On March 31, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Chiles v. Salazar, holding that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors violates the Free Speech Clause as applied to a licensed therapist seeking pre-enforcement review. Because the ruling is as-applied in nature, Colorado’s ban on “therapeutic” practices that medical professionals overwhelmingly deem harmful remains intact. But the Court significantly narrows the law’s LGBTQ-protective reach by treating its application to the most common form of conversion practices—talk therapy—as a content-based restriction on speech. Although the case returns to the lower courts, the Court’s conclusion that the law engages in viewpoint discrimination triggers strict scrutiny, effectively ensuring that this Christian therapist and others like her are constitutionally protected when they “talk” to children about “converting” into religiously acceptable hetero- and cis-normative versions of themselves.

The consequences for queer children are devastating. Children seldom have meaningful agency to resist the demands of their caregivers, churches, or communities, even when those demands inflict profound psychological harm. Now, not even a well-intentioned state like Colorado can shield vulnerable queer youth, many of whom will be compelled to absorb the normative messaging of conversion therapy. The ideology central to conversion therapy teaches children that they are broken and must be fixed—an injury that will scar them well into adulthood. Yet, the Court reduces the practice to little more than a benign conversation: “all Ms. Chiles does is speak with clients.” This conclusion is possible only by ignoring the real harms children experience during and after a therapist’s “speech.”

Chiles is the latest in a stream of decisions demonstrating the Court’s special sympathy for perceived victims of LGBTQ+ inclusion. In 2021’s Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the Court ruled for a Catholic foster care agency that precluded the placement of children in homes with same-sex parents without hearing from any LGBTQ+ parent applicants who may have been turned away. The Court reasoned that Philadelphia’s anti-discrimination policies created a risk that the city might treat religious adherents less favorably than secular parties at some future time. The opinion never acknowledges how this outcome facilitates—indeed, requires—the humiliating exclusion of queer people from serving as foster parents, or harms children in need of loving foster homes that queer families can provide.

More recently, in 2025’s Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court sided with parents challenging a school district’s policy denying parents opt-outs from LGBTQ-inclusive curricula. The majority opinion minimized the threat that opt-out rights pose to public education more generally, and it was silent about the dignitary, emotional, and stigmatic harms that queer children will experience when their peers exit a classroom before any educational acknowledgment of queer themes, characters, or stories. Instead, the opinion fixates on the religious burdens conservative parents will suffer when their children are exposed to the reality that LGBTQ+ people exist. According to the Court, these LGBTQ+ inclusive lessons impart intolerable normative lessons that gravely threaten parents’ religious beliefs. First, it is difficult to discern any limiting principle in Mahmoud; does public education not exist, at least in part, to transmit norms of civility and respect for others in a pluralistic society? Second, the Court fails to even consider the normative messages queer children will internalise when their identities are erased from the classroom.

In these and other recent decisions, like 2018’s Masterpiece Cakeshop granting a Christian baker the First Amendment right to deny services for a same-sex wedding, the Court appears myopically sensitive to the harms that may befall conservative religious adherents within a legal landscape that suddenly treats queer people as human beings worthy of inclusion and respect. In an ominous sign, the Court recently agreed to hear a case next term, St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, offering yet another opportunity to weigh religious liberty claims against LGBTQ-inclusive policies. The question in St. Mary’s Catholic Parish centers on whether Colorado may constitutionally exclude a Catholic preschool from its universal preschool program because the preschool’s admission policy excludes LGBTQ children and children with LGBTQ parents. Given the Court’s recent pattern, it is easy to predict the likely outcome: a law designed to prevent LGBTQ exclusion will be twisted into a law that excludes religious adherents.

In the last decade, the Court has remade the Constitution in line with right-wing policy preferences. Today, harms to religious adherents’ commitment to LGBTQ exclusion garner maximum constitutional protection, while the resulting exclusionary harms to LGBTQ people receive none. Simply put, the contemporary Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment privileges religious intolerance over equality for all.