The Supreme Court remanded Colorado's conversion therapy ban to the Tenth Circuit with strict-scrutiny instructions, placing similar laws in 24 jurisdictions at legal risk.
The Supreme Court vacated the Tenth Circuit's ruling upholding Colorado's ban on conversion therapy for minors and remanded the case with instructions to apply strict scrutiny, the most demanding standard of constitutional review [1]. Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the opinion, holding that Colorado's prohibition, as applied to the licensed-therapist context, constitutes a content-based restriction on professional speech and must therefore satisfy a compelling government interest [1]. The ruling does not strike down the law. Colorado's ban remains in effect pending the Tenth Circuit's review on remand [2].
The case reached the Court after the Tenth Circuit upheld Colorado's statute under a lower level of scrutiny, reasoning that the state's regulation of professional conduct, including speech delivered in a therapeutic setting, warranted deference [2]. Colorado's law prohibits licensed mental health professionals from attempting to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of patients under 18. The Supreme Court's intervention signals that the Tenth Circuit applied the wrong constitutional framework from the outset.
The significance of the ruling extends far beyond Colorado. Twenty-three other states and the District of Columbia have enacted similar bans, all of which now face the same constitutional question under the same heightened standard [2]. Strict scrutiny requires the government to demonstrate not only a compelling interest but also that the law is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest, a bar that many state legislatures did not design their statutes to clear. Legal challenges to those parallel bans are likely to proliferate, and courts in other circuits may face pressure to revisit prior rulings that applied intermediate or rational-basis review [1]. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in dissent that the majority's approach risks converting professional licensing boards into constitutional defendants across a wide range of occupational speech, from medical advice to legal counsel [1].
The case now returns to the Tenth Circuit for a full strict-scrutiny analysis. That court must determine whether Colorado can demonstrate a compelling interest in protecting minors from conversion therapy and whether the statutory prohibition is narrowly drawn to that end. If Colorado fails either prong, the statute falls. If it survives, the resulting opinion will serve as a template for other jurisdictions defending comparable laws. Either outcome is likely to generate further Supreme Court review, making the Tenth Circuit's forthcoming decision a critical waypoint in what is now a national constitutional reckoning over professional speech regulation.