Alright, this is one of those legal moments where what a state tries to shut down ends up doing the exact opposite—and that’s exactly the angle Jonathan Turley is leaning into.
So here’s the setup. Colorado passes a law aimed at banning what it defines as conversion therapy for minors. The intention, at least on paper, is to regulate a type of counseling the state views as harmful. But once that law gets challenged, it doesn’t stay a local issue—it turns into a national First Amendment case.
And that’s where things flip.
The Supreme Court comes in with an 8–1 decision and says: you can’t do this—not because of what the state thinks about the practice, but because of how the law treats speech. The key issue isn’t just therapy—it’s viewpoint. If a counselor is allowed to say one thing but not another based on the state’s preference, that crosses into unconstitutional territory.
Turley’s point is pretty blunt: Colorado keeps trying to regulate speech in this space, and each time it does, it ends up strengthening free speech protections instead. That’s the “irony” he’s talking about. What was meant to limit certain conversations is now reinforcing the legal boundary around them.
He also zeroes in on the dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, which took a very different approach. Her argument leans toward treating this kind of counseling as conduct that the state can regulate, rather than protected speech. Turley sees that as the more concerning angle—not because it lost, but because of what it implies about how far regulation could go.
Meanwhile, the majority opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, sticks to a familiar principle: the government doesn’t get to decide which viewpoints are acceptable, even if it believes it’s acting in the interest of public health. That’s where the First Amendment steps in—as a guardrail, not a suggestion.
And then you’ve got Justice Elena Kagan, who agrees with the outcome but adds an important clarification. Flip the scenario, she says—ban the opposite viewpoint—and it would still be unconstitutional. The rule applies both ways. That’s the consistency the Court is trying to maintain.
So what you’re left with is a case that started as a state-level policy decision and ended up reinforcing a broader constitutional principle. Colorado tried to draw a line around certain kinds of speech—and in doing so, helped define just how hard that line is to draw in the first place.
