The United States Supreme Court took on a case Tuesday challenging a Colorado law prohibiting conversion therapy for minors exploring their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The plaintiff, Kaley Chiles, a Christian therapist from Colorado, argued the ban is in violation of her First Amendment rights.
Colorado law bars licensed therapists from offering treatment aimed at changing a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The law is meant to regulate professional conduct rather than regulate protected speech.
During the Supreme Court hearing, Chiles argued that the law violates her First Amendment rights by prohibiting voluntary talk therapy sessions with minors who seek help aligning their gender identity with their biological sex or reducing same-sex attraction.” Chile’s attorney told the justices that the state is “censoring private conversations.”
Distinguished Senior Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute Ilan Meyer joined other lawyers in writing a brief in support of the law.
“My position in this case has been documenting that conversion therapy has no reported benefits in the terms of successfully changing sexual intentions, so if somebody is gay, they’re not able to make them straight,” Meyer said.
Meyer defined conversion therapy as an attempt to change somebody’s sexual intention or gender identity.
USC Rossier School of Education Emeritus Faculty and Licensed Clinical Psychologist Mary Andres said conversion therapy is imposed on a child, most likely by a parent.
“Instead of a kid coming and saying, ‘Could you please enroll me in conversion therapy,’ which would be a different situation, what we see happening oftentimes is that a kid will go and talk to somebody and the adults or the people in charge will panic and they’ll say ‘we need to change you, we’re going to send you to conversion therapy,’” Andres said.
This pattern of adults reacting out of fear rather than understanding, Andres said, reveals a deeper problem. The rush to fix a child often ignores their need to be heard and accepted.
“I think it’s very dangerous for one,” Andres said, regarding the Supreme Court case. “I think what every child wants, what every human wants, is loving kindness and wanting to have that unconditional love instead of that imposed conditional kind of love. So that’s why I hope this does not go through and that people listen more than tell each other how they should be.”
Therapy guidelines in the United States and other countries suggest trying to support queer youth and helping them remove stigma about sexual intention and gender identity, Meyer said.
“It is very concerning that the therapist would attempt to change somebody’s sexual orientation or gender identity by shaming them or siding with their own maybe questions about whether is it OK to be gay or to be transgender,” Meyer said.
Andres said the issue comes when therapists use their credentials, which imply they are following a code of ethics or best practices as supported by research, to share their personal opinions. Conversion therapy is not endorsed by the American Psychological Association.
“So the belief is you’re not going to thrive unless you’re a heterosexual… That is not coming out of pediatric care. It’s not coming out of psychology, psychiatry, or medicine,” Andres said.
Andres added that members of the APA cannot practice conversion therapy as it is unethical according to the standards of beneficence and non-maleficience of psychology.
“The ethical principle of doing no harm means that when somebody’s a healthcare worker, they’re not supposed to do anything that can intentionally injure or cause suffering to someone,” Andres said. “So if you’re telling a kid who’s saying, ‘I’m struggling with same-sex attractions,’ that those are bad, ‘You’re wrong for having those,’ that causes that kid to have an increase in anxiety, depression and suicidality or substance abuse, you’re causing harm in that situation.”
Meyers said evidence shows conversion therapy can damage people, harming their mental health and well-being, potentially leading to depression, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and other mental health problems.
Andres said the rates of suicide, suicidal ideation and attempts are higher in queer children than heterosexual kids. According to a The Trevor Project study (2024), 39% of LGBTQ youth considered suicide in the past year, compared with 14% of straight youth.
Andres said young people’s brains are still in a formative stage until they’re 25, meaning there’s recklessness and less impulse control when it comes to this matter, increasing the rates of depression as well. Kids might feel like they are failing at trying to be the kind of person that authority figures and their loved ones want them to be, affecting their mental health, according to Andres.
“It can be really painful for a kid who doesn’t measure up, who feels like they don’t fit in,” Andres said. “What people want in a family, and what I always say are healthiest families, are when a person can have the attitude to say anything to their parents and the parents are able to hear that.”
Andres said children should feel safe enough to share details of their life, such as career aspirations or sexuality, with their parents without fear of rejection. Andres said they need someone to understand their confusion or distress, allowing them to explore their feelings and understand where the distress is coming from.
“What conversion therapy does is the exact opposite,” Meyer said. “It makes people feel worse about being LGB or being transgender and that’s how it’s damaging to their health and well-being.”
According to Andres, conversion therapists are going to do what they can “to correct that” and make the patients align with a heterosexual identity, essentially changing the essence of who the kids are.
When someone is ”something other than heterosexual, then that can cause them to have a lot of shame. It can cause them to increase their anxiety,” Andres said. “It’s like, ‘Oh no, I’m having unwanted thoughts,’ because those thoughts, they’re told, are not OK. That’s where we see depression.”