The US Supreme Court recently delivered a big victory for a Christian counselor and, in the process, bolstered the First Amendment’s protections for free speech. While it remains to be seen just how far this precedent will reach—beyond this case and to more explicit religious freedom issues—Christians should nevertheless be encouraged.
Chiles v. Salazar involved a Colorado law that prohibited counselors from offering to minors therapy that would discourage elements of their sexual identity and orientation. Put simply, the law banned so-called “conversion therapy,” including talk therapy. Counselors, the law stated, could offer only “acceptance, support, and understanding” for their minor patients.
When Kaley Chiles argued the law burdened her First Amendment right to use talk therapy with her clients, two federal courts ruled against her. Specifically, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the law amounted not to a burden on speech but to a permissible regulation on “professional conduct.” In March 2025, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Chiles’s final appeal.
During oral arguments in November, several justices grilled Colorado’s solicitor general on the constitutionality of the state’s law. The Supreme Court’s conservatives were of course skeptical, but so were justices on the court’s liberal wing. Justice Elena Kagan wondered why Colorado’s law shouldn’t be treated as unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned why Colorado was treating some sorts of speech as less worthy of protection than others.
On Monday, in an 8–1 decision, the Court ruled for Chiles. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch declared that Colorado’s statute violated the First Amendment by prohibiting counselors from having certain “voluntary counseling conversations” with their patients. Some may be content with their sexual identity and orientation, Gorsuch said, while others may want to change or eliminate certain attractions and behaviors. Because counselors would be prohibited from effectively working with some patients, the court held the law unconstitutionally favored some speech over others.
Gorsuch also explained that Chiles’s activity—talk therapy, absent any medical, physical, or other intervention—should receive the highest level of protection under the First Amendment. Colorado, the lower courts, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion described this type of speech as “conduct,” a category of expression more susceptible to regulation. But Gorsuch and seven other justices disagreed, saying, “The State’s premise is simply mistaken. … Her speech does not become conduct just because the State may call it that.”
Despite the 8–1 vote margin, it would be a mistake to assume Chiles v. Salazar is the last word on counseling regarding sexuality. Voting with the majority but writing a separate opinion, Justice Kagan said the issue in this case was neither the wisdom nor the constitutionally protected nature of Chiles’s counseling but rather the way in which Colorado wrote its law.
Specifically, Kagan pointed out that if a future law is content based yet viewpoint neutral—that is, prohibiting all talk therapy concerning sexual identity and orientation—the court’s reasoning might be different. But content-based laws that single out certain viewpoints, she reasoned, are almost guaranteed to run afoul of the First Amendment. And that is precisely what happened in this case.
This caveat notwithstanding, Christians can be encouraged by the Chiles decision. For one thing, it allows a counselor to provide care based on the needs of the patient. Obviously, Tuesday’s decision does not require counselors to prioritize “conversion therapy” for clients questioning their sexual identity and orientation. What it does do, however, is make all sorts of conversations an option in counseling relationships while barring states from privileging certain kinds of speech. Any time the government is prohibited from playing favorites regarding speech, Americans—including Christians—should rejoice.
Christians can also be thankful the government cannot impose restrictions on the sensitive conversations patients have with their counselors. Patients (including minors) struggling with questions about their sexual identity and orientation should want counselors to approach them with the highest degree of professionalism and attention to care, not with an eye toward what state regulations require them to say or not say.
Professional organizations like the American Psychological Association and American Counseling Association maintain ethics codes prohibiting counselors from imposing their own values on their clients. Both groups, however, offer differing guidance when it comes to the counseling and therapy methods raised in Chiles v. Salazar. When professionals have informed disagreements concerning best practices for client care, the government should not stifle that debate.
Finally, Christians can be heartened by yet another favorable Supreme Court decision with implications for religious expression. Although the court did not examine Chiles v. Salazar through the lens of the free exercise clause, it isn’t hard to see a connection given the case’s subject matter coupled with Chiles’s attorneys citing her Christian faith as motivation for her counseling. And while the result of this decision is more positive for free speech than for free exercise, it will not hurt future cases where religious freedom is front and center.
In the years since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, the court has issued myriad decisions with favorable outcomes for religious freedom and expression—Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, and Mahmoud v. Taylor, to name just four.
Even Bostock v. Clayton County, which expanded LGBTQ rights under the Civil Rights Act, said legislation like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act may act as a “super statute” in safeguarding Americans’ religious freedom where rights claims conflict. Chiles v. Salazar is a continuation of an established trend.
While Chiles v. Salazar does give Christians reasons for optimism amid cultural headwinds in an increasingly negative world, we must not lose sight of where our hope is ultimately found. The psalmist David asks a question to which he knows the answer: “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?” (2:1). The answer he gives is a timeless reminder of God’s providence and sovereignty, even in moments where the world looks increasingly to be against God’s people: “Blessed are all who take refuge in [the Lord]” (v. 12).
It is right for Christians to give thanks for Supreme Court decisions like Chiles v. Salazar, which guarantee opportunities to interact with and serve our fallen world. But we should do so while remembering that our confidence and hope, in life and eventually in death, come from God alone.
Daniel Bennett is a professor of political science at John Brown University. He has written two books: Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement (2017) and Uneasy Citizenship: Embracing the Tension in Faith and Politics (2024).
