U.S. Supreme Court case may reshape the reach of state power

The Supreme Court may end up overturning a Colorado ban on gay conversion therapy for minors and in the process could reshape how states regulate licensed mental health professionals, reports Newsweek.

The case Chiles v. Salazar is before the high court and turns on a single constitutional question: whether Colorado’s restriction on “any practice or treatment … that attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity” is a permissible regulation of professional conduct or an unconstitutional limit on speech.

Newsweek spoke with Ryan Thoreson, an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, about the case. Some legal experts think the Supreme Court could end up overturning Colorado’s ban.

Thoreson noted in Newsweek that the high court has been “consistently solicitous toward free speech and religious exercise claims brought by conservative litigants, even when those claims undermine longstanding laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination and harm.”

At UC Law, Thoreson’s scholarship examines the legal and social regulation of gender and sexuality and spans constitutional law, comparative and international law, and human rights law.

Read the full story in Newsweek.

Learn more about UC’s Ryan Thoreson online.

Featured top image from Istock/Mohamad Faizal Bin Ramil.