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Every day we depend upon the counsel of our doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, architects, and pharmacists. Yet, in a startling decision, the Supreme Court recently struck down Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” for minors in an opinion that threatens to undermine the professional advice on which we all constantly rely. In a world in which it is increasingly difficult to discern what’s true and what’s false, what’s beneficial and what’s harmful, professionals have on the whole remained dependable sources of good information. The law encourages and safeguards our reliance on professional advice. But, thanks to the Court’s unusually obtuse decision, that may now change.
The case before the Court involved a Colorado law prohibiting licensed counselors from attempting to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a minor. Counselors could, however, assist minors who were undergoing gender transition. A licensed mental-health counselor, Kaley Chiles, challenged Colorado’s law because it permitted her to encourage gender transitions but not to oppose them. She contended that the law discriminated on the basis of viewpoint and thus violated her First Amendment right of freedom of speech.
The Court uncritically endorsed Chiles’ argument. It reasoned that “as a talk therapist, all Ms. Chiles does is speak with clients.” The Court condemned Colorado because it sought to regulate Chiles’s speech because of what she said. It did not matter that Chiles was a licensed professional doing her job. The First Amendment, said the Court, “protects the right of all” to speak as they will, including professionals. Colorado could not “suppress views Ms. Chiles wishes to express”; it could only regulate speech that was incidental to conduct, as for example by requiring informed consent before medical procedures. But here Colorado was simply regulating “speech as speech.”
Pulling out large rhetorical guns, the Court insisted that the First Amendment means “that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely” and that “the free marketplace of ideas” is “the best means for discovering truth.” “However well-intentioned,” the Court said, “any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.”
This reasoning is simply nonsense in the context of the professional speech that all of us rely on all the time. We extend extraordinary protections to political speech, but not to the ordinary communications of professionals, which are routinely regulated. Take the case of lawyers. Lawyers do nothing but talk. They give advice; they advise clients on how to draw up wills, contracts, and other legal documents; they offer opinions on the legality of transactions; and so on. On the Court’s reasoning, to regulate these communications is to regulate “speech as speech.” Lawyers possess an inalienable constitutional right to communicate as they please because the marketplace of ideas will ensure that in the end truth will emerge. Hogwash.
At present, the speech of lawyers is governed by a framework of legal guardrails to ensure that their clients receive comprehensive, competent, and trustworthy advice. Lawyers are subject to licensing, discipline, malpractice liability, and fiduciary duties. These are all viewpoint-based limits on speech. The state distinguishes competent from incompetent speech, subjecting the latter to the penalties of malpractice.
The state makes these viewpoint distinctions so that clients can rely on the advice of their lawyers. There is no marketplace of ideas between clients and lawyers. If Justice Gorsuch, who wrote the Court’s opinion, were to consult his lawyer to draft a will, and if (God forbid) his lawyer were to commit professional malpractice by drawing up an invalid will, and if Justice Gorsuch were to sue his lawyer, the incompetent lawyer could not defend by invoking the marketplace of ideas.
Gorsuch’s lawyer could not claim, as Justice Holmes asserted in defining the marketplace of ideas, that the proposed will was “an experiment, as all life is an experiment.” Gorsuch did not visit his lawyer to engage in abstract debate. He did not care about the eventual emergence of truth. He had important business to transact, the crafting of a workable will.
The law currently protects Gorsuch’s expectations. But now, after his ill-considered opinion in the Colorado case, all that is open to question. We doubt whether the Court would make such an obvious error were it not so anxious to strike yet another blow in its ongoing war against protections for LGBTQ lives. The Court has increasingly conscripted the First Amendment into that assault, without apparent consideration of the consequences.
Like lawyers, the professional life of accountants, engineers, and architects transpires through speech. Much of what doctors do also occurs through the medium of speech. States require licensing and pervasively regulate professionals because society cares that their speech be competent. Clients and patients ought to be able to rely on the speech of professionals. They should be able to expect more than just speculation. They should receive reliable advice grounded in competent expertise. And, if things go wrong, they ought to be able to hold professionals accountable.
This is what the entire framework of professional regulation exists to guarantee. This is what the Court has just thrown into doubt.
