The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in Chiles v. Salazar, a challenge on free speech grounds to Colorado’s ban on LGBTQ “conversion therapy” for children under 18.
Kaley Chiles is a Colorado therapist and evangelical Christian who argues the state’s 2019 law that bans this discredited and dangerous treatment, which seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, is a violation of her First Amendment rights.
The other side of the case is the state of Colorado, represented by regulator Patty Salazar. The state argues that it is regulating healthcare and protecting children from a practice that every major medical and mental health organization in the US, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association the American Psychiatric Association and the National Association of Social Workers, has linked to increased suicidality, depression and other serious mental health issues.
The fundamental question before the Court is whether talk therapy is protected speech or medical activity. Chiles argues that it’s speech, and that Colorado’s law unlawfully regulates the content of her speech; Colorado argues that it’s medical conduct, which is not protected by the First Amendment—states are permitted to regulate such conduct to protect patients from harmful or substandard care.
The Supreme Court’s decision will affect the fates of queer youth in more than two dozen states that ban or restrict this “therapy.” The Trump administration is backing Chiles, with lawyers from the far-right Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) representing her.
Such a consequential case should be given careful framing and context from the media. Unfortunately, in their coverage previewing the October 7 hearing, the New York Times—and, to a lesser degree, the Washington Post and USA Today—failed in striking ways.
These three articles from three major papers were significant because they set the framework for readers to understand the case. They were also placed prominently in the papers, with the Times (10/6/25) and Post (10/7/25) articles both appearing on page A1, and the USA Today (10/7/25) piece on A4. (The stories appeared online a day or two earlier.)
The Times‘ framing skewed heavily toward Chiles’ perspective. While the Post and USA Today presented more thoroughly the experiences of LGBTQ people and the arguments of the respondents, all three pieces left out scientific and legal information that are necessary for a complete understanding of the case—and what’s at stake for LGBTQ youth.
‘Free speech test’
Who wants to lose a “free speech test”? The New York Times (10/5/25) put the emphasis on the rights of the therapist, rather on protecting at-risk youth from demonstrable harms.
Supreme Court reporter Ann E. Marimow previewed the hearing for the New York Times (10/5/25) under the headline, “Can Conversion Therapy Be Banned? Colorado Faces Speech Test at the Supreme Court.”
By describing the case as a “free speech test” that Colorado is facing, the Times headline frames the case exactly the way Chiles and the ADF are asking the Supreme Court to interpret it: as a question of speech, as opposed to a medical regulation issue.
The lead image is of Chiles gazing thoughtfully into the distance, and the article begins with a description of her “tranquil” Colorado Springs office and offerings of “loose leaf tea.” It paints Chiles as a well-meaning professional who, under Colorado’s ban, is unable to perform her job properly because her speech is limited:
Mrs. Chiles, an evangelical Christian with a master’s degree in clinical mental health from Denver Seminary, says the law violates her First Amendment rights, constraining what she is allowed to say in therapy sessions with young people who have sought out her care.
The article acknowledges that major medical groups disavow the conversion therapy as ineffective and potentially harmful, before returning to Chiles’ argument that “it seemed like an invasion for the state to kind of be peering into our private counseling sessions.”
Marimow goes on to lay out the legal arguments on both sides, but returns again to Chiles’ claim that these children are “voluntarily” seeking this treatment. The article notes that both sides cite last year’s decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti, which allows states to ban gender-affirming treatments for youth that they consider harmful. But it glides silently over the contradiction of anti-LGBTQ activists’ claims: On the one hand, youth under 18 are unable to consent to gender-affirming care—which has been shown to save lives—and therefore in need of protection from the state to avoid coercive pressure from medical professionals. At the same time, they are fully capable of “voluntarily” engaging in conversion therapy, which has been shown to put them at risk. (A 2024 Trevor Project survey found that 13% of LGBTQ youth report being threatened with or subjected to conversion therapy.)
The Times also lets the “free speech” perspective have the last word. The piece mentions a similar case brought in Washington State that the Court refused to hear two years ago, and quotes the objection from Justice Clarence Thomas, who said he would have heard the case “because it ‘silenced one side of this debate’ by restricting the First Amendment rights of medical professionals.”
