5 things to know about the Supreme Court’s ruling on a conversion therapy ban | Opinion
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against Colorado’s law banning licensed therapists from performing conversion therapy on minors, finding the talk therapy portion violated the First Amendment. Columnist David Mastio writes that the decision forced him to reconsider whether he had been consistent enough in his support of free speech.
FULL STORY: Supreme Court reminds us 1st Amendment protects really terrible speech | Opinion Here are 5 key takeaways:
- Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion, and Democratic appointees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan both signed onto it. Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter.
- Colorado argued it was regulating professional conduct, not speech. The court rejected that reasoning, with Gorsuch writing that professionals don’t lose speech protections because their work is relabeled a “treatment modality.”
- The ruling does not affect bans on physical methods. Outlawing electro-convulsive treatments and drugs to “cure” minors of their sexual orientation remains the law.
- The court cited two earlier cases involving speech that aided terrorists — post-9/11 prosecutions of lawyers and doctors, and a 9-0 ruling that Twitter allowing ISIS recruitment speech didn’t make the platform a participant in attacks. If speech helping terrorists was protected, the court reasoned, talk therapy was too.
- Kansas and Missouri have debated conversion therapy bans but never passed them.
The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The full story in the link at top was reported, written and edited entirely by journalists.
This story was originally published April 2, 2026 at 3:26 PM.
David Mastio
Opinion Contributor,
The Kansas City Star