Colorado Bans Christian Counselors From Speaking to Private Clients Under 18 About Leaving ‘Transgenderism’ — Even If Clients Want to Talk

The government should not interfere with private conversations between a licensed professional counselor and a client. But Colorado disagrees.

The state prohibits religious counselors from speaking to clients under 18 in a way that involves helping clients’ with their confusion about sexual orientation or “gender identity,” even if the clients want to talk about it. The state considers this to be conversion therapy.

But the law encourages counselors to have conversations about accepting, supporting, and understanding clients’ “identity exploration and development,” and assisting clients with the so-called transformation.

One counselor, Kaley Chiles, a Christian, said that the state is violating her freedom of speech and free exercise of religion as well as those of her clients. Chiles believes, according to her complaint, that “people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex,” and that God “establishes the foundation upon which to understand their identity and desires.”

Many of Chiles’ clients sought her counsel because she believes these things. And the First Amendment protects her right to talk about it.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) represents Chiles. She filed a lawsuit against the state, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld Colorado’s law in September.

AFL said the appeals court reasoned that “mere talking during a counseling session is ‘conduct’ the First Amendment does not protect,” rather than speech. AFL asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

“The government has no business censoring private conversations between clients and counselors, nor should a counselor be used as a tool to impose the government’s biased views on her clients,” said ADF legal counsel Cody Barnett. “As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a similar case, even though these types of laws are ‘viewpoint-based … discrimination in its purest form,’ the federal appeals courts are currently divided 2–2 over whether they are valid.”