Opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-539new_3fb4.pdf
Case background
Kaley Chiles holds a master’s degree in clinical mental health and a state
counseling license in Colorado. She begins counseling with no predetermined
goals, instead discussing a client’s own goals and then formulating methods
of counseling that will most benefit them. On matters of sexuality and gender
her clients arrive with different objectives: some are content with their
sexual orientation and gender identity and want help only with social issues
or family relationships, while others hope to reduce or eliminate unwanted
sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of
harmony with their bodies. She employs only talk therapy, prescribing no
medication and using no physical techniques.
In 2019, Colorado adopted a law prohibiting licensed counselors from engaging
in “conversion therapy” with minors, defining the term to reach any practice
or treatment that attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or
gender identity, as well as any effort to change behaviors or gender
expressions. The same statute expressly permits counselors to provide
acceptance, support, and understanding for identity exploration and
development, and to assist a person undergoing gender transition. A complaint
to the state regulatory board can trigger discipline up to a fine, probation,
Ms. Chiles filed suit in federal court and sought a preliminary injunction,
raising a First Amendment challenge to the law only as it applies to her talk
therapy. Both the district court and the Tenth Circuit held she had Article
III standing to bring her as-applied pre-enforcement challenge, but both
denied the injunction on the merits, reasoning that Colorado’s law is best
understood as regulating professional conduct and reaches speech only
incidentally, so that it triggers no more than rational-basis review. Judge
Hartz dissented. This Court granted certiorari to resolve a circuit conflict
over how the First Amendment interacts with laws like Colorado’s when they
are applied to talk therapy.
Questions Presented
(1) 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.
Holding
Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy, as applied to Ms. Chiles’s talk
therapy, regulates speech based on viewpoint, and the lower courts erred by
failing to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny.
As applied to a counselor who does nothing but speak, the law does not merely
regulate the content of her speech; it prescribes what views she may express,
permitting words of acceptance and support while forbidding anything that
attempts to change a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Speech
does not become conduct because a government calls it a “treatment” or a
“therapeutic modality.” The First Amendment is no word game, and
constitutional rights cannot be circumscribed by mere labels. That the
regulation falls only on licensed health care professionals changes nothing;
NIFLA expressly rejected the notion that professional speech carries
diminished constitutional protection. Nor does the law fit any recognized
exception: it compels no disclosure of factual, noncontroversial information
in commercial speech, and it does not regulate conduct in a way that only
incidentally burdens speech. Colorado’s appeal to traditions of medical
licensing, informed consent, and malpractice liability proceeds at far too
high a level of generality, and no one of those traditions supports the
State’s position on its own terms. The judgment of the Tenth Circuit is
reversed and the case remanded.
The Court
Justice Gorsuch delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice
Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Barrett
joined. Justice Kagan filed a concurring opinion, in which Justice Sotomayor
joined. Justice Jackson filed a dissenting opinion.
What this episode contains
This episode is an AI-narrated reading of the majority opinion in
Chiles v. Salazar, written by Justice Gorsuch.
AI disclosure: The voice in this episode is AI-generated, using a machine
learning model styled to loosely resemble the authoring justice. Tone,
inflection, pacing, and emphasis are artifacts of the model and should not be
attributed to Justice Gorsuch. The text being read is the Court’s published
majority opinion, lightly adapted to improve readability for the spoken format.
