Alliance Statement on the Supreme Court’s Chiles Decision

 

The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity (ATCSI) welcomes the Supreme Court of the United States’ 8-1 decision in Chiles v Salazar declaring state and municipal bans on speech-based change exploring therapies unconstitutional. 

 

The case involved Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado, who filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of a Colorado law prohibiting “conversion therapy.” Chiles and her attorneys argued that the law violates the First Amendment’s Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses, both facially and as applied to her. In her suit, Chiles argued that before the law was enacted, she freely discussed topics such as sexual attractions, behaviors, gender roles, and identity with clients. However, since the implementation of Colorado’s ban, she indicated she had to avoid conversations that might be perceived as violations of the law. She alleged Colorado’s law forced her to deny voluntary counseling aligned with her and her client’s religious beliefs, hindering her ability to fully explore topics like sexuality and gender with certain clients. 

 

The ATCSI has been engaged in challenging these laws both in legal action and scholarly writings. This began with California’s first-in-the-nation therapy ban in 2012, which was legally contested in Pickup v Brown by several ATSCI officers, including current President David Pickup, LMFT. In addition, ATSCI officers were integral to challenging “conversion therapy” bans in Florida (Vazzo v Tampa Bay, Otto v Boca Raton) in 2019 that led the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn such laws in their jurisdiction, causing a split in Federal Court of Appeals rulings that prompted SCOTUS to take up the Chiles case. 

 

Finally, the ATCSI submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of Chiles, highlighting the ideological monoculture that currently exists within academic and research communities studying change, the limits of appealing to the statements and resolutions of professional associations, and the downstream effects of this monoculture on the depictions of professionals and traditionally religious persons as well as on research and policy. This brief was cited multiple times by Chiles’ attorneys. 

 

In response to the decision, ATCSI President David Pickup observed, "The effects of ideological monoculture in professional and religious circles that demand all people accept LGBTQ assertions of inborn causality and immutability has resulted in great harm to many clients and prospective clients since 2012. Those clients who have been forced to believe in LGBTQ ideology have faced irreversible harm in some cases. I am so very thankful that the US Supreme Court has legally ended these harms."

 

The ATCSI appreciates that the Supreme Court recognized what the ATSCI has been asserting for decades, namely, that there is no definitive and methodologically sound research attributing harm to speech-based, client-initiated therapies exploring clients’ potential for change in their unwanted same-sex and gender feelings and behaviors. The ATSCI will continue to advocate for the rights of clients to pursue such therapies and the rights of counselors to provide them. 

 

In addition, with the overturning of these laws, the ATSCI recognizes the increased importance of its mission to provide education and training to clinicians on best practices through our annual conferences and the Journal of Human Sexuality. The ATCSI remains committed to promoting an ethical therapy environment free from coercion and shaming that respects client autonomy. 

 

The ATCSI believes the SCOTUS decision in Chiles provides a unique cultural moment that clarifies the dangers to free speech, religious liberty, and client autonomy that can occur when  advocacy goals of politicians and professional organizations far outpace what social science is credibly able to say. Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of the justices recognized this and decided accordingly.

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For further information, visit www.therapeuticchoice.org and www.journalofhumansexuality.com   

 

For further interviews, contact David Pickup, LMFT, at (346) 739-1144.

 

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