Gender and the high court

Since descending the golden escalator in 2015, Donald Trump has dominated the national conversation. Yet over the same period, a quieter but potentially more profound development has occurred: The U.S. Supreme Court has moved away from the judicial activism of earlier decades and begun returning American jurisprudence to more originalist foundations. The latest example is its ruling on so-called “conversion therapy,” a decision with significant implications for Christian counselors and pastors.

Over the past decade, the Court has consistently safeguarded religious liberty and free speech. In recent years, it has protected the religious liberty of a Christian baker (Masterpiece Cakeshop, 2018), upheld the rights of a Catholic adoption agency (Fulton, 2021), overturned Roe v. Wade (Dobbs, 2022), affirmed that the government cannot compel speech (303 Creative, 2023), upheld state authority to restrict gender transition procedures for minors (Skrmetti, 2025), and sided with religious parents against a school district that sought to impose LGBT ideology on their children (Mahmoud, 2025).

The Court’s recent decision, Chiles v. Salazar, marks another significant First Amendment victory for people of faith. At issue was Colorado’s “conversion therapy” law, which prohibited counselors from offering guidance aimed at changing a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Writing for an 8–1 majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch concluded that the law violated the First Amendment by regulating speech based on viewpoint. Because similar laws exist in more than 20 states, the ruling carries immediate and far-reaching implications.

Colorado’s law, enacted in 2019, reflects a broader trend that began in the early 2010s. Since 2011, lawmakers have introduced hundreds of bills aimed at prohibiting licensed mental health professionals from counseling individuals who seek help coping with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. These measures were often framed as efforts to protect people, especially minors, from allegedly harmful practices associated with efforts to change sexual orientation. Decades ago, “conversion therapy” referred to coercive and often abusive techniques, such as electroshock therapy—methods that Christian counselors have long rejected. Over time, however, progressive lawmakers expanded the definition to include voluntary talk therapy, even when sought by the client.

Under Colorado’s statute, counselors were prohibited from engaging in “any practice or treatment” that sought to change a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to reduce same-sex attraction. At the same time, the law explicitly permitted counseling that affirmed a client’s LGBT identity or assisted in gender transition. The result was a one-sided framework in which certain viewpoints could be expressed freely while others were prohibited.

Justice Gorsuch identified this imbalance as unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. A counselor, he noted, could offer “acceptance, support, and understanding” to a client exploring a transgender identity, but could not provide similar support to a client seeking to live in accordance with biological reality. The First Amendment, however, does not permit the government to privilege one perspective while silencing another.

For years, Christian counselors have warned that laws like Colorado’s impose content and viewpoint-based restrictions on protected speech. In practice, these policies have required mental health professionals in many states to adopt a “gender-affirming” model of care, regardless of their clinical judgment or religious convictions.

The deeper issue, however, is not merely legal but philosophical and theological. Laws banning “conversion therapy” rest on a particular understanding of the human person—one that treats sexual orientation and gender identity as self-defining categories. That perspective was reflected in the dissent of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who argued that attempts to change LGBT identities are stigmatizing and harmful.

Despite Colorado’s claims to the contrary, its law was not neutral, and it rested on a contested view of human nature. In effect, Colorado, along with the medical associations that supported its position, embraced—and sought to enforce—the view that human beings are defined primarily by their internal psychological identity. In this framework, identity is self-created and self-defined, largely detached from the givenness of the human body. Biological realities, including the body’s orientation toward reproduction, carry little authority. What ultimately matters is one’s internal sense of self, and any counseling approach that does not affirm that identity is regarded as harmful.

A Christian anthropology based in the Bible offers a different account. It affirms that human beings are created with design and purpose and that identity is grounded in objective realities. It also recognizes that distress related to one’s identity is a legitimate subject for compassionate care, wise counsel, and moral reflection.

The Court’s ruling does not resolve these competing visions of the human person. It does, however, ensure that the state cannot enforce one of them to the exclusion of all others. In doing so, it preserves space for counselors, pastors, and others to offer guidance consistent with their convictions.

That principle lies at the heart of the First Amendment. As the Court observed, our first freedom exists to guard against efforts to impose an official orthodoxy. Laws like Colorado’s, which restrict speech based on viewpoint, do more than regulate professional conduct. They seek to dictate what may be said and, ultimately, what may be believed.