Sidelining survivors
The New York Times only includes one quote from someone impacted by conversion therapy: Matthew Shurka, who is featured in only three short paragraphs in the nearly 2,000 word article. In contrast, Chiles, whose photo is featured at the top of the piece and whose argument weaves the narrative together, is directly quoted three times and mentioned by name in 15 paragraphs.
Shurka has testified about the trauma he experienced during five years of conversion therapy, and is an activist against the practice. “I knew I wasn’t changing and I blamed myself for my failures; it didn’t occur to me that the therapist was harming me,” Shurka is quoted as saying.
A beat later, the reader is back in Chiles’ office, with “a photo of a sunset with a biblical verse about the power of counsel and understanding,” while the Times lists her experience and credentials.
Marimow’s piece fits into the pattern that FAIR has long documented and quantified of the Times sidelining trans and queer perspectives on issues that impact their lives (FAIR.org, 7/14/25, 5/30/25, 5/28/24, 8/30/23, 5/19/23, 5/11/23).
Rather than leading with the therapist’s perspective, USA Today (10/5/25) opened with a gay man recalling that through conversion therapy, he “absorbed the therapist’s message that something was deeply wrong with him.”
In contrast, other major papers spent more time centering former conversion therapy patients. USA Today (10/5/25) began its preview of the case with the story of Matt R. Salmon, a gay survivor of conversion therapy, which he refers to as a form of “psychological abuse.” Salmon is now a psychiatrist and counselor himself.
“Licensed professionals don’t have free speech,” he argues. “You don’t just get to say whatever you want.”
USA Today also cited the testimony of Francis Lyon, a trans man who testified to the Colorado legislative committee in 2019 that conversion therapy blamed his parents for not instilling “femininity” by encouraging him to wear skirts, hose, heels and cosmetics.
Like the New York Times, the Washington Post (10/6/25) led its piece with a profile of Chiles. But unlike the Times’ Marimow, Post reporter Justin Jouvenal spent significant space on the testimony of a conversion therapy survivor. Silas Musick, a transgender man from Colorado Springs nearly ended his own life in 2010 as a result of the conversion therapy he underwent. He testified to the Colorado state legislature in 2019 to support the law that is now in question.
“There was no amount of thinking or praying or wishing or trying to change daily behaviors,” Musick told the Post. “It led to the deepest, darkest depression of my life.”
“Musick eventually concluded that he couldn’t live his life as his family and religion wanted, so he would end it,” Jouvenal wrote.
Not a mental illness
The Times also presents Chiles’ case as one of not being able to provide sufficient mental health care.
“If clients under 18 tell her that their same-sex attractions are causing them stress, as a licensed therapist, she is forbidden from counseling them to change their sexual orientation,” the piece explains.
The Washington Post (10/6/25) leads with Kaley Chiles’ claim that a ban on conversion therapy “silences her.”
The Washington Post further quotes Chiles’ argument that sexual orientation and gender are being “treated differently than literally every other topic in counseling…. It’s not the way we would operate with addictions and eating disorders and with depression.”
There’s a good reason for that that the Post should have pointed out: Same-sex attraction and transgender identities are not mental illnesses.
As the APA and other professional societies have made clear, this is the underlying problem with conversion therapy:
While many might identify as questioning, queer or a variety of other identities, “reparative” or conversion therapy is based on the a priori assumption that diverse sexual orientations and gender identities are mentally ill and should change.
The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973, and “gender identity disorder” in 2013. Studies show real mental illnesses LGBTQ youth face are a result of social stigmatization—not their identities themselves (Trevor Project, 12/15/21).
Both pieces fail to make this critical point about mental illness and conversion therapy, allowing LGBTQ experiences to be quietly pathologized and stigmatized.
Meanwhile, there are treatments that are shown to improve the mental health outcomes of queer youth. A 2022 JAMA study found that gender-affirming care for trans youth cuts their suicide risk by 73%. And the Trevor Project’s 2024 survey of LGBTQ youth’s mental health found that queer-affirming schools, families and communities greatly reduce children’s suicide risk.
Misrepresented evidence
The Times also left readers uninformed on the evidence behind the harms and ineffectiveness of conversion therapy. “In her filings, Mrs. Chiles also rejected the state’s reliance on a medical consensus, saying there is insufficient evidence that voluntary talk therapy that seeks to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation causes harm,” the Times piece stated, without offering any analysis of that evidence.
Those filings from Chiles and the ADF cite—in addition to such “evidence” as testimonials from “detransitioners” and people who profess to having successfully changed their sexual orientation, as well as the Wall Street Journal editorial board, the Daily Wire and a Reddit thread—a very small handful of studies that it claims show that conversion therapy is not actually harmful, and that people’s gender expression and sexual orientations can be changed.
A researcher whose work was cited by advocates for conversion therapy actually described such therapy as “not only ineffective in changing sexual orientation but … psychologically damaging, often resulting in elevated rates of depression, anxiety and suicidality” (Guardian, 10/6/25).
But as the Guardian (10/6/25) reported, two of the scholars cited said the ADF “profoundly” misrepresented their work in ways that threatened the safety of queer youth.
The ADF cites a study by Clifford Rosky and Dr. Lisa Diamond, claiming that their work suggests sexuality is subject to change. In reality, the study discusses the fluidity of sexuality for some people, independent of conversion therapy, and condemns the practice as potentially lethal.
“They claim our work supports conversion therapy when our work clearly and specifically condemns conversion therapy on the same page they’re citing,” Rosky told the Guardian.
The ADF and Chiles further cite a 2009 APA study in their argument that noted a lack of research on the effects of conversion therapy on youth specifically. USA Today points out that this is because of the ethical problem of subjecting children to conversion therapy, which the APA asserts in studies (2009, 2015, 2020), and reiterates in their brief to the Supreme Court, is ineffective and harmful.
The New York Times and Washington Post pieces do not mention the ADF’s misuse of these studies as “evidence,” even though they clearly undermine their support for conversion therapy. Nor do they cite or link to any of the peer-reviewed studies provided by Colorado to support its position.
In reality, lesbian, gay and bisexual people who have undergone conversion therapy are nearly twice as likely to attempt suicide. Transgender and nonbinary youth who have been subject to it are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide (NBC News, 9/11/19). That risk jumps to four times as likely if they’ve undergone conversion efforts before age 10.
Even though Chiles is framing her argument as one of free speech, the lack of scientific evidence for her claims as a health professional is critical, because Colorado’s argument centers on the state’s ban protecting children from substandard care.
False equivalence
Coverage that was centered around the mental health needs of LGBTQ youth, and not a therapist’s interest in self-expression, would look very different (Stanford Medicine, 9/30/25).
One of the few things the Times does point out (if late in the piece), that the Post and USA Today fail to, is that one of the main legal challenges that Chiles faces, and one of Colorado’s central arguments, is that the law has never actually been enforced in the state, and would not be applied to any therapy she has claimed to have engaged in. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued in the hearing, the Court requires “credible threat of prosecution” for Chiles to have standing to even bring the case, and none is demonstrated.
But the Times‘ clarification is not made before the paper first paints a picture of the Colorado law constantly impacting Chiles’ practice, rather than simply being a hypothetical:
Under a 2019 Colorado law, if clients under 18 tell her that their same-sex attractions are causing them stress, as a licensed therapist, she is forbidden from counseling them to change their sexual orientation. If they want to talk about their gender identity, she cannot advise them to change it.
When the Times asked her if she has ever practiced conversion therapy, Chiles responded that she “has worked with young people struggling with gender dysphoria and unwanted sexual desires.”
“I’ll just have to let everyone else decide what that is as a label,” she said.
Meanwhile, queer people who have undergone conversion therapy face very real and well-documented risks.
The absurdity of pitting a hypothetical “chilling” effect on Chiles’ speech, versus the litany of studies and real lived experiences that prove conversion therapy is not only ineffective but dangerous for the mental health of LGBTQ people, is lost in all three of these pieces.
It is certainly journalists’ job to present both sides of important Supreme Court cases. But it is also their duty to clarify the medical consensus, the context, and the potential impacts of the case. While it’s true that the professional practice of Kaley Chiles and others like her might be impacted—despite her failure to demonstrate that—it’s hard to argue, given the evidence, that the people most impacted by this case will be anyone other than queer youth. It’s their lives and perspectives that therefore ought to be centered in the coverage.
