This past March 10, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to a Colorado law banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ minors, on the grounds that the law banning the practice clashed with First Amendment rights. If the court, which currently holds a 6-3 conservative majority, decides to overturn the ban, along with other state-wide bans like it, more than 20 states, including North Carolina, could see a resurgence of the practice.
Conversion therapy is the medically discredited practice of trying to change, modify or suppress a person’s sexual or gender identity. The practice has shifted over the years, taking on such lengths as brain surgery, electric shocks, castration, and hypnosis. Much of the theory that underlies the practice revolves around the assumption that anything other than heterosexuality and gender nonconformity are mental disorders that can and should be “cured,” a notion that has long-since been rejected by modern day mainstream medicine, psychology and psychiatry.
The Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law estimates that nearly 700,000 LGBTQ adults in the United States have undergone conversion therapy.
The Colorado case that has since risen to the Supreme Court revolves around a law that mostly bans the practice, which was put into place by the state in 2019. “Left out” of the writing of the law were counselors who “engaged in the practice of religious ministry,” said Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional therapist with no background in ministry, yet holds conservative Christian beliefs.Chiles challenged the constitutionality of the law in Colorado federal court, stating that it violated her rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.
In 2024, a divided appeals court ruled against Chiles, arguing that Colorado is entitled to regulate a licensed professional’s conduct to prevent such harm, along with citing evidence of conversion therapy hurting minors. Chiles’s lawyers then moved to escalate the case to The Supreme Court, writing that as “a practicing Christian, Chiles believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex.”
As it currently stands, North Carolina only has a partial ban on the practice. In 2019, Governor Roy Cooper signed an executive order that stripped away any state funding that would have gone to fuel conversion therapy, including through the uses of Medicaid and Health Choice programs. North Carolina became the first state to have any sort of prohibitive action, however, the practice itself is still technically legal. Religious providers are still allowed to perform conversion therapy for adult patients who want to sign up for it.
In 2023, the Supreme Court had declined to hear a similar case which challenged Washington state’s ban on the practice. However, as of the current political climate aimed against transgender issues, and with the court’s recent invitation to hear the case, the previous opinions on the matter could easily be tipped, much like the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.