The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear Chiles v. Salazar, a major First Amendment challenge to Colorado’s 2019 Minor Conversion Therapy Law, with oral arguments scheduled for October 7, 2025. This is not a sleepy procedural dispute; it is a raw collision between free speech, religious liberty, and the growing tendency of state regulators to police not just conduct but the content of professional conversations. For hardworking Americans who cherish free expression and parental authority, this case demands attention.
Colorado’s law bars licensed mental-health professionals from providing counseling that “attempts or purports to change” a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity, a prohibition that critics say has been enforced in practice as an “affirmation-only” rule. Therapists who step outside the narrow script risk license discipline and fines, while the statute explicitly allows other actors to give different kinds of advice. That legal architecture effectively empowers state bureaucrats to decide which therapeutic viewpoints are acceptable and which are punishable.
The suit was brought by Kaley Chiles, a Christian counselor who says the law muzzles her ability to discuss faith-informed perspectives and to explore all options with clients and families seeking help. Conservative legal advocates have jumped into the case, arguing that licensed professionals do not shed their constitutional rights at the clinic door. This is squarely about whether government regulators can single out and silence viewpoints they disfavor under the guise of professional standards.
Supporters of Colorado’s ban insist they are protecting children from harm, but their framing dangerously conflates open clinical discussion with abusive practices. No one defends coercion or physical harm, yet the state’s statute sweeps far broader, chilling legitimate therapeutic inquiry and even conversations about underlying causes of gender confusion. When government bureaucrats dictate permitted medical and counseling opinions, freedom of thought and the patient-doctor relationship are casualties.
We should also reject the smug claim that all mainstream medical opinion uniformly backs the “affirm-only” approach. Medicine and ethics are not static; clinicians and families deserve the latitude to consider complex, individualized options without fear of losing their licenses. Most Americans instinctively know that parents—not state functionaries—should decide how to care for a hurting child, and that robust therapy means honest exploration, not rote affirmation demanded by law.
The stakes of Chiles v. Salazar reach well beyond Colorado. More than two dozen states have laws or policies touching conversion-related practices for minors, and the Court’s ruling will reshape the boundary between permissible professional regulation and viewpoint censorship across the country. The justices will have to decide whether the state’s power to regulate professions gives it license to silence dissenting medical opinions, a question that will reverberate through courts and clinics for years to come.
This is a moment for citizens who value free speech, religious liberty, and parental rights to stand up. We should demand that the Supreme Court protect the right of therapists to speak honestly with patients and for parents to make decisions without an ideological gag order from state agencies. America was built on the freedom to seek truth and counsel without government-imposed orthodoxy, and we must not surrender that principle now.
