Jim Campbell
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Thanks for having me, John.
Yeah, our client in the case is Kaylee Childs.
She's a licensed counselor in the state of Colorado, and she wants to help kids that are struggling with gender confusion and gender dysphoria.
But unfortunately, Colorado passed a law that says that if you are helping a client like that,
that you can only encourage them to gender transition.
You can't help them grow comfortable with their body and realign their identity with their sex.
And so as a result of that, because that's blatant viewpoint discrimination, we filed a lawsuit against that California or that Colorado law.
So the Supreme Court recognized that these laws, and there's roughly 23 of them around the country, that they discriminate based on viewpoint.
And if there's one thing we know about the First Amendment, it's that the government can't pick and choose views that it likes while silencing views that it doesn't like.
So the Supreme Court recognized that.
They also rejected Colorado's argument that
that this was just some kind of conduct that Kayleigh Childs is engaged in.
There is no conduct.
Kayleigh only engages in conversations with young people struggling with these issues.
And the court recognized that you can't relabel conduct or speech conduct just to avoid the requirements of the First Amendment.
Yeah, it's an eight to one decision because the Supreme Court is so strong on issues of free speech.
Almost all of the court recognized that this law is so problematic under well-established First Amendment principles.
Only Justice Jackson dissented and her dissent simply gets the First Amendment wrong.
She ignores the fact that this law discriminates based on viewpoints and picks winners and losers in the public square.
Her argument was essentially that this was akin to conduct, that because when Kaylee Childs has these conversations with clients that she is trying to help them work through issues, she labeled it treatment and said that treatment is conduct and that it's not speech.