Youth's Lives Every Day
In March 2025, the Supreme Court of the United States announced that they would hear a case on the topic of conversion therapy – the dangerous, discredited practice that attempts to change a young person’s sexuality or gender.
Here’s what you need to know about the case:
What is Chiles v. Salazar about?
In this case, the justices will hear a challenge to a current Colorado state law. This law protects youth under the age of 18 from being subjected to conversion therapy by licensed mental health professionals. The petitioner in this case is Kaley Chiles. Chiles is a mental health counselor in Colorado who filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado, claiming that the law in question infringes on her freedom of speech. The respondent in this case is Patty Salazar, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, and she is representing the state of Colorado. Colorado maintains this law is a legitimate regulation of a specific health care treatment, and protects kids in the state from abusive practices that are proven to cause harm, including increasing depression, anxiety, and suicide risk.
What is conversion therapy?
Conversion therapy refers to practices that seek to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Despite their name, these practices are in no way legitimate “therapy,” and lack any standards or basis in evidence. These unscientific practices are rooted in outdated ideas that LGBTQ+ people are “unnatural” or need to be “cured.” Historically, these practices have involved behavior modification and painful aversive treatments, as well as discredited psychoanalytic theories such as the claim that being gay is “caused” by faulty parenting, trauma, or abuse.
What does the current Colorado law say?
Colorado’s law is similar to more than twenty other state laws that very narrowly and specifically prohibit state-licensed mental health professionals from attempting to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Importantly, this law does not apply to non-licensed religious counselors. It also very clearly includes a clause that allows therapists to help young people explore their sexual orientation or gender identity ethically. This is an important distinction: by law, state-licensed therapists are already allowed to help youth explore their identity. They cannot, however, pressure children toward a specific outcome (E.g. promising a gay person that, after counseling, they will “no longer be gay”).
What does the research say?
Extensive research has been conducted on the topic of conversion therapy, and its harms on young people. Research shows that LGBTQ+ youth who experienced conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year. These practices are also associated with an extensive list of long-lasting social and emotional consequences, including: depression, anxiety, suicidality, substance abuse, a range of post-traumatic responses, loss of connection to community, damaged familial relationships, self-blame, guilt, and shame.
What do experts say?
Medical consensus on this issue is clear: conversion therapy is a debunked, rejected practice that causes psychological harm to young people. Every major medical and mental health association in the United States, including The American Psychiatric Association, The American Psychological Association, and The American Medical Association, has condemned these practices – and they support laws that protect kids from harm, like the Colorado law at the center of this case. Ethical mental health professionals support these regulations because the psychological harms of these practices are clear – and because they know it is important for people seeking mental health support to feel they can trust the care they receive.
It’s not just the medical and mental health experts that support Colorado’s law. Protections against conversion therapy have broad bipartisan, religious, and public support, too.
Laws that protect young people from conversion therapy, like Colorado’s law, have broad bipartisan and religious support. Since 2012, Republican legislators have supported bans on conversion therapy introduced into legislatures all across the United States more than 1,000 times.
Many religious groups continue to express support for banning these dangerous practices, with nearly 400 religious leaders across the globe calling to end conversion therapy worldwide in 2020. In recent years, dozens of former “ex-gay” movement leaders and founders of conversion therapy programs have publicly denounced these practices, too.
A majority of Americans reject conversion therapy, and support efforts to protect LGBTQ+ youth from its harms. 2025 polling data found that a majority of adults in the United States (56%) think conversion therapy should be illegal to use on minors.
What will happen next?
This is not the first time laws protecting youth from conversion therapy have been challenged in court; in nearly every case, the laws have been upheld as constitutional, and the Supreme Court has actually declined appeals of cases that allowed bans to continue several times. While no one can predict how the justices will rule, the outcome of this decision will have significant impacts on the health and safety of LGBTQ+ young people across the United States.
If Colorado’s law is upheld, Colorado and other states will remain free to exercise their traditional legal authority to regulate medical and mental health care to protect minors from ineffective and harmful practices. If Colorado’s law is overturned, Colorado and other states may no longer be able to regulate mental health treatments that jeopardize the safety and well-being of minors.
How has The Trevor Project weighed in on this case?
The Trevor Project, together with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, filed an amicus brief, or “friend of the court” brief in this case. The brief presents evidence on the serious mental health harms that conversion therapy causes for LGBTQ+ youth, reflecting peer-reviewed research, national survey data, stories of conversion therapy survivors, and The Trevor Project’s unique insights, hearing directly for youth in crisis describing their experiences with these practices.
For decades, The Trevor Project has been a leading voice in the fight to end conversion therapy in the United States and across the globe, and remains committed to protecting LGBTQ+ young people from this dangerous and discredited practice — and creating a world where all young people feel safe, seen, and supported exactly as they are.
*For the latest news on LGBTQ+ youth & what actions you can take to support them, sign up for The Trevor Project’s advocacy action alerts by visiting trvr.org/AdvocacyAlerts.*
