By Kaelea Shaner (she/her)
Kaelea is a board member of the National LGBTQ+ Bar’s Law Student Congress.
January 7 is quietly becoming an important date on the global LGBTQ+ human rights calendar. On January 7, 2022, Canada’s federal conversion therapy ban came into force, creating new Criminal Code offenses that target the provision of conversion therapy as well as those who profit from it, advertise it, and take a child abroad to undergo it. Around the same time, survivor-led advocacy groups began building momentum around recognizing January 7 as International Day to End Conversion Therapy (IDECT). The goal of this day is to honor survivors of the practice, educate the public about the practice, and press for full legal bans worldwide.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, conversion therapy is taking a very different trajectory in the eyes of the law. In Chiles v. Salazar, the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether Colorado may prohibit licensed mental health professionals from providing conversion therapy to LGBTQ+ minors, and whether such a prohibition is unconstitutional “viewpoint discrimination” under the First Amendment. The Court is expected to decide the case by the end of its 2025-2026 term (typically by June 2026).
The decision in Chiles could ultimately reshape how far states can go in regulating professional practice when that practice is primarily conducted through speech. Given that, it may also determine whether a growing set of state safeguards for LGBTQ+ youth can survive this type of aggressive First Amendment framing.
What is conversion therapy?
Conversion therapy is an effort to change an individual’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity. It refers to practices aimed at altering, suppressing, or “reducing” a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. Historically, conversion therapy has taken many forms, from talk-therapy models to aversive techniques, hypnosis, transplantation, and coercive religious interventions. What remains common is that all forms treat LGBTQ+ identity as a defect in need of curing.
Major medical and mental health organizations have resoundingly debunked conversion therapy, finding it to be both ineffective and harmful to patients. The American Psychological Association has affirmed that these efforts do not reliably change sexual orientation and can be harmful to the youth involved. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry describes conversion therapy as premised on a false pathologizing of LGBTQ+ identities and warns of harms. Synthesis of the full body of research literature on conversion therapy connect exposure to it with elevated risks of depression, anxiety, social isolation, and suicidality.
Inconsistent protections across the U.S.
In the United States, most conversion therapy prohibitions come from regulating licensed mental health professionals. These regulations focus primarily on treatment of minors by providers. As of 2025, 23 states (and the District of Columbia) prohibit licensed healthcare providers from subjecting minors to conversion therapy, while others partially restrict the practice. Many states still have no laws or regulations on the topic at all.
Despite these bans, there are still limitations in some states. Laws often do not extend to cover unlicensed or purely religious actors. Some states preempt or deter local protections, which weakens their enforcement and coverage. The result is that a young person’s protection from conversion therapy can be dependent upon their ZIP code. This patchwork is one reason why Chiles matters so much; if the Court constitutionalizes a broad speech-based right to provide conversion therapy, state-level protections could become far more difficult to defend all over the country.
Conduct regulation or censorship?
Colorado’s law (like many other states’) frames conversion therapy for minors as unprofessional conduct by licensed practitioners. In September 2024, the Tenth Circuit upheld the law, concluding it primarily regulates professional conduct (a therapeutic treatment) even though it is often carried out through speech.
Other courts have taken an opposing view; the Eleventh Circuit struck down similar local bans in Florida, treating talk therapy as protected speech and applying strict scrutiny to invalidate the ordinances. This represents the point of contention at issue in Chiles: whether therapy is best understood as professional treatment which can be regulated by the state, or speech which the state can very rarely restrict.
The Supreme Court has been circling this terrain for years. Earlier federal court decisions upholding bans, including the Ninth Circuit’s Pickup v. Brown and the Third Circuit’s King v. Governor of New Jersey, leaned solidly on the idea that the state may regulate professional conduct and professional speech within the standard of care. Subsequent decisions however, like the Supreme Court’s decision in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra (NIFLA) held that content-based restrictions on professional speech were subject to strict scrutiny, the highest standard of review for assessing the constitutionality of government action.
This leaves uncertainty, with a Court increasingly receptive to First Amendment claims framed as protecting religiously motivated speakers. As such, advocates and the broader LGBTQ+ legal community are likely to be concerned with the outcome of Chiles.
Chiles v. Salazar: what the Court is being asked to decide
The question presented in Chiles is a constitutional question of whether a law that prohibits licensed counselors from providing conversion therapy to minors a permissible regulation of professional conduct, or an unconstitutional restriction on speech based on viewpoint.
Reporting around the case suggests that the Court’s conservative majority has expressed skepticism around letting states resolve contested issues by declaring a professional consensus. That skepticism, however, rests on the underlying presumption that LGBTQ+ identity is a condition to be treated. At the same time, however, it is important to note that this case, as of this writing, has yet to be decided. What we can say, responsibly, is that the arguments and early coverage indicate meaningful risk that the Court could narrow states’ ability to prohibit conversion therapy for minors, either by striking bans outright or by imposing a demanding standard of review that makes such laws more difficult to defend.
Canada’s criminal model and Europe’s expanding human rights efforts
Canada’s approach to conversion therapy stands out in terms of the breadth of its coverage. Under Bill C-4, Canada created Criminal Code offenses that prohibit causing anyone (regardless of age or consent) to undergo conversion therapy, as well as advertising or profiting from it, and removing a child from Canada for conversion therapy abroad. Bill C-4 goes beyond the licensing rules that make up the U.S. approach. Instead, it states outright that conversion therapy is a criminal harm.
In Europe, there is a push for broader bans, though the EU’s legal structure means that change often comes through member-state action or consensus among member-states with respect to setting a particular agenda. European institutions have increasingly treated conversion practices as incompatible with dignity and fundamental human rights. The European Parliament, for instance, has catalogued various national approaches and gaps across its member states.
Most notably, a European Citizens’ Initiative calling for an EU-wide ban has gathered over one million verified statements of support and has been submitted to the European Commission. European bodies, including the European Economic and Social Committee, have emphasized the need for uniform protections and support for victims. Across many different democracies, conversion therapy is increasingly being treated as a matter of human rights and public safety.
Why this matter to LGBTQ+ law students and lawyers
The legal profession helps shape the law and exists, in part, to protect those who need it most. As such, it is incumbent on us in the field to pay close attention when vulnerable members of our community are threatened. When the Supreme Court of the United States portrays a harmful practice as constitutionally protected expression, we must be active in providing avenues for support.
If January 7 is to become a widely recognized International Day to End Conversion Therapy, it is because survivors and advocates are insisting on the basic proposition that LGBTQ+ identity is not a disorder, and that the state has a duty to protect children from practices rooted in stigma and pseudoscience. For U.S. lawyers and law students, the coming months require us to view these issues with clarity and precision. As such, the LGBTQ+ legal profession must be ready to respond to the Court’s ultimate decision.