14 Powerful Lines From Justice Jackson's Dissent on Conversion Therapy: 'Like It or Not, Treatment Standards Exist in

[justaprogressive]

America - Ms. Magazine

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth, ruling the law likely violates the First Amendment—a decision advocates warn will put young people at risk.

In a rare and forceful move, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered her dissent from the bench.

Below, we’ve pulled the most powerful, incisive—and yes, spiciest—lines from her 35-page dissent, followed by the full text. Read, share your favorite line, and help lift up a dissent that refuses to mince words about what’s at stake.

1.

Not only is conversion therapy ineffective, former participants report that it causes lasting psychological harm. Gay and transgender children who underwent nonaversive conversion therapy say they were taught to feel shame and self-hatred. Survivors continue to suffer from PTSD, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. As one survivor put it, conversion therapy “‘came close to killing me.’”

2.

Chiles insists that, although she is a counselor licensed by Colorado, she has a constitutional right to flout Colorado’s statute and the standard of care it incorporates if a client asks her to do so.

3.

Talk therapy is a medical treatment. So, why wouldn’t such speech-based medical treatments be subject to reasonable state regulation like any other kind of medical care?

The United States and the majority just insist that a law that undertakes to regulate speech-based medical treatments is presumptively unconstitutional because the treatment is being administered solely through speech. But that reasoning is maddeningly circular, and it is based on happenstance, not logic.

https://msmagazine.com/2026/03/31/conversion-therapy-justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-dissent-chiles-v-salazar/