Chapter 1: What is the Supreme Court's ruling on conversion therapy in Colorado?
The Supreme Court released its opinion on one of the most controversial cases of the term regarding a Colorado law that banned LGBTQ plus conversion therapy for minors.
The high court's ruling effectively throws the case back to a lower court, which is tasked with examining whether or not the law infringed on the free speech rights of Kaylee Childs, a licensed counselor with a master's degree in clinical mental health, who said she practices from a Christian perspective. Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor.
Today is Wednesday, April 1st, 2026. Joining me to walk through what this decision will mean not only for Childs, but for Christian counselors in the two dozen other states that have an active ban on conversion therapy for minors is USA Today Supreme Court correspondent Maureen Grabe. Maureen, thank you so much for being here. Hi, thanks for having me.
Maureen, what was the basis of this Colorado dispute?
Well, the Christian counselor that you mentioned, she was challenging the constitutionality of this Colorado law that prohibits licensed mental health workers from providing conversion therapy to minors. And the state defines conversion therapy as an attempt to, quote, change an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity to
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. And the main issue here was that she was saying that the law allows her to help someone transition to another gender or to help them be comfortable as a gay person.
But if she wants to counsel someone to be, as she put it, comfortable in the sex that they were born in to not transition, then that is not allowed under the law.
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Chapter 2: How does the Colorado law affect free speech rights for counselors?
So the question was whether this law then restricts her free speech rights.
What does this eight to one ruling essentially do?
Well, the court did say that the law violates her free speech rights under the First Amendment. And anytime that happens, that triggers an extra level of scrutiny from courts to decide whether the law is valid or not. And it's a very high bar to meet in situations like this.
So the upshot of this is that Colorado is not going to be able to enforce this law against this counselor for the kind of counseling that she says she wants to practice.
As I mentioned, Colorado isn't the only state to prohibit conversion therapy. What will be the immediate impact of this ruling?
Yeah, you're right. It's not the only state to have laws like this, and it's not the only law that is being challenged. There are other challenges to other laws in the works, and the lower courts that are handling those challenges, they're going to be taking their cue from this ruling, which wasn't about whether the law can be upheld, the regulation is valid in all circumstances. It was whether
It could be applied to the kind of counseling that she says she wants to do. And if the situation is similar in other challenges, then they will also get a similar outcome to this one.
Maureen, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson cast the one dissenting vote here.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the 8-1 ruling for LGBTQ+ youth?
Why was she in opposition to this ruling?
She basically took the side of Colorado, which was arguing that states should be able to regulate medical care, whether that care comes in the form of speech therapy or surgery, that it's not a direct implication on someone's free speech. It's an indirect implication on someone's speech. And so the First Amendment rules shouldn't apply to medical care regulation.
More than a dozen mental health and professional medical organizations also weighed in here, right?
Yeah. And they said that trying to change someone's sexual orientation or their gender identity is not legitimate therapeutic treatment. And not only does it not help, but actually harm someone.
The Justice Department supported Childs, the Christian therapist, in this case. What did they say?
Yeah, it was interesting that the Justice Department got involved because this involved a state law, not a federal law, so a dispute they could have stayed out of. But they went beyond even just filing a brief supporting the counselor. They asked the court for time during the oral arguments in October so they could help make the case for why they thought this law was problematic.
And during those oral arguments, one of the points that the lawyer for the department made was about the fact that major medical groups have repudiated conversion therapy as ineffective and harmful.
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Chapter 4: What was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissenting opinion?
They said, well, that may be true now, but they pointed out that The prevailing standard of care can change. And in fact, in the 1970s, medical groups thought that being gay was a mental illness. So their point was that you can't use that as a standard to make it OK to violate someone's free speech rights.
Tell me about the alliance defending freedom who represented Childs in this case. And does this ruling continue a trend with the Supreme Court?
The group has been very active bringing Supreme Court cases that they feel violate someone's, particularly their religious views, and they've been pretty successful. The Supreme Court in recent years has issued a number of rulings that have been supportive of when they think someone's religious rights are being violated.
Maureen, what did Colorado's Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser argue here?
He argued that states have long had the ability to protect patients by regulating health care professionals. And the state said that the evidence shows that trying to change someone's sexual orientation or gender identity doesn't work. And it can lead to depression, anxiety, a loss of faith, and also can make people think about suicide.
How are families of LGBTQ plus youth responding to the ruling?
The advocacy groups representing LGBTQ plus folks are roundly condemning the decision. The head of the Trevor Project, for example, he called the decision a tragic step backward for our country that will put young lives at risk.
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Chapter 5: How did mental health organizations respond to the ruling?
Colorado is a progressive state with regards to the rights of the LGBTQ plus community. In recent years, the Supreme Court has issued other rulings affecting those rights. Tell me about those.
So there were two cases. One involved a website developer, another a cake baker, and both of those service providers were opposed to providing some services to gay customers. They thought that would violate their religious beliefs to do so. And in both of those cases, the court ruled against Colorado.
Maureen, looking ahead, the court heard arguments earlier this year regarding state laws banning transgender athletes from competing on female sports teams. Is it clear how this decision might influence that case?
There shouldn't be any overlap between the two. The legal issues in the cases are very different. This case involved, as we said, free speech rights. And the case about states' bans on transgender athletes involves the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. That's the clause that says people in equal situations should be treated equally.
And it also involves a federal law that bans sex discrimination in education.
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Chapter 6: What arguments did Colorado's Attorney General present?
So we're still waiting for that decision. And based on the oral arguments, it did sound like the court is likely to uphold these state bans. But if the court does uphold the state bans on transgender athletes, they'll do it for different reasons than the reason that they cited when siding with the counselor in yesterday's decision.
Maureen, what was your biggest takeaway from this case?
I think it's noteworthy that it was an 8-1 decision that you had two of the three liberal justices who were agreeing with the six conservative justices. Justice Elena Kagan, she wrote a concurring opinion, which was joined by Justice Sotomayor, explaining that there might be a way for Colorado to write a law that doesn't have this issue.
But the fact that there was this, what they call the legal term is viewpoint discrimination, where the The counselor was arguing that if she wanted to counsel a youth to go one direction, she was allowed to, but if she wanted to counsel the youth in another direction, she couldn't. That made the case very difficult and to be considered constitutional. And so...
You know, people might assume that in culturally divisive cases like this one, you're going to get a 6-3 ideological divide. The six conservative justices on one side, the three liberals on the other. So it was noteworthy that two of the three liberal justices said that at least the way Colorado's law is now, it's problematic.
Maureen Grappi is a Supreme Court correspondent for USA Today.
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Chapter 7: How might this ruling influence future legal challenges regarding LGBTQ+ rights?
Maureen, it's always a pleasure to have you on the excerpt.
Thanks for having me on.
Thanks to our senior producer, Kaylee Monahan, for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts at usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA Today's The Excerpt.
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