A clear majority of the U.S. Supreme Court seemed inclined to overturn a Colorado law that prevents doctors or other health care professionals from practicing conversion therapy. At stake is not only Colorado's Minor Conversion Therapy Law, but also the left's shibboleth that sexual deviancy is an immutable characteristic.
In 2019, Colorado passed the MCTL, which was endorsed by the panoply of professional medical organizations. The law prevents medical practitioners or licensed therapists from engaging in conversion therapy with a patient under 18. Oddly enough, if you aren't a licensed therapist or you are involved in (lol) "gender affirming care," then all is good. The plaintiff, Kaley Chiles, is a licensed therapist described in court documents as "a practicing Christian, Chiles believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God's design, including their biological sex."
The real objective of the law is to prevent homosexual and gender-confused youth from seeking counseling to harmonize their sex with their sexual desires and self-image. If a teenage boy thinks he's a girl, a licensed therapist can go along with the madness. The moment you suggest that the kid isn't a girl, you are in professional and legal jeopardy. There is no reason for this other than the government favors sexual deviancy over normalcy. As therapists practicing conversion therapy don't typically ambush clients, the effect of the law was to prevent persons under 18 who felt homosexual or transgender urges from seeking help to combat them.
Working with the Alliance Defending Freedom, Chiles filed a lawsuit claiming that the law is a clear example of viewpoint discrimination.
Chiles lost at the district court level. The court decided that she was harmed by the law, but she needed to suck it up and move on. According to the judge, Chiles's speech wasn't really speech but professional conduct. A three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit (Biden, Obama, and George W. Bush appointees) upheld the lower court's decision. "The MCTL does not prohibit a mental health professional from discussing what conversion therapy is, what her views on conversion therapy are, or who can legally provide this treatment to her minor clients," ruled the Tenth Circuit majority. "It only bars a mental health professional from engaging in the practice herself. We thus conclude, as the district court did, the MCTL is a regulation of professional conduct incidentally involving speech."
Colorado did not have a great day. Chiles was supported by the Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, indicating that the White House thinks the case is important. Justice Alito characterized the law as “It’s like blatant viewpoint discrimination.” While Justice Jackson was taking notes for her 473-page dissent, and the Wide Latina tried to steer the court onto the issue of Chiles's standing, notwithstanding that both the district court and the Tenth Circuit found it existed and it was not the subject of today's argument (Whether a law that censors certain conversations between counselors and their clients based on the viewpoints expressed regulates conduct or violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment), Justice Kagan drove the final nail into MCTL's coffin. Referring to the ability of one doctor to go along with a patient's sexual dysfunction with no consequences, and the punishment faced by a colleague trying to treat the condition
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan seemed to express skepticism about the Colorado law, posing a hypothetical in which two doctors acknowledge a patient identifies as gay. One offers to help the patient accept that, while the other offers to help change the patient.
“And one of those [doctors’ responses] is permissible and the other is not,” Kagan said. “That seems like viewpoint discrimination in the way we would normally understand viewpoint discrimination.”
Thirty other states have laws similar to Colorado's, so a win here is going to have a major downstream effect on the ability of the left, via their capture of professional organizations, to control the discussion on the grooming of children into homosexuality or transgenderism.
They thought they were winning:
The push to prohibit such practices for gay minors was driven by the growing belief that sexual orientation is so central to a person’s identity that no one should be asked to change it, researchers said. In 1977, a majority of U.S. adults thought being gay or lesbian was because of upbringing and environment, according to a Gallup poll, while 13 percent saw it as determined at birth. By 2012, the percentage believing sexual orientation is determined at birth had grown to 40 percent, crossing over to a majority in 2015, the year the Supreme Court established same-sex marriage as a national right.
But they see victory slipping away.
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