The post Marketplace of Malpractice appeared first on Verfassungsblog.
On 30 March 2026, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026 (“New Trans Rights Act”), received Presidential Assent, completing a legislative process that took less than three weeks from introduction to law. The Bill had cleared both Houses of Parliament amid Opposition walkouts and protests, without pre-legislative public consultation, without referral to a Parliamentary Standing Committee, and without engagement with the National Council for Transgender Persons. What emerged was a law authored without the people most governed by it.
TState Bodies he New Trans Rights Act reorganises the terms on which transgender lives become intelligible to law. Its animating logic, that trans identity is an “acquirable characteristic” the state must verify rather than an irreducible human experience it must recognise, directly confronts the constitutional architecture erected by the Indian Supreme Court in previous case law. The Act re-medicalises identity, re-bureaucratises recognition, and risks criminalising both community kinship (guru/chela) structures and legitimate gender-affirming care.
Under the existing Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 (“2019 Act”), a transgender person was defined as “a person whose gender does not match with the gender assigned to that person at birth”, broad, inclusive of trans men, trans women, genderqueer persons, and persons with intersex variations, and expressly independent of surgical or hormonal intervention. Section 4(2) codified the right to self-perceived gender identity. The New Trans Rights Act removes both.
The new definition of ‘transgender person’ proceeds in two limbs. The first covers only persons with named socio-cultural identities (kinner, hijra, aravani, jogta, eunuch), persons with specified intersex variations, and persons forcibly compelled to assume a transgender identity through mutilation or surgical, chemical, or hormonal procedures. The second limb is a proviso that excludes persons with “self-perceived sexual identities.” This is a form of indirect discrimination within the trans community, wherein the hierarchy of recognisability is artificially created by privileging identities that are either culturally codified or medically verifiable over those that are self-perceived.
Trans men, trans women, non-binary persons, and genderqueer individuals, none of whom necessarily belong to the named socio-cultural communities and none of whom necessarily present intersex variations, are excised from the statute entirely. They constitute a substantial portion of persons who have historically sought certificates of identity under the 2019 Act and who face documented discrimination in education, employment, and healthcare.
This narrowing stands in tension with decades of scholarship demonstrating that gender-variant identities in South Asia are neither fixed nor reducible to discrete socio-cultural categories. Hijra identities themselves are internally diverse, religiously syncretic, and historically fluid (see Reddy and Loh), while the imposition of rigid classificatory frameworks often reflects colonial and postcolonial state logics rather than lived realities (see Dutta & Roy). It also stands in direct contradiction to NALSA’s foundational holding that “transgender” is an umbrella term embracing a wide range of identities and experiences, and that any attempt to confine it to specific socio-cultural communities imports precisely the classificatory errors the Court sought to dismantle (see NALSA, para 19; para 81 (Sikri J.)).
The State’s justification for the narrowing rests on three grounds: (a) that the prior definition was “vague,” (b) that it made it “impossible to identify the genuine oppressed persons,” and (c) that it was incompatible with several existing statutory enactments. Each ground fails on examination. The vagueness argument misunderstands gender identity. Identity is not vague; it is complex, because it is internally experienced rather than externally observable. NALSA engaged precisely this complexity and concluded that self-determination, not medical verification, was the constitutionally appropriate response (see NALSA, para 19). To call self-determination a source of vagueness is to restate the biomedical premise the Court rejected. The impossibility argument is contradicted by the data, i.e., over 32,000 certificates had been issued as of March 2026 with 5,566 rejected applications, demonstrating a functioning, not unworkable, system. The incompatibility argument is the most constitutionally dangerous, for it recasts rights-bearing identity as administratively suspect. The Statement of Objects and Reasons asserts that a statute conferring rights cannot define its beneficiary class by reference to an “acquirable” characteristic. Applied consistently, this logic would undermine every protective statute defining its beneficiaries by reference to religion, belief, or disability. What is presented as a technical objection is, in substance, an argument against rights themselves.
