With One Damning Question, Ketanji Brown Jackson Defined the Supreme Court's New Term - SLATE

[In It to Win It]

SLATE (Archived)

Midway through Tuesday’s arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked a question that stripped away the veneer of constitutional principle from the Supreme Court’s latest blatant culture war. Last term, she noted, the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Now, in Chiles, the same court seemed poised to strike down Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” for minors. Both regulations “work in basically the same way,” she noted, prohibiting treatments designed to change a child’s gender expression. The difference is that Tennessee aims to erase transgender identity, while Colorado seeks to affirm it. “I’m just, from a very broad perspective, concerned,” Jackson said, “about making sure that we have equivalence with respect to these things.” Does the Constitution really take sides in this battle, blessing states that discriminate against transgender youth while condemning those that protect them?

As interpreted by this Supreme Court, the short answer is yes: The Constitution does little to protect LGBTQ+ rights and much to subvert them. There is little doubt that the Republican-appointed justices will use Chiles to weaken or destroy protections against conversion therapy for minors. In the process, they may insist that they are simply following neutral principles wherever they lead and will safeguard pro-LGBTQ+ speech in the future too. Don’t believe it. As this case lays bare, the court’s feints at evenhanded justice merely obscure its weaponization of constitutional liberties in service of the religious right’s agenda.

Chiles is a test case engineered to invalidate laws that ban licensed counselors from attempting to change a minor patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. About half the states have enacted these laws, often on a bipartisan basis with strong public support. Extensive evidence shows that it is impossible to forcibly alter a young person’s gender or sexuality, and dangerous to try. For that reason, every major medical group in the United States endorses prohibitions against conversion therapy. Conservative Christian counselors, however, have long opposed these laws, arguing that they impermissibly censor protected speech. (Critically, they do not apply to family members, religious figures, “life coaches,” or anyone besides licensed therapists.) The Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right law firm, manufactured Chiles so the Supreme Court would have an opportunity to rule that therapists have a First Amendment right to attempt to “convert” LGBTQ+ children. After Donald Trump returned to the White House, his Justice Department joined the case on the side of the plaintiff, a Christian therapist named Kaley Chiles.

To fend off this attack, Colorado offered two main arguments to justify its ban. First, it asserted that medical treatment is a kind of “professional conduct” that states have broad leeway to regulate. It doesn’t make a difference when the treatment at issue takes the form of speech, because medical regulations often “incidentally burden expression” without triggering First Amendment scrutiny. The real question is whether the treatment violates the standard of care; if so, a state has every right to restrict it. That leads into Colorado’s second justification—that conversion therapy does indeed contravene the standard of care by subjecting minors to “discredited” quackery far more likely to harm than help. In support, the state submitted a small mountain of scientific studies, expert testimony, and other materials that attest to the impossibility of reversing LGBTQ+ identity and the mental health dangers inherent in trying.

Supreme Court on banning gender-affirming care for trans youth: Sure, that's fine, no constitutional violation.

Supreme Court on banning so-called conversion therapy for gay youth: No, can't have that, grave constitutional violation.

Here, Ketanji Brown Jackson gets to the bottom of it:

— Cristian Farias (@cristianfarias.com) 2025-10-07T22:16:26.864Z

Transcript: www.supremecourt.gov/oral_argumen...

Slate's @mjsdc.bsky.social wrote it up: slate.com/news-and-pol...

— Cristian Farias (@cristianfarias.com) 2025-10-07T22:16:26.865Z

When all is said and done, the Supreme Court will be greatly responsible for creating a balkanized United States—where states will be able to regulate medical treatments the justices approve of, and others won't be able to regulate those the justices don't approve of.

See also: Dobbs.

— Cristian Farias (@cristianfarias.com) 2025-10-07T22:16:26.866Z

[Klarkashton]

1. No way is that bunch of Christian Nationalist going to pass up

An opportunity to punish gay people.
The fix is in.