The Supreme Court handed Colorado an 8-1 defeat last week in Chiles v. Salazar, striking down the state's conversion therapy ban as a violation of the First Amendment. It was the third time in recent years that the justices rebuked Colorado in a major dispute over speech, religion, and individual rights, a pattern that conservative legal advocates say reveals a state government determined to enforce ideological conformity no matter how many times the nation's highest court tells it to stop.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, left little room for ambiguity. Fox News Digital reported that Gorsuch described the law's suppression of speech as an "egregious" assault on the Constitution.
"The First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country."
That line, from the majority opinion, reads less like boilerplate and more like a direct warning to Colorado's political leadership. Eight justices agreed. Only one dissented. And yet the state's record suggests the warning may go unheeded.
Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed Colorado's conversion therapy ban into law in 2019. The statute restricted licensed counselors from engaging in talk therapy aimed at preventing minors from embracing being transgender or gay. Colorado argued it could regulate the therapy as professional conduct and that the state had an interest in protecting minors from what it considered harmful counseling.
Kaley Chiles, a licensed faith-based counselor in Colorado Springs, challenged the law. She argued that she helped youths reach their own stated goals, which could include minors seeking counseling on their sexuality and gender identity. Alliance Defending Freedom represented Chiles before the Supreme Court.
The justices were not persuaded by Colorado's framing. The court found that the law only restricted talk therapy when the counselor's viewpoint ran in one direction, against embracing a transgender or gay identity. That made the restriction viewpoint-based, the court held, and viewpoint discrimination is among the most serious First Amendment violations a government can commit.
The 8-1 margin speaks for itself. This was not a close call.
What makes Chiles notable is not just the ruling but the company it keeps. Colorado has now been on the losing end of a string of high-profile Supreme Court cases, each one involving the state's attempts to use civil rights enforcement mechanisms against individuals who hold traditional or conservative views.
In 2018, the justices sided with Jack Phillips, the Lakewood baker who refused to create a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple, in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The court found that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had shown unconstitutional hostility toward Phillips' religious beliefs, hostility it did not direct at other bakers. That decision was narrower in scope, but the message was pointed: the state's enforcement body was not treating all viewpoints equally.
The Supreme Court has delivered a series of significant defeats to progressive legal strategies in recent terms, and Colorado has been at the center of several.
In 2023, the court ruled 6-3 in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis that the First Amendment barred Colorado from using its Anti-Discrimination Act to force a website designer to create wedding websites for same-sex couples. Once again, Colorado's civil rights division was on the losing side. Once again, the state had pushed enforcement past the constitutional line.
And in Trump v. Anderson, the justices unanimously reversed the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to remove President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential primary ballot over allegations that he had incited an insurrection. The court found the state lacked the authority to take that step. That case drew justices across the ideological spectrum into agreement, a unanimous rebuke of Colorado's most aggressive legal gambit to date.
Carrie Severino, president of the legal watchdog JCN, told Fox News Digital that Colorado's pattern goes beyond individual cases. She pointed to a state government that refuses to accept correction.
"Colorado seems h***-bent on enforcing its own new orthodoxy of thought, and the Supreme Court has had to come back time and time again to correct them and to remind them that the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, even when the state may disagree with a person's opinions."
Severino also connected the dots back to Masterpiece Cakeshop, noting that the court had already identified institutional bias in Colorado's enforcement agencies.
"The Supreme Court found, at least at the time of Masterpiece Cakeshop, that Colorado's state agency was acting in a way biased against a certain set of beliefs, and from what we can see that hasn't changed in the intervening years."
Her sharpest assessment was the simplest: "Unfortunately, each time the Supreme Court has corrected them, they've only doubled down."
That observation tracks with the timeline. After Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2018, the state passed the conversion therapy ban in 2019. After 303 Creative in 2023, Colorado's legal apparatus continued to press its enforcement posture. The broader trend of Democratic legal defeats at the Supreme Court has not slowed the state's appetite for these confrontations.
Jim Campbell, the Alliance Defending Freedom attorney who represented Chiles, was blunt when asked whether the pattern in Colorado cases was accidental.
"I don't think at this point that it's coincidental. The State of Colorado has shown an utter disregard for the First Amendment rights of people like Kaley Chiles."
Campbell described a state that "has proven itself to be no respecter of the First Amendment." That is a serious charge from a lawyer who has now stood before the justices and won on behalf of a client Colorado tried to silence.
The ongoing constitutional battles at the Supreme Court continue to test the limits of state power against individual rights. Colorado, more than any other state, keeps volunteering to be the test case, and keeps losing.
Terry Schilling, president of the conservative organization American Principles, framed the issue in explicitly political terms. He told Fox News Digital that Democrats in Colorado "will stomp on the rights of anyone who stands in the way of the well-heeled gay and transgender lobby whether it is bakers, doctors, or desperate families."
Schilling also pointed to efforts his organization is making to take the fight directly to voters through ballot initiatives.
"It should not take the lengthy legal battles or the Supreme Court to rein in the liberal war against reality. That is why fed-up Colorado families are appealing straight to voters to protect children from extremist Democrats."
Whether those ballot initiatives gain traction remains to be seen. But the frustration Schilling describes is grounded in something concrete: Colorado residents who hold traditional views on marriage, gender, and counseling have now watched their state government lose at the Supreme Court repeatedly, and respond each time by finding a new way to push the same agenda.
The Democratic push to reshape the Supreme Court takes on a different light when you consider how often the current court has had to correct a single blue state's overreach.
Four major Supreme Court reversals in less than a decade. An 8-1 ruling. A unanimous ruling. A 6-3 ruling. A finding of institutional hostility toward religious belief. A finding of viewpoint discrimination. A finding that the state exceeded its constitutional authority.
These are not close cases decided on technicalities. They are broad rebukes of a state government that treats the First Amendment as an obstacle rather than a guarantee. Colorado's political leaders signed the laws, staffed the commissions, and authorized the enforcement actions that produced each of these defeats. At some point, the pattern stops being bad luck and starts being policy.
The question now is whether Colorado's leadership will absorb what the court has said, or whether the state will simply find the next counselor, baker, or designer to target. The political passions surrounding the Supreme Court show no signs of cooling, and Colorado's track record suggests its officials are more interested in making a point than respecting the one the justices keep making.
When eight out of nine justices tell you that you violated the Constitution, the reasonable response is to change course. Colorado's response, so far, has been to change targets.