The inclusion of persons “forcibly compelled” to assume a transgender identity as a definitional category of transgender persons is analytically incoherent. Such persons are victims of abduction and bodily harm, not transgender persons in any meaningful sense. Their inclusion conflates identity with victimisation and stigmatises the entire category by associating transgender identity with coercion and violence. It also produces a legal absurdity. A person forcibly castrated and compelled to present as a hijra, even though hijra identity is constituted not by bodily presentation but by community membership, kinship, and social belonging, qualifies under the new definition, while a trans man who has lived his gender identity for decades, sought no surgery, and belongs to no named socio-cultural community, does not. This conflation echoes anthropological misreadings that collapsed hijra identity into practices of emasculation (see Hossain), ignoring its social, ritual, and kinship dimensions (see Nanda).
The New Trans Rights Act inserts a new provision, i.e., Section 2(aa), which defines an “authority” as a medical board headed by a Chief Medical Officer or Deputy Chief Medical Officer. By amending Section 6 of the 2019 Act, the District Magistrate is now required to examine the recommendation of this authority before issuing a certificate of identity. The District Magistrate may also take the assistance of “other medical experts.” The 2020 Trans Rights Rules, enacted under the 2019 Act, had expressly clarified that no medical or physical examination would be required as a precondition to the issuance of a certificate. The New Trans Rights Act reverses this entirely.
The change may appear procedural. It is not. In NALSA, the Court held that self-determination of gender identity falls within personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution, and directed legal recognition without conditioning it on medical procedures. (see NALSA, para 69 and para 74). This holding was subsequently affirmed in Navtej Singh Johar, where the Court grounded the right to identity in “individual autonomy and liberty, equality for all sans discrimination of any kind, recognition of identity with dignity” as the “cardinal constitutional ideals” (see Navtej, para 3, Majority Opinion). Where the 2019 Act treated self-declaration as the trigger for administrative processing, the New Trans Rights Act places a medical board between the person and the state. Recognition is now conditional on institutional validation. A right has become a permission.
The medical board model also carries a structural constitutional problem visible in another domain. Persons with disabilities in India have long experienced the perverse consequences of medical boards applying inconsistent standards, the same individual receiving different disability percentages from different boards, with real consequences for education and employment. The analogy is instructive: where identity or entitlement is mediated through expert certification, arbitrariness becomes structural rather than exceptional. As Rahul Bajaj notes, in Vikash Kumar v. UPSC, the Supreme Court directly addressed the misuse justification for restricting disability facilities. Its response was unequivocal: the mere possibility of misuse cannot justify denying a benefit to an entire class. The same logic compelled this Court in Navtej to hold that the existence of Section 377, justified on the same speculative misuse rationale, was unconstitutional (see Navtej, para 95). The New Trans Rights Act’s implicit justification, preventing fraudulent identity claims, founders on exactly this reasoning. The Statement of Objects and Reasons identifies no specific, documented pattern of fraud under the 2019 Act. Speculative misuse cannot justify systemic exclusion.
There is a deeper epistemological problem. The new definition retains socio-cultural identities, hijra, kinner, aravani, jogta, alongside intersex variations, but a medical board can assess only the latter. Whether a person belongs to the hijra socio-cultural community requires engagement with community history, lived experience, and social belonging, questions for which medical expertise is the wrong instrument. NALSA itself acknowledged this when it observed that hijras “belong to a distinct socio-religious and cultural group” whose identity is determined not by biology but by social belonging (see NALSA, para 70).
The New Trans Rights Act also amends the mandatory hospital reporting requirement in Section 7 in two ways. The word “may” is replaced with “shall,” making it mandatory for persons who undergo gender-affirming surgery to apply for a revised certificate. A new sub-section 1A requires medical institutions to furnish details of such persons to the District Magistrate and the authority.
