Supreme Court Rules for Christian Counselor: Finds Bans on "Conversion Therapy" Unconstitutional

Now, while most people have very justifiably been focused on international news over the last two months, a lot has been happening domestically on the legal front. Case in point, the U.S. Supreme Court has just issued a new landmark ruling. Specifically, in an 8-to-1 decision, the Supreme Court found that Colorado's ban on quote-unquote conversion therapy was unconstitutional, and the ban violated the First Amendment rights of Christian therapists. Let's go through the details of this particular case together, because not only does Colorado have this law in the books, well, had this law in the books, but also half the country does as well, including the District of Columbia. So let's discuss what it means for both Colorado, as well as for everyone else in the whole country. And of course, if you appreciate content like this, please do smash those like and subscribe buttons, which occasionally helps the algorithm pick up the episode and share it out to ever more people. Thank you so much for that. Now, in terms of the backstory, in 2019, the governor of Colorado signed into law a new bill, which was officially titled the Prohibit Conversion Therapy for a Minor Act. What this new state-level law did was that it prohibited licensed psychiatrists, as well as all other licensed mental health professionals, from engaging in quote-unquote conversion therapy with patients who are under the age of 18. If they did so, if they engaged in conversion therapy, these professionals could be disciplined by their relevant licensing boards. They can have either their licenses taken away, as well as being forced to pay fines of upwards of $5,000 per offense. Now within this context, within the context of this particular law, the definition of conversion therapy was written as follows, quote, conversion therapy means efforts to change an individual's sexual orientation, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex. Essentially what this meant in practice was that if you were a psychiatrist within the state of Colorado and you had a young patient come in under the age of 18 who was experiencing gender dysphoria, you could do nothing other than affirm the new gender identity that they were now expressing. If you tried to dig out the roots of why they were doing this, you would likely be in violation of that law. Same thing if somebody was coming in and questioning their sexuality, a therapist in Colorado would not be able to do anything other than affirm whatever that child was saying. Now, as you might imagine, there were Christian mental health professionals who did not really appreciate having the state forcing them to affirm something that they did not necessarily believe in. One of those people was named Kaylee Childs. She is a licensed professional counsel in Colorado Springs, as well as a practicing Christian. Quote, Ms. Kaylee Childs holds a master's degree in clinical mental health and provides exclusively talk therapy, no medications, physical interventions, or coercive techniques. She does not approach sessions with predetermined outcomes. Instead, she listens to clients, including minors, as they articulate their own goals and works with them to pursue those objectives while respecting their autonomy. Many clients seek her out specifically for her faith-integrated approach. Childs has said she believes people flourish when they live in alignment with God's design, including their biological sex. Some clients want support affirming their current identity, while others seek help reducing unwanted same-sex attractions, changing behaviors, or finding greater alignment with their bodies. And so, as you can imagine, given this style of practice, in the year 2019, when the state of Colorado implemented their new anti-conversion therapy law, Ms. Childs said that it basically infringed on her ability to help minors who were struggling with gender dysphoria, as well as what was referred to there as unwanted same-sex attraction. She added that, And so, in the year 2022, Ms. Childs filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking a preliminary injunction for her own talk therapy practice. However, both the lower court as well as the appellate court found that she did have standing in the case, meaning she could bring the case forward, but they both denied her the relief that she was actually seeking. She appealed again all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, who wound up accepting the case. Oral arguments were heard from both sides back in October, and then just a few days ago, the court ruled in favor of Ms. Kayleigh Childs. All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment, I'd like to introduce today's sponsor, Cowboy Colustrum. Look, it's the new year, and I know that many people, myself included, we're looking to finally fix some of those nagging problems in our lives. And so, if you want to finally fix your gut, if you want to make your hair healthier and stronger, and if you want to add some fresh, natural glow to your skin in 2026, then you need to be adding colustrum to your daily routine. And Cowboy Colustrum, they offer the highest quality bovine colustrum that you can get here in the U.S. It's 100% American-made from 100% American grass-fed cows. Now, if you've never heard of colustrum before, I actually have mine here. This is the strawberry variety, and this is the chocolate, and I have the vanilla one kicking around here somewhere. It's great. 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Once again, promo code Roman, R-O-M-A-N. And I'll also throw all their links. You can find them down in the description box below. Cowboy Colustrum supports the show. So let's support them right back. The links will be down in the description box below. Specifically, the court found that these conversion therapy bans do, in fact, infringe on the First Amendment rights of mental health professionals. Now, the decision was almost unanimous. It was 8 to 1 with only Justice Katonji Brown Jackson dissenting. However, writing for the majority, you had Justice Neil Gorsuch say that the Colorado law regulated speech based on viewpoint, which is unconstitutional. Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same. But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country. It reflects instead a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth. Laws like Colorado's, which suppress speech based on viewpoint, represent an egregious assault on both commitments. The majority opinion then goes on to basically say that by permitting counselors to affirm gender transitions while at the same time prohibiting them from helping their clients to align themselves more with their biological sex was a clear example of discriminating on, well, for one viewpoint over another. Quote, speech does not lose constitutional protection merely because the government labels a treatment or therapeutic modality. The First Amendment is no word game. And as such, this Colorado state level law was found to be unconstitutional. Now in terms of the next steps for this case, the case itself was sent back down to the lower courts to be resolved in line with this new ruling, which means that they still have some technical hoops to jump through, but they ultimately have won the case because that's what the U.S. Supreme Court said and everything below that has to be in line with that ruling. Regardless, if you don't live in Colorado, this ruling does have nationwide implications because as I mentioned at the top of the episode, these similar conversion therapy bans for minors, they're currently on the books in 23 different states as well as the District of Columbia. And according to Mrs. Childs' lawyer, this ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court will lead all those different state level laws to also get struck down. Quote, Childs' attorney, Jim Campbell of Alliance Defending Freedom, said the Supreme Court's ruling in his client's case, which was based on her engaging in voluntary conversions, will lead to similar laws in other states being struck down. During a teleconference after the ruling, he said, the court said laws like these that discriminate based on viewpoint single out a particular perspective for silencing, that those laws have to be subject to the highest, highest First Amendment scrutiny. And so that's going to apply to every single one of these laws around the country. And the one thing we know is that whenever a court has applied that kind of heightened scrutiny to one of these laws, it has struck it down. On the flip side, however, you have the attorney general of Colorado who wasn't too pleased with the Supreme Court decision and released a statement following, reading as follows. The high court's decision was a setback for Colorado's efforts to protect children and families from harmful and discredited mental health practices. For generations, states have set and enforced standards to ensure that licensed professionals provide safe and appropriate care. We strongly disagree with the court's reasoning. Conversion therapy is a practice that every major medical and mental health association in the country has rejected as unsafe and ineffective. Now, in order to bring a bit more color into the story, if you would like to see how these conversion therapy bans for minors really work in practice, then I would highly recommend that you check out a documentary film that The Epoch Times put out called Gender Transformation. It's a docudrama which exposes this pipeline that exists between the school system, the medical system, and the psychiatric profession, which is basically, well, which has led to a surge in the number of kids identifying themselves with the trans ideology. That docudrama, it basically shows how the hands are really tied of mental health counselors in states like Colorado and California, where basically when the kid comes in suffering from mental health problems as well as gender dysphoria, they are quite literally legally not allowed to do anything other than to affirm them and then to help them go further down that particular road. I'm going to show you a trailer for that film because it's a documentary in the sense that it has a lot of interviews with professionals, but it's also a docudrama because it actually shows a case, which is based on a real-life case, of a mother who is slowly losing her child in this process, and the system, she realized, was completely set against her because she tried to get the counselor involved, but again, the counselor's hands were tied because of laws like this, and then when she herself tried to intervene, she actually had the CPS, Child Protective Services, called on her because even she herself as a parent was not allowed to engage in a version of conversion therapy. Here's a trailer for that movie. Do you think you'd be happier as a boy? My mom would never allow it. That's abuse. Anybody who's gone through this, it's the same thing. We're just masquerading. When did parents become enemy number one? This is all coming from the top, the major corporations, governments, politicians. You have a pipeline, it's also in the education system. So today we're going to talk a bit about genders. We are here to support you. I feel like I couldn't breathe. My aching body fell to the floor. I've talked to hundreds if not thousands of parents. Our stories are all the same. They told my parents if I wasn't allowed to transition, I would be at risk of suicide. This was a group where they basically gathered vulnerable children and taught them that it was us against them. Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son? That question is asked over and over again and therapists are trained to say that. It's destroyed my health. Looking back it made me feel even more hopeless. And then I felt down, I felt tired, I felt exhausted. My body shakes on its own uncontrollably. I'll never be the same. I was allowed to destroy my body. They never talk about how much harm is being caused. You know Josh from the club? He says our closest family are often our worst enemies. It's separating kids from their parents. The state has decided that Evan should stay at a group home for now for his safety. I miss you so much Evan. Leave him alone. This is the most important question. Why are they all doing this? If you'd like to check out that phenomenal docudrama in full, I will throw a link to it. It'll be right there at the top of the description box below. You can just click on that link. It'll pop you over to Epic TV, our awesome personal own video platform that we own that's not at all either controlled or censored by YouTube. And check it out. And then until next time, I'm your host Roman from The Epic Times. Stay informed and most importantly, stay free.