EJ Haust, the official guest host of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision to revisit Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors is a major win for First Amendment protections.
The case, Chiles v. Salazar, involves a challenge to Colorado’s 2019 law prohibiting licensed therapists from engaging in “conversion therapy” with minors. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said lower courts applied the wrong legal standard and must reconsider the law under strict scrutiny, which is the highest level of constitutional review.
Speaking during Tuesday’s broadcast minutes after the ruling was handed down, Haust described the court’s decision as decisive and argued that the overwhelming majority signals a fundamental constitutional issue.
“When it’s 8-1, you know that the merits of the case clearly state that this is a violation of First Amendment rights,” she said.
The Court’s lone dissenter, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, maintained that states have broader authority to regulate licensed professionals, particularly in healthcare settings involving minors.
Haust strongly disagreed, criticizing Jackson’s reasoning and delivery.
“She’s not very clever. She is bombastic and outrageous just for the sake of it… I don’t appreciate anything that comes out of that woman’s mouth. She talks and talks, but doesn’t get anything out,” Haust said.
In contrast, Haust praised the majority opinion, quoting directly from Justice Gorsuch’s language, “The First Amendment stands as a bulwark against any effort to prescribe an orthodoxy of views, reflecting a belief that each American enjoys an inalienable right to speak his mind and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for finding truth.”
Haust emphasized that the broader issue is not the validity of conversion therapy itself, but individual choice and government limits.
“Whether you believe in that therapy or not is really not the issue… If I’m an individual and I’m choosing my therapist, I don’t want the state of Colorado to say what they can and cannot tell me,” she stressed.
She also criticized what she described as inconsistency in Colorado’s policies on youth therapy.
“Colorado has made it such a big deal to say that you can affirm care… So much so that they said all other therapies are no good.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