The mandatory disclosure requirement raises serious concerns about the right to privacy. State interference with privacy must be backed by law, serve a legitimate state aim, and be proportionate. The first condition is met. The other two are not. The Statement of Objects and Reasons identifies no legitimate aim served by requiring hospitals to report gender-affirming surgeries to district authorities. The Amendment’s overall orientation, toward verification and control of who qualifies as transgender, suggests the aim is surveillance rather than welfare. The Yogyakarta Principles, which NALSA expressly adopted as a framework, specifically prohibit compelling any person to “undergo medical procedures, including surgery, sterilization or hormonal therapy” as a condition of legal recognition, and equally prohibit state surveillance of gender identity as a condition of protection (see NALSA, para 22; Yogyakarta Principle 18) Mass surveillance of a constitutionally protected characteristic cannot constitute a legitimate state aim under Puttaswamy. India’s data protection law further requires consent for processing personal health data, a requirement the mandatory reporting provision bypasses without justification.
The practical consequence is a chilling effect on access to care. Trans persons who would otherwise seek legitimate medical transition may avoid hospitals to evade state reporting, being driven toward unregulated and unsafe alternatives. In Navtej, the Court expressly recognised that the existence of provisions targeting LGBT persons, regardless of enforcement, produces a chilling effect that “builds insecurity and vulnerability into the daily lives” of those communities. The surveillance apparatus, ostensibly protective, may function to harm.
The substituted Section 18 adds serious new offences: kidnapping combined with grievous hurt to force assumption of transgender identity attracts ten years to life for adults and mandatory life imprisonment for children; forcing a person to present as transgender and engage in begging or servitude attracts five to ten years for adults and ten to fourteen years for children. The State justification, addressing documented abduction and forced bodily modification, is not without foundation or any data. But the provisions as drafted are simultaneously over-inclusive and under-inclusive.
The gharana system, the structured kinship network of guru and chela that organises community life for hijra, kinner, and related groups, has historically been the primary social safety net for gender non-conforming persons abandoned by natal families (see Goel). The new offences in clauses 18(e) to 18(h) are structured around “allurement,” “inducement,” “deception,” and “compulsion”, undefined and elastic terms. Gharanas, the only home many trans persons have known, could be mischaracterised as sites of allurement or inducement, exposing community leaders to prosecution for acts of bona fide care. Police in India have historically harassed hijra communities under vagrancy provisions. New legislative categories carrying life imprisonment will not be applied with greater discernment. As Gopi Shankar Madurai observes, the new clauses target external perpetrators while leaving internal exploitative hierarchies untouched, effectively legitimising the exploitative dimensions of established community structures while criminalising the protective ones.
The inclusion of “surgical, chemical, or hormonal procedures” within “grievous hurt” risks criminalising legitimate gender-affirming care. Medical professionals assisting voluntary transitions may fear prosecution under provisions not clearly confined to coercive contexts. The concern extends further: hormonal procedures prescribed for polycystic ovary syndrome, menopause, or cancer fall within the literal language of the provision. The phrase “outwardly present a transgender identity” compounds this by treating transgender identity as a performance, something one can be compelled to do rather than something one is. NALSA held that “values of privacy, self-identity, autonomy and personal integrity are fundamental rights guaranteed to members of the transgender community under Article 19(1)(a)” (see NALSA, para 66). Reducing identity to an “outward presentation” enshrines in criminal law the stereotype that trans identity is a choice of appearance, precisely the stereotype that has sustained centuries of stigma and violence against trans communities.
Finally, the asymmetry in penalties exposes the Amendment’s true priorities. The existing offences, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and forced displacement of transgender persons retain a two-year maximum sentence, a sentence community advocates have challenged as grossly inadequate. The Amendment creates life imprisonment as maximum punishment for forcing a child to present as transgender (Section 18(e)(f), but leaves at two years the maximum for sexually or physically abusing a transgender person (Section 18(d). The legislation is more concerned with managing the boundaries of transgender identity than with protecting transgender lives.
The Trans Rights Act arrives at a moment when India’s constitutional jurisprudence on gender identity, rooted in NALSA and awaiting elaboration in the pending challenge to Section 7 of the 2019 Act, was poised to move forward. Instead, it re-medicalises identity, re-bureaucratises recognition, and narrows protection at the precise moment the community needed welfare, upliftment, and expansion of rights. The state’s interest in precise definitions and administrative clarity is legitimate, but the Trans Rights Act pursues it at the direct expense of protection, treating identity, that most intimate of human attributes, as a claim requiring verification rather than a person requiring recognition. The Constitution still stands. So does the directive in NALSA. Whether courts will act on that directive remains to be seen, but the legislative record is now clear, and it is not a flattering one.
Disclaimer: The post was submitted before the bill was passed.
The post State Bodies appeared first on Verfassungsblog.
he US Department of Education (DOE) announced on Monday that it will rescind agreements previous presidential administrations had with certain schools to interpret Title IX to include protections for transgender and gay students.
The DOE Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a press release that said it has terminated agreements with Cape Henlopen School District, Delaware Valley School District, Fife School District, La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified, and Taft College. Agreements were established under the former Biden and Obama administrations that interpreted Title IX to extend to transgender and gay students.
The OCR’s new interpretation removes federal requirements for the schools to continue faculty training on pronoun usage and allow students to use restrooms of their preferred gender identity. Explaining its decision, the OCR stated:
Resolution agreements are used by OCR to require schools to take specific actions to resolve noncompliance with federal civil rights law. Previous Administrations distorted the law contrary to its plain meaning to police discrimination on the basis of “gender identity,” not sex, and imposed resolution agreements with no legal foundation, but rather, based on an ideologically-driven interpretation of Title IX. They illegally saddled school districts with Title IX violations for actions such as “improper use of preferred pronouns” or “asking questions about a student’s preferred gender.”
The change comes after a Kentucky federal court in January ruled that the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX was illegal.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richie said one of the purposes of this change is to protect female athletes, stating:
While previous Administrations launched Title IX investigations based on ‘misgendering,’ the Trump Administration is investigating allegations of girls and women being injured by men on their sports team or feeling violated by men in their intimate spaces…
The post Trump administration rescinds protections for transgender and gay students at several school districts, Taft College appeared first on JURIST – News.
Belarus parliament passed a bill on Thursday criminalizing propaganda of LGBTQA+ relationships, sex change, childfree lifestyle, and pedophilia, with punishment including fines, community service, or arrests. Belarus drafted the bill in February 2024. The bill will now go to President Lukashenko, who is expected to sign it.
Belarus decriminalized the LGBTQA+ movement in 1994, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but same-sex marriage has not been recognized in the country. In 2024, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus classified the LGBTQA+ movement as “non-traditional sexual relationship or behavior,” the same classification that is given to necrophilia, pedophilia, and voyeurism. In September of the same year, 15 LGBTQA+ individuals were arrested by Belarusian authorities, with some being subject to physical and psychological abuse. Others were forced to flee the country.
Belarus is mimicking Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies: Russia passed the bill prohibiting LGBTQ+ propaganda in 2022. European Court of Human Rights found that the 2013 version of the same law was discriminatory. In 2023, Russia banned gender-affirming surgeries and labeled the LGBTQ+ movement as “extremist”. In 2024, Russia relabeled the LGBTQ+ movement as a terrorist organization. The crackdown on the LGBTQA+ community in Russia continued in the form of bar raids, fines for Telegram posts, fines on bookstores for LGBTQA+ books, fines to Apple, criminal proceedings, and more. In 2024, Russia banned propaganda of a childfree lifestyle and outlawed propaganda of abortions a year later.
International organizations and rights groups have also been voicing concerns over LGBTQA+ rights in Kazakhstan, Turkey, Hungary, Georgia, and Bulgaria.
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Idaho’s governor signed a bill into law on Tuesday that prohibits transgender individuals from using bathrooms and changing rooms that align with their gender identity.
The bill applies to those who enter such spaces “knowingly and willfully.” First offenses carry a misdemeanor penalty of up to one year in prison. Repeat violations, including those that occurred in other states with similar laws, trigger felony charges with a maximum sentence of five years.
Bill opponents condemned it as part of a continuous attack on transgender individuals. ACLU of Idaho legal director Paul Carlos Sorwick called it part of “an overall campaign” that targets transgender individuals. State Sen. Ron Taylor (D) said some constituents told him they would leave Idaho, fearing their children would be arrested. Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates of Idaho called the bill one of “the most extreme anti-transgender bathroom ban in the nation.” Nikson Mathews, Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus chair, said Idaho legislators have shifted “from refusing to protect [LGBTQ+ individuals] to actively targeting us.”
This is the latest in anti-transgender legislation out of Idaho. In 2023, state Senate Bill 1100 restricted all bathrooms and changing rooms in public K-12 schools to sex assigned at birth. It also permitted students to recover up to $5,000 for each time a transgender student entered a restroom that did not align with their biological sex. The ACLU reported that the law pushed trans-students into separate, “private” facilities.
In 2025, Idaho House Bill 264 expanded such coverage to bathrooms and sleeping quarters in various public institutions. Namely, these include correctional facilities, domestic violence shelters, juvenile correctional centers, and state universities.
In 2025, the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute found no evidence that transgender restroom access increases violent victimization of strangers. A 2013 Williams Institute study found that transgender people face significant risks in gender-segregated facilities. Among respondents, 68 percent reported verbal harassment and nine percent reported physical assault. ACLU of Idaho argued the new law forces transgender individuals to choose between entering unsafe spaces or risking criminal charges.
The post Idaho criminalizes transgender bathroom use appeared first on JURIST – News.
In 2025, 574 people in Switzerland had their gender entry changed in the civil status register, according to provisional data published on Thursday. Such a change has been possible in the Alpine country since 2022. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox The Federal Statistical Office said authorities made 312 gender-entry changes from “man” to “woman” in 2025. Conversely, 262 entries were changed from “woman” to “man”. The greatest number of gender-entry changes took place in the canton of Zurich (120), whereas none recorded in the small eastern canton of Appenzell Inner Rhodes. According to the Statistical Office, more than half of the requests (56%) were made by people under the age of 25. Those under the age of 16 require the consent of their legal representative to request such a change. The Swiss register of persons recognises the genders male and female. The entry is made at birth and is mandatory: that is, it must be made even if the gender cannot be …
President Droupadi Murmu on Tuesday assented to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, a measure that Amnesty International says restricts the ability of transgender and gender-diverse individuals to self-identify. Aakar Patel, chair of Amnesty International India’s board, criticized the law, stating: “This regressive law dilutes safeguards and deepens state intrusion into the lives of transgender people.”
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, was passed by voice vote in both houses of Parliament on March 25, completing its legislative approval process. Opposition leaders raised concerns over the expedited process and urged that the bill be referred to a standing committee for broader consultation with stakeholders. Under the amended framework, transgender individuals are required to undergo a series of official verification procedures before their gender identity can be legally recognized by authorities.
The amendment introduces a narrower definition of “transgender,” limiting recognition to specified socio-cultural categories and biological variations. It also removes a separate definition of intersex persons, grouping them within the broader transgender category. Additionally, the law establishes criminal penalties for “compelling,” “forcing” or “alluring” a person or child to present as transgender, with punishments extending up to life imprisonment.
Legal observers note that the amendment departs from principles articulated by the Supreme Court in NALSA v. Union of India of 2014, in which the Court recognized gender identity as a matter of personal autonomy and affirmed the right to self-identification without mandatory medical intervention. The new framework replaces the Court’s recognition of self-identification with a system requiring certification by a medical board and subsequent recognition by a District Magistrate, raising concerns among critics about increased state oversight and potential inconsistencies with constitutional protections and international human rights standards.
The legislation was enacted despite objections from a Supreme Court-appointed expert committee on transgender rights, which had recommended withdrawing the bill and conducting further consultations with affected communities. The committee explicitly asked the government to withdraw the bill and engage in meaningful consultation with transgender communities. However, the government proceeded with the legislation.
Meanwhile, the Rajasthan High Court cautioned that legislative changes cannot dilute constitutional guarantees, particularly those recognized in prior Supreme Court rulings, signaling the potential for future legal challenges to the amendment.
The post India passes transgender rights amendment, prompting concerns over compliance with Supreme Court precedent appeared first on JURIST – News.
March 31, 2026 06:00:36 pm
The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors violates the First Amendment when applied to counselors who use only talk therapy, a landmark decision with sweeping implications for how states regulate speech by licensed health care professionals. The court voted 8-1 to reverse a lower court ruling that had […]READ MORE ▸
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| POLICY NEWS Supreme Court rules against Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy (c) Supreme Court rules against Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy Today, the Supreme Court ruled against Colorado’s law banning licensed mental health care providers from practicing conversion therapy on minors. Conversion therapy refers to treatments provided to a person for the purpose of changing their sexual orientation or gender identity. Williams Institute research estimates that 698,000 LGBT adults have been exposed to conversion therapy, including 350,000 who had been subjected to the treatments as adolescents. Conversion therapy is a discredited and harmful practice. In an amicus brief filed with the Court in Chiles v. Salazar, Williams Institute scholars presented extensive evidence of the impacts of conversion therapy on LGBT people, demonstrating both its ineffectiveness at achieving its main purpose—making a person not LGBT—and the harms reported by those who have experienced the treatments. Major medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, oppose the practice and consider it unethical. The Court’s decision did not endorse conversion therapy or address whether the practice is harmful or ineffective. In fact, it gave almost no consideration to the potential for harm or Colorado’s interest in protecting its residents from those harms. Instead, the Court narrowly focused on whether the law infringed upon the free speech rights of the petitioner, Kaley Chiles. Specifically, the Court considered whether the law regulated conduct, which the state has more leeway to restrict, or speech, which receives greater protections under the First Amendment. Eight justices joined the majority opinion that held that Colorado’s law regulates speech, rather than conduct. As a result, the Court held that the law should have been treated with more skepticism in the lower courts. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed with the majority and acknowledged the lasting psychological harm associated with conversion therapy. As she explained, “Ultimately, scientific evidence supports the conclusion that the anticipated harms from conversion therapy are twofold. First, conversion therapy stigmatizes the patient, telling them that their gender identity or sexual orientation is something to be fixed, rather than accepted. This rejection can lead to shame and guilt, which in turn can cause long-term emotional distress. Second, conversion therapy sets patients up to fail by giving them an unattainable goal.” The case will now return to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, where it will be reconsidered in light of the Supreme Court’s decision. While bans like Colorado’s may not survive today’s decision, the case does not signal that conversion therapy is safe or effective, for minors or adults. The case also does not foreclose other avenues for survivors to take legal action against providers when they have been harmed or defrauded by the practice. Courts in several states, including California and New Jersey, have indicated that conversion therapy is a fraudulent commercial practice, allowing legal claims against providers under state consumer protection laws. In addition, the case does not require insurers to cover conversion therapy for minors. Several states, including New York and Minnesota, prohibit Medicaid or private insurers from covering conversion therapy. Despite today’s decision, there remain pathways to challenging or curtailing the practice of conversion therapy in the future. While the Court’s decision establishes that states cannot categorically ban therapists from using talk therapy to discourage a person’s identification as LGBT, it doesn’t undermine what the evidence shows. At the Williams Institute, we believe that this evidence will have its day in court.  Today, the Supreme Court ruled against Colorado’s law banning licensed mental health care providers from practicing conversion therapy on minors. Conversion therapy refers to treatments provided to a person for the purpose of changing their sexual orientation or gender identity. Williams Institute research estimates that 698,000 LGBT adults have been exposed to conversion therapy, including 350,000 who had been subjected to the treatments as adolescents. Conversion therapy is a discredited and harmful practice. In an amicus brief filed with the Court in Chiles v. Salazar, Williams Institute scholars presented extensive evidence of the impacts of conversion therapy on LGBT people, demonstrating both its ineffectiveness at achieving its main purpose—making a person not LGBT—and the harms reported by those who have experienced the treatments. Major medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, oppose the practice and consider it unethical. The Court’s decision did not endorse conversion therapy or address whether the practice is harmful or ineffective. In fact, it gave almost no consideration to the potential for harm or Colorado’s interest in protecting its residents from those harms. Instead, the Court narrowly focused on whether the law infringed upon the free speech rights of the petitioner, Kaley Chiles. Specifically, the Court considered whether the law regulated conduct, which the state has more leeway to restrict, or speech, which receives greater protections under the First Amendment. Eight justices joined the majority opinion that held that Colorado’s law regulates speech, rather than conduct. As a result, the Court held that the law should have been treated with more skepticism in the lower courts. