Elena Kagan just did more damage to the progressive agenda than any Republican could have dreamed of. And she did it on purpose. The Supreme Court dropped an 8-1 ruling torching Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors — and Kagan wrote a concurrence that basically told every Democrat in America, “Hey, you idiots built a legal weapon that points both directions.”
Brilliant work, Democrats. Truly inspired stuff.
Kagan spelled it out in terms so simple even a gender studies major could follow along: “Consider a hypothetical law that is the mirror image of Colorado’s. Instead of barring talk therapy designed to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity, this law bars therapy affirming those things.” She called the constitutional issue “straightforward” — meaning Texas, Florida, and Tennessee can ban gender-affirming talk therapy tomorrow morning using Colorado’s own playbook.
The progressives built a legal boomerang, threw it as hard as they could, and it’s screaming back toward their teeth. Couldn’t have happened to nicer people.
The whole case started with Kaley Chiles, a Christian counselor in Colorado Springs who uses regular talk therapy — just words, just conversation — with clients who voluntarily walk through her door and set their own goals. No electric shocks, no strapping anyone to a chair, none of the Frankenstein nonsense the left conjures up when they hear “conversion therapy.” Chiles never even performed the procedure Colorado banned because the state had her so terrified of losing her license that she censored herself preemptively.
And the kicker? Colorado dragged this fight all the way to the Supreme Court to defend a law it never once enforced. Six years. Zero sanctions. Zero enforcement actions. Not a single therapist punished.
Democrats burned through God knows how much taxpayer money — money that could have gone toward, say, maintaining the 544 structurally deficient bridges in Colorado — to defend a law that nobody ever used. That’s the Democratic Party in a nutshell. They’ll let your bridges collapse while they fight to the death over a symbolic speech code that gathered dust for six years.
Justice Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion and drove a truck through Colorado’s entire argument: “The First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.” He also dropped this one — “medical consensus is not static; it evolves and always has.” A prevailing standard of care “cannot mark the outer boundary of what they may say tomorrow.”
Translation: the government doesn’t get to muzzle therapists based on whatever the medical priesthood happens to believe this week. (These are the same “experts” who spent forty years telling us eggs would kill us. Eggs! They couldn’t figure out EGGS and we’re supposed to let them decide what therapists are allowed to say?)
The lone dissenter was — who else — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. You remember her. The woman who famously couldn’t define “woman” during her own confirmation hearing. KBJ dramatically read her dissent from the bench, crying about how the decision “opens a dangerous can of worms” and moaning that “our medical system unravels” because therapists now have a “constitutional right to provide substandard medical care.”
“Substandard medical care.” A conversation between a counselor and a willing patient is now “substandard medical care.” But pumping a fourteen-year-old full of puberty blockers and scheduling her for a double mastectomy before she can drive? That’s the gold standard, apparently. Somebody get this woman a fainting couch.
Now for the part that should make every conservative grin from ear to ear. During oral arguments, Colorado’s solicitor general Shannon Stevenson got asked about Kagan’s mirror-image scenario. Her response boiled down to, “Well, that’s different because *our* speech bans are the good kind.” That’s not a legal argument. That’s what a six-year-old says when you catch her eating frosting out of the can with her fingers — “But I was *hungry*!”
Justice Alito called the law “blatant viewpoint discrimination.” Justice Barrett asked the one question Democrats never want to answer: “Can a state pick a side?” