US Supreme Court blocks ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ minors

The US Supreme Court has struck down a Colorado ban on “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ minors, handing a major victory to a Christian therapist who argued the restriction violated her free speech rights.

The case centred on a 2019 Colorado law barring licensed practitioners from providing “conversion therapy” to patients under 18.

Supporters of the practice say it can alter the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ people.

Major medical groups, including the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association, have discredited the treatment, and more than 20 US states as well as much of Europe have outlawed it.

In an 8-1 ruling, the justices sided with Kaley Chiles, a licensed mental health counsellor who said her Christian faith informed her challenge to the law and maintained that it infringed the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

“Colorado’s law addressing conversion therapy does not just ban physical interventions. In cases like this, it censors speech based on viewpoint,” conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court’s majority.

“As applied to Ms Chiles, Colorado’s law regulates the content of her speech and goes further to prescribe what views she may and may not express, discriminating on the basis of viewpoint,” he wrote.

Mr Gorsuch added that the First Amendment serves as a “shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country”.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to lower courts for further review.

Ruling opens ‘can of worms’ – dissenting judge

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter, warning that the majority had opened “a dangerous can of worms” by weakening the authority of states to regulate medical practices that, she said, “risks grave harm to Americans’ health and wellbeing.”

“The Constitution does not pose a barrier to reasonable regulation of harmful medical treatments just because substandard care comes via speech instead of scalpel,” she wrote.

James Campbell, Ms Chiles’ lawyer and an attorney with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, praised the ruling as “a significant win for free speech, common sense, and families desperate to help their children”.

After returning to office for his second term in January of last year, President Donald Trump said the federal government would recognise only two genders – male and female – and signed an executive order limiting gender transition medical procedures for people younger than 19.

In June, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold a Tennessee law banning hormone therapy, puberty blockers and gender transition surgery for minors.

Conversion therapy bans are in place, at least in part, across a number of countries, backed by health bodies including Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists.

The United Nations has urged a worldwide ban, calling the therapies discriminatory, degrading and a violation of bodily integrity.