a speech restriction, the court signaled that states will have a harder time defending limits on what licensed therapists can say in sessions with minors.
That prospect is alarming for many Colorado parents of LGBTQ youth, who say they relied on the 2019 law to protect their children from a practice major medical groups have long called harmful. The state legislature passed the ban after citing research that linked conversion efforts to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts among young people.
The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention group, has reported that LGBTQ people who underwent conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to attempt suicide compared with those who did not.
Counselors like Steven Haden, a licensed social worker who works with LGBTQ teens in Colorado, told local reporters they fear the decision will open the door for more providers to resume or expand conversion efforts under the banner of free speech, Politico reported.
Haden called the ruling "alarming" and warned it could have "long-lasting effects" on children's mental health if bans in Colorado and other states are weakened or struck down. Other parents and religious counselors, however, welcomed the decision, saying it safeguards their ability to seek therapy that reflects their beliefs and their children's goals.
Colorado officials have not yet announced how they will adjust enforcement, but the case now heads back to the lower courts, where judges must decide whether the state's interest in protecting minors from harm is strong enough to justify limits on therapists' speech.
As families wait, many are bracing for a period of uncertainty, with school counselors, pediatricians, and community groups preparing to field new questions from worried teens and their parents, as per CNN.
