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SCOTUS WADES BACK INTO THE WAR ON TRANS KIDS  
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Henry Carnell; Madison Pauly
October 6, 2025
Mother Jones
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_ Scotus is considering Greenlighting Conversion therapy. The science
is in: The anti-LGBTQ “treatments” are ineffective and dangerous.
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A protester outside of the Supreme Court as justice hear arguments in
United States v. Skrmetti in December 2024., Kevin Dietsch/Getty

 

Since the early 2010s, amid a sea change of public acceptance of LGBTQ
people, state after state banned the use of conversion therapy—the
debunked, harmful practice of trying to change a person’s sexual
orientation or gender identity—on children and teenagers. And for
just as long, a tiny contingent of therapists
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on the fringes of their profession have been fighting to overturn
those laws, arguing that they have a free-speech right to try to
“treat” or “cure” LGBTQ youth.

Now, those therapists—and their powerful allies
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Christian legal movement—are on the verge of success.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court hears arguments in _Chiles v. Salazar,
_a case brought by a Christian therapist challenging a Colorado law
that forbids licensed mental health professionals from attempting to
change minors’ gender identity or sexual orientation. The case has
the potential to overturn restrictions on conversion therapy in 23
states, greenlighting a practice shown through decades of research to
put individuals at higher risk for suicidality and depression. 

The science on conversion therapy is unambiguous: it’s both
ineffective and dangerous. All the way back in 2009, an American
Psychological Association task force issued a landmark report
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documenting the lack of evidence behind sexual orientation “change
efforts,” as scientists refer to them. Since then, APA has only
strengthened
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its stance
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against both anti-gay and anti-trans conversion efforts. In October
2015, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration published a report concluding that sexual orientation
and gender identity change efforts were “coercive, can be harmful,
and should not be part of behavioral health treatment.” 

More recently, 28 major medical and psychological associations signed
a joint statement
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condemning conversion therapy and pledging to eliminate
it. “Decades of research findings and clinical expertise have
revealed that variations in sexual orientation and gender identity are
a normal part of human development across race, ethnicity, and
socioeconomic status,” they wrote
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Before 1973, when homosexuality was still considered a psychological
disorder, conversion therapy was the standard treatment. Some
psychologists would administer electric shocks to patients, or give
them nausea-inducing drugs, while showing them gay pornography. But
once same-sex attraction was no longer pathologized, almost all
therapists stopped trying to “cure” it, instead looking for ways
to support their clients without changing their sexual orientation.

Still, as _Mother Jones _documented
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in an investigation last year, conversion therapy never really went
away. Today, the practice
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takes the form of religious counseling or talk therapy. 

“It is psychologically manipulative,” Simon Kent Fung, a
conversion therapy survivor and advocate, said
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in 2023—instilling and deepening feelings of shame, isolation, and
worthlessness.

 
In a prior interview
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with _Mother Jones, _conversion therapy survivor Myles Markham
described the aftermath of conversion therapy as “a place of
constant, albeit quiet, torment.”

“A lot of thoughts placed into my head about how disturbing and
gross and creepy people like me were,” a transgender survivor of
conversion therapy, Lillian Lennon, said
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in the same series of interviews. “I internalized a lot of these
projections.”

When the harms of conversion therapy came to light a decade ago, and a
campaign [[link removed]] to ban its
use on children swept the nation, prominent leaders in the
“ex-gay” movement disavowed their work, dissolved their
organizations, and apologized. Today, those leaders are siding with
Colorado at the Supreme Court.

“They cannot take back the harm they caused, but they recognize
their unique obligation and opportunity to prevent future damage,”
their lawyer wrote in a filing
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in August.

The case now before the Court was filed by Colorado Christian
counselor Kaley Chiles. Her lawyers are affiliated with the Alliance
Defending Freedom (ADF), a far-right legal powerhouse deeply involved
in efforts to overturn _Roe v. Wade_ and in a constant
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stream
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of legal attacks
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on trans rights.
 
