Supreme Court rules against Colorado ban on conversion therapy, cites 1A

[kan...@aol.com]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/31/supreme-court-colorado-ban-conversion-therapy-ruling

The ruling was 8-1; which prompts me to think hard about why I disagree. 

So Colorado had a law preventing counsellors from doing conversion therapy on LGBTQ and trans patients. 1A was cited; the speech part, not the religion part. 

What was said is that therapy is SPEECH, and is thus protected. I'd argue that in a patient/counsellor relationship, speech is TREATMENT.  Elana Kagan made the best point here, stating that therapy aimed toward affirming a patient's choice of orientation is protected. Therefore the "mirror speech" has to be protected too. 

This I get. But it seems to invite really bad therapies. Conversion therapy has been shown to have a LOT of negative outcomes- increased depression, suicide, etc. Also, does this protection allow a therapist to, for instance, counsel a rape victim to go sleep with her rapist as a way of taking control of the situation? That's an extreme example; but the point is that patient/counsellor speech is treatment. 

That's why I disagree with the ruling. 

OTOH, maybe the criminal court isn't the place to regulate what a counsellor does. For that there's malpractice rulings. 

I dunno. I spent 40 years in the ER dispensing  advice. Many/most cases involved giving people advice on what they should do. Yes, I sutured plenty of people and took care of fractures, asthma attacks, etc. But a lot of the time I gave patients advice on next steps. I called it "drawing a road map". I suppose my speech was  protected by 1A. But if the advice was crappy, I could still be held responsible. 

So maybe in the end SCOTUS got this right. If therapy yields bad results, malpractice is the remedy. The tort court is the place to regulate counsellor/patient speech/therapy. 

[kan...@aol.com]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/supreme-court-awful-conversion-therapy-kagan-sotomayor-why.html

This article has me off the fence. I was right when I said that in counselling sessions, speech is TREATMENT. As such it should be subject to regulation. Now if a minister or other non-licensed person wants to do conversion therapy, so be it. But licensed therapists are TREATING patients; and as such should be held to standards. As for the "both sides" argument put forth by Kagan, that was wrong. I'm not allowed to dispense bad advice along with good advice in the sake of some balancing act. We're medical providers, not philosophers. Same with counselling. 

They got this one wrong. But at least it wasn't some Dem/Rep B.S. divide. They all held hands and jumped together. All except the newbie.