Colorado conversion therapy limits head back to federal court

Colorado’s limits on conversion therapy for licensed mental-health professionals are back in federal court after the Tenth Circuit sent Kaley Chiles’s challenge back on May 27, 2026. The case, filed in Colorado, now turns on how far the state can go in regulating what counselors say to clients.

For Chiles and for other licensed counselors watching the case, the practical question is whether the state can keep enforcing the restriction once the First Amendment is applied at full strength, not the watered-down version that applies to ordinary professional regulation.

A tougher constitutional standard

The Supreme Court had already reversed the Tenth Circuit’s earlier judgment and said Colorado’s law regulates Chiles’s speech in a viewpoint-discriminatory way, which means strict scrutiny applies. That is the hardest standard in constitutional law, and it requires the state to show the restriction is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest.

Judge Hartz dissented from sending the case back again. He wrote that the court could have resolved the appeal directly and said the law does not come close to satisfying strict scrutiny. He also questioned whether Colorado could justify a ban that does not reach the same kind of therapy when it is provided by people without licenses, including clergy.

What remains unresolved

The case does not end the fight over Colorado’s rules. It shifts the battle to whether the state can defend a law that reaches licensed counselors’ speech in a way the Supreme Court has already flagged as constitutionally suspect.

That leaves the broader policy intact for the moment, but under a far less comfortable legal cloud than before.