Christian Counselor Wins Big as Supreme Court Slaps Down Censorship Law

The Supreme Court just handed down an 8-1 decision that should have been 9-0, and honestly, the fact that it wasn’t unanimous tells you everything you need to know about where we are as a country. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in favor of Kaley Chiles, a Christian counselor in Colorado who committed the apparently radical act of wanting to help confused kids feel comfortable in their own bodies rather than fast-tracking them toward irreversible medical procedures that could destroy their lives.

Colorado passed a law that prohibited counseling aimed at helping individuals become comfortable with their biological sex. Read that again. The state literally made it illegal for a licensed counselor to tell a struggling teenager that maybe, just maybe, they don’t need to chemically castrate themselves or undergo surgical mutilation to solve what might be a temporary identity crisis. The law claimed it was protecting minors, but from what exactly? From adults who might encourage them to wait, to think, to consider that puberty is confusing for everyone and always has been?

Chiles, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, argued what should be obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. The Colorado law violates the First Amendment. It’s government censorship dressed up in the language of compassion, and it’s been preventing her from accepting clients who desperately need her help.

Gorsuch nailed it in his opinion. “The spoken word is perhaps the quintessential form of protected speech,” he wrote. You know what’s remarkable about that sentence? That it needed to be written at all in 2025. We’ve reached a point where the Supreme Court has to remind state governments that yes, talking to people is protected by the Constitution. Speech. The thing the First Amendment was literally designed to protect before anything else.

This case matters beyond Colorado, beyond Chiles, beyond even the transgender debate that’s consuming our culture. It’s about whether the government can dictate what licensed professionals are allowed to say to their clients in private counseling sessions. If Colorado can ban certain types of talk therapy because the state disagrees with the underlying viewpoint, what’s next? Can California ban counselors from encouraging traditional marriage? Can New York prohibit therapists from discussing religious faith as a source of healing?

The slippery slope isn’t a fallacy when you’re already sliding down it.

What drives me crazy about cases like this is the sheer arrogance required to pass such a law in the first place. Colorado legislators looked at parents and counselors and kids struggling with genuine psychological distress and decided that certain conversations just can’t be allowed. They appointed themselves the arbiters of acceptable thought, the gatekeepers of permissible speech, the protectors of young people from ideas the state finds inconvenient.

And let’s be clear about what Chiles actually wanted to do. She wanted to help gender-confused children become comfortable with their bodies as they are. That’s not conversion therapy in any honest sense. That’s basic counseling rooted in the reality that the vast majority of kids who experience gender confusion during puberty eventually become comfortable with their biological sex if given time and support. The research backs this up, but apparently Colorado decided that research doesn’t matter when it conflicts with ideology.

The fact that eight justices saw through this charade gives me hope. Not much, but some. It means the First Amendment still has teeth, at least for now. It means that even in our current climate of censorship and compelled speech, there are still lines the government can’t cross.

One justice dissented. One justice looked at a law that criminalizes certain types of speech between counselors and clients and thought, yeah, that’s fine. That should terrify you regardless of where you stand on transgender issues. Because today it’s counseling about gender identity. Tomorrow it’s something you care about.

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