ADF argues that because Chiles’ form of therapy consists only of
talking with clients, Colorado’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law
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right to free speech. Colorado, on the other hand, asserts that
Chiles’ words during her therapy sessions constitute “professional
conduct” subject to regulation.  

Many of the arguments in the case dive deep into science, gender, and
medicine. ADF and Chiles
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claim that “no reliable science” finds conversion therapy harmful
or ineffective, citing several scholars who study how sexual
orientation can shift over the course of a person’s lifetime. Yet
two of those scholars, and the family of a deceased researcher, told
the _Guardian_
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this week that ADF had “profoundly” misinterpreted and
“distorted” their research, conflating naturally occurring sexual
fluidity with forced repression. 

“It’s erasing the fact that conversion therapy is motivated by
shame, fear of disconnection, fear of expulsion, fear of the loss of
God’s love, fear of abandonment,” Lisa Diamond, distinguished
professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah,
told the _Guardian_. “Those are triggers of suicidality. That’s
where the damage comes in.”

Chiles says
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she wants to use talk-based therapy to help minor clients “choose to
align their sense of identity with their sex” and “to reduce or
eliminate unwanted sexual attractions”—when the minors request it.
She also claims the law prevents her from supporting clients who are
detransitioning or speaking freely with them about their gender and
sexuality. “Exploration is off-limits if the goal is change,” her
lawyers write, “unless that change is a gender transition.”
Lawyers for the state of Colorado argue that the law forbids
therapists from trying to force children to adopt a different sexual
orientation or gender identity—cisgender or transgender, gay or
straight. “What the therapist cannot do is try to achieve a
predetermined gender identity for the minor,” they argue
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“regardless of whether that is or isn’t a transgender identity.”

“[The laws] were developed in close conjunction with mental health
professionals to make sure that they’re crafted very narrowly,”
says Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ
Rights, who has worked for years on efforts to ban the use of
conversion therapy on minors. The practices prohibited are when a
therapist is “trying to seek a predetermined outcome” around
youth’s gender or sexuality. The law does “not restrict in any
way, shape or form, any form of legitimate therapy,” Minter
argues. 

Fung, the survivor and advocate, says the fight to protect Colorado
kids from conversion therapy has brought together unlikely allies.
Catholic school educators, conservative therapists, and LGBTQ
advocates are working hand-in-hand in the effort—like Christian
therapist Julia Sadusky
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who uses non-conversion therapy to help devout youth and co-authored a
brief in support of Colorado. The law “hasn’t at all hindered me
from being effective in my work with teens and with their families,”
Sandusky said in an interview. 

 

Now out as a gay man, Fung is still religious and wants young people
to know there is a path through the pain of being told their religion
conflicts with their sense of self. He says the side supporting Chiles
uses “spiritual blackmail” to spread misinformation and fear.
But legal observers like _Slate_’s Marc Joseph Stern
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say it’s extremely likely the Supreme Court will side with ADF.
After all, the court’s conservative majority has done the same in
two previous
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cases
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in which ADF represented clients claiming that a Colorado law intended
to protect the LGBTQ community infringed on their First Amendment
rights as Christians. If the justices rule for Chiles, the remaining
conversion therapy bans across the country are also likely to fall.

One party rooting for Chiles to succeed: the Trump administration.
Last month, the court granted a motion
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from the Solicitor General to participate in Tuesday’s oral
arguments.

It’s no surprise the administration is siding with conversion
therapy proponents. When President Donald Trump took office and
promptly purged mentions of “gender” from government documents,
the Department of Health and Human Services took down the SAMHSA
report that determined conversion therapy was “coercive” and
“harmful.” A few months later, HHS issued a new report
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calling for doctors to withhold gender-affirming treatments from
transgender young people. Instead, it endorsed “exploratory
psychotherapy”—a euphemism embraced by conversion therapists
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for the work they do with trans children. 

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* Department of Health and Human Services under Trump; Gender and
Sexuality;
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