Colorado Attorney General urges Supreme Court to uphold ban on ‘dangerous’ conversion therapy

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has urged the US Supreme Court to uphold the state’s law banning conversion therapy on LGBTQ+ children, calling the practice ‘dangerous’.

Weiser’s office filed an 83-page-long notice on Tuesday (19 August), arguing that conversion therapy is “substandard” ‘medical care’ for minors that should be “regulated”, in response to a challenge to its current ban in March.

In March this year, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case, Chiles v. Salazar, challenging Colorado’s ban on the practice.

Weiser, who has served as Attorney General of Colorado since 2019, has now urged SCOTUS in a press conference to keep the ban in place.

“No amount of talk, pressure or shaming can make a gay person not gay, or a transgender person not transgender. Licensed therapists shouldn’t be able to abuse their position of trust to push an agenda that causes long-lasting harm to kids and families,” The Denver Post reported.

“The Supreme Court should adhere to its long line of precedents and affirm the states’ power to regulate health care and protect kids and families from substandard practices.”

Conversion therapy is a barbaric practice that aims to change its subject’s sexual orientation or gender expression to heterosexual or cisgender, and stems from the belief that having a minority sexual or gender expression is a mental disorder.

Some of the most invasive versions of ‘conversion therapy’ can include berating or beating, being forced to pray as a form of healing, and “corrective rape”.

“Regardless of how this practice is performed, it does not work and causes long-lasting harms that include depression, self-hatred, loss of faith and suicide,” Weiser added.

The challenge alleges that the ban violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause. It was filed by Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counsellor in Colorado Springs, who claimed that due to the state ban, she had “been forced to deny voluntary counselling that fully explores sexuality and gender to her clients and potential clients in violation of her and her clients’ sincerely held religious beliefs”. 

SCOTUS is set to hear oral arguments in October.

Chiles is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, which is described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“The government has no business censoring private conversations between clients and counselors, nor should a counsellor be used as a tool to impose the government’s biased views on her clients,” Kristen Waggoner, CEO and general counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom said in March.

Colorado banned conversion therapy in 2019. The practice is currently prohibited in 23 states and the District of Columbia. It is not banned in the United Kingdom.

SCOTUS is also currently considering hearing a case to overturn same-sex marriage across the US.

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