The US Supreme Court has ruled 8-1 that Colorado's ban on conversion therapy for minors violates the First Amendment, delivering a landmark victory to a Christian counsellor who argued the state had effectively silenced her inside her own practice. The decision in Chiles v Salazar, handed down on Tuesday, reversed a ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which had previously found the 2019 Colorado law to be a constitutional regulation of professional conduct.
Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch held that the state law violated the free speech rights of talk therapy counsellor Kaley Chiles by favouring one viewpoint over another. 'The First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country,' Gorsuch wrote, adding that Colorado's law 'does not just ban physical interventions.'
