In Colorado, if a person suffering from gender confusion wanted professional help in overcoming feelings of gender dysphoria, licensed mental health counselors and psychiatrists were BANNED from providing help.

Instead, the state forced those professionals to affirm the gender dysphoria, even if that is not what the client wanted!

More than 100 cities and states took the same action — BANNING Christian counseling for gender dysphoria and unwanted same-sex desires. Liberty Counsel has led the fight to free counselors and clients since 2012, with our case Pickup v. Brown in 2012, and our Otto v. Boca Raton and Vazzo v. City of Tampa cases we won at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned counseling bans in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. These wins set the stage for Chiles v. Salazar, in which we submitted two amicus briefs.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Chiles, holding that a ban on Christian change counseling violates the First Amendment and overturning Colorado’s ban. Hallelujah!

Writing for the majority, Justice Gorsuch issued a scathing condemnation of the cities and states — and the lone dissenting opinion on the High Court — which tried to rob Christian counselors and their patients of the basic constitutional rights. Gorsuch raised many of Liberty Counsel’s arguments in our Christian counseling cases, including our win at the High Court for crisis pregnancy centers.

Help us overturn the rest of the bans with your gift today!

From Gorsuch’s majority opinion:

The Constitution does not protect the right of some to speak freely; it protects the right of all. It safeguards not only popular ideas; it secures, even and especially, the right to voice dissenting views. ...

From three specific sets of laws, Colorado and the dissent [Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson] ask us to recognize a cavernous “First Amendment Free Zone,” ... one in which States may censor almost any speech they consider “substandard care.'

Far from a test of professional consensus, the First Amendment rests instead on a simple truth: “[T]he people lose” whenever the government transforms prevailing opinion into enforced conformity.

But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country. It reflects instead a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth. However well-intentioned, any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an “egregious” assault on both of those commitments (emphasis added).

This is a monumental WIN for free speech, freedom of religion, and the millions of mental health professionals and their patients seeking relief from gender dysphoria and unwanted sexual desires.

But now we must enforce it ...

While this win sets the national precedent, the remaining 86 cities and states, which have banned Christian change counseling, must now be dragged to court to force them to comply with the Chiles v. Salazar ruling.

Liberty Counsel already represents counselors in other states with bans still in effect. Now we must litigate to free these mental health professionals and their patients as well.

This ruling comes not a moment too soon in this age where the LGBTQ is furiously trying to sterilize and mutilate boys and girls into the “transgender” movement as fast as they can. Many of the detransitioning patients we have met with were prevented by city and state laws from getting the Christian counseling that could have stopped their transitions. Now we fight to keep cities and states from forcing children and adults into the transgender trap through their own Christian counseling bans.

Help us make sure people have the RIGHT to get off the trans train. Together, we can free a generation from the transgender trap and ensure that Christian counseling is never, ever banned again!

YOU are making freedom possible! Thank you for your support.

God bless, and may you have the best Easter yet!

Mat Staver
Founder and Chairman
Liberty Counsel

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Source:

“Chiles v. Salazar.” Supreme Court of the United States, March 31, 2026. Supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-539_fd9g.pdf.