The Supreme Court just nuked Colorado’s so-called “conversion therapy” ban in an 8-1 beatdown so lopsided that even liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan sided with the conservatives.
The lone holdout? Ketanji Brown Jackson, the woman who famously couldn’t define “woman” during her confirmation hearing, now wants to define which words therapists are allowed to use during their sessions with patients.
Shocking, truly. The justice who can’t identify basic biology wants to be the national speech referee. Somebody get this woman a dictionary before we hand her a gavel again.
The case, *Chiles v. Salazar*, involved Kaley Chiles — a licensed counselor in Colorado Springs who runs a small private practice helping clients work through addiction, trauma, eating disorders, and — brace yourselves — gender dysphoria. Colorado Democrats passed a law in 2019 threatening counselors like Chiles with $5,000 fines and the loss of their professional license if they dared have the wrong conversations with minors. Not surgeries. Not drugs. Conversations.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, absolutely demolished Colorado’s argument. He pointed out that “censorious governments throughout history” believed their speech restrictions were essential to public safety, too — which is Gorsuch’s polite, judicial way of calling Colorado’s Democrat legislature a bunch of petty authoritarians. Then he dropped the hammer: “Colorado’s law addressing conversion therapy does not just ban physical interventions. In cases like this, it censors speech based on viewpoint.”
The most devastating part? Gorsuch explicitly called out Jackson for proposing what he described as a “First Amendment Free Zone” for medical professionals. And this isn’t me being dramatic — Gorsuch literally used those words in the majority opinion. Jackson argued that “bedrock First Amendment principles have far less salience when the speakers are medical professionals.” A sitting Supreme Court justice — appointed by Democrats, confirmed by Democrats — argued that certain Americans deserve *less* free speech based on their job title. Not because of what they did, but because of what they *said*.
And Democrats wonder why we don’t trust them with power.
Jackson threw a 35-page tantrum in dissent — longer than the majority opinion and Kagan’s concurrence *combined*. She even read it aloud from the bench, which is the Supreme Court equivalent of flipping the table. “To put it bluntly,” she whined, “the Court could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care.” She warned that “no one knows what will happen now.”
Really, Ketanji? We’re talking about a law that punishes *talking*. Not a single person was ever sanctioned under this statute in its entire existence. Zero victims. Zero enforcement actions. Zero anything. But sure, civilization is collapsing because a Christian therapist in Colorado Springs can have honest conversations with her clients.
The truly delicious moment came from Justice Kagan’s concurrence. Kagan — who has never been confused for a conservative in her entire life — joined with Sotomayor to essentially tell Jackson she was being ridiculous. Legal scholar Ilya Shapiro put it perfectly: Kagan’s opinion was basically an “I can’t believe I have to explain this to my colleague” moment. She wrote that Jackson’s position “rests on reimagining” the difference between banning a viewpoint and regulating a profession — and Kagan wasn’t buying it.
When you’ve lost Kagan and Sotomayor on a culture war case, you haven’t just lost the argument. You’ve embarrassed yourself.
Kagan also dropped this gem: a state couldn’t ban talk therapy designed to *affirm* a minor’s gender identity, either. “Because the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward.” Translation? Colorado wasn’t protecting kids. Democrats were picking winners and losers based on ideology and slapping a “public health” label on it. Classic.
Twenty-three states — including deep-blue strongholds like California, New York, and New Jersey — passed similar laws banning so-called conversion therapy, and over a hundred cities and counties piled on. Every single one of those laws now has a constitutional bullseye on its back. Democrats spent years building this censorship machine one state at a time, and the Supreme Court just took a sledgehammer to it.
Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal group that represented Chiles, now has sixteen wins at the Supreme Court since 2011. They helped overturn *Roe v. Wade*. They defended the Colorado baker and the web designer. Democrats keep dragging Coloradans to the Supreme Court to test their speech-policing theories, and they keep getting their teeth kicked in. You’d think they’d learn.
The LGBTQ advocacy crowd predictably melted down. Shannon Minter from the National Center for LGBTQ Rights called the decision “hypocritical.” Oh, WE’RE the hypocrites? These are the same people who want to ban a therapist from talking to a teenager but think pumping that same teenager full of puberty blockers is sacred, untouchable healthcare. Pick a lane.
Gorsuch landed the kill shot in his opinion with a line every American should memorize: “The people lose whenever the government transforms prevailing opinion into enforced conformity.” That’s not just about conversion therapy. That’s the same playbook Democrats ran with COVID — remember when “the science” meant “shut up and comply or we’ll destroy your career”? Same energy. Same party. Different issue.
Ketanji Brown Jackson wanted to carve out a special zone where the First Amendment doesn’t apply to people with medical licenses. Eight of her colleagues — including the two liberals Democrats love most — told her to sit down. Maybe next time Jackson wants to decide which Americans get free speech and which ones don’t, she can start by figuring out which ones are women.
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