Colorado’s conversion-therapy ban survives religious challenge

A licensed Colorado counselor lost a constitutional challenge to the state’s conversion-therapy restriction after the Tenth Circuit said the law does not target religion. For counselors who object on faith-based grounds, that matters because the court treated the rule as a neutral professional limit, not a warning shot aimed at religious practice.

The ruling leaves Colorado’s counseling restriction for minors on firmer ground against this particular free-exercise theory. It does not decide the larger policy fight over conversion therapy itself, only whether this law was written or applied in a way that discriminates because of religion.

Why neutrality mattered

The court focused on the law’s plain text and said it is neutral on its face. That phrase does the heavy lifting in Free Exercise Clause cases, because a rule that applies without religious targeting is harder to strike down as an attack on faith.

Kaley Chiles tried to show that the state restriction burdened religious practice because of its religious character. The panel was not persuaded. It said she failed to show the law restricts religious practices because of their religious nature, which is the line the court said she needed to cross to win on this argument.

What the ruling leaves open

The case, Chiles v. Salazar, involves Colorado officials who oversee licensed professional counselors. The decision means the state can keep defending the restriction as a neutral rule for licensed providers who counsel minors, even when opponents say it collides with religious views about sexuality and identity.

That leaves one route to a challenge much narrower. The court did not say Colorado’s policy is beyond attack on every constitutional theory, but it did reject the claim that the ban was anti-religion on its face or in the way Chiles described it.