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed with the majority and acknowledged the lasting psychological harm associated with conversion therapy. As she explained, “Ultimately, scientific evidence supports the conclusion that the anticipated harms from conversion therapy are twofold. First, conversion therapy stigmatizes the patient, telling them that their gender identity or sexual orientation is something to be fixed, rather than accepted. This rejection can lead to shame and guilt, which in turn can cause long-term emotional distress. Second, conversion therapy sets patients up to fail by giving them an unattainable goal.” The case will now return to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, where it will be reconsidered in light of the Supreme Court’s decision. While bans like Colorado’s may not survive today’s decision, the case does not signal that conversion therapy is safe or effective, for minors or adults. The case also does not foreclose other avenues for survivors to take legal action against providers when they have been harmed or defrauded by the practice. Courts in several states, including California and New Jersey, have indicated that conversion therapy is a fraudulent commercial practice, allowing legal claims against providers under state consumer protection laws. In addition, the case does not require insurers to cover conversion therapy for minors. Several states, including New York and Minnesota, prohibit Medicaid or private insurers from covering conversion therapy. Despite today’s decision, there remain pathways to challenging or curtailing the practice of conversion therapy in the future. While the Court’s decision establishes that states cannot categorically ban therapists from using talk therapy to discourage a person’s identification as LGBT, it doesn’t undermine what the evidence shows. At the Williams Institute, we believe that this evidence will have its day in court. |
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Supreme Court strikes down Colorado conversion therapy ban as applied to talk therapy for minor
The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors violates the First Amendment when applied to counselors who use only talk therapy, a landmark decision with sweeping implications for how states regulate speech by licensed health care professionals.
The court voted 8-1 to reverse a lower court ruling that had upheld the law, finding that Colorado’s statute discriminates based on viewpoint by allowing counselors to affirm a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity but prohibiting them from helping clients who wish to change those things.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint” and cannot survive under the First Amendment simply because the state labels talk therapy as professional conduct.
“The First Amendment is no word game,” Gorsuch wrote. “And the rights it protects cannot be renamed away or their protections nullified by mere labels.”
The case was brought by Kaley Chiles, a licensed mental health counselor who argued that Colorado’s 2019 law prevented her from helping clients reach their own stated goals through conversation alone.
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concurred but wrote separately to note that a viewpoint-neutral law restricting speech in medical settings would present “a different and more difficult question.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter, warning the ruling could make speech-based medical treatments “effectively unregulatable” and that the decision “plays with fire.”
Jackson argued the court had long recognized that states may regulate the practice of medicine, including treatments delivered through speech, without triggering heightened constitutional scrutiny.
Twenty-five other states have enacted similar conversion therapy bans. The decision is expected to prompt legal challenges to those laws across the country. However, its practical reach will depend on how lower courts apply the ruling’s distinction between viewpoint-based and viewpoint-neutral restrictions on professional speech.
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We are excited to announce the hashtag#SexualOrientation and hashtag#GenderIdentity in hashtag#internationallaw (hashtag#SOGILaw) summer school.
The five-day summer school on SOGI 2026 in International Law is held at Leiden University; in 2026 from 29 to 31 July in the Hague and continuing on 3 and 4 August in Leiden. The dates for 2026 have been chosen to allow participants to also take part in the WorldPride Human Rights Conference (5 to 7 August in Amsterdam) and other events of WorldPride, EuroPride and Pride Amsterdam (all from 25 July to 8 August).
This year’s edition is directed again by Prof. Andreas R. Ziegler (President of the Swiss Society of International Law as well as a Full Professor at the University of Lausanne who was the leading force behind the publication of the hashtag#OxfordHandbookonLGBTILaw 2026 (hashtag#SOGIESC)) and Elias Tissandier-Nasom, PhD candidate at Leiden Law School. Professor Kees Waaldijk, the founder of this programme, continues to serve as honorary co-ordinator.
Curious about what this year’s edition has to offer?
Visit our website and register now: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/education/study-programmes/summer-schools/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity-in-international-law-human-rights-and-beyond
International and Comparative SOGIESC Law - Professor Andreas R Ziegler 