Chiles v. Salazar
The Court Strikes Down Colorado's Conversion Therapy Ban
Chiles v. Salazar was featured in Conversion Therapy Supreme Court Debates (January 2026). The following is excerpted from the 8-1 majority opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, as prepared by the Court Reporter of Decisions. Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy, as applied to Kaley Chiles’s talk therapy, regulates speech based on viewpoint, and the lower courts erred by failing to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny. The First Amendment protects the inalienable right of every individual to decide for himself “how best to speak,” Riley v. National Federation of Blind of N.C., Inc. (1988), and laws regulating speech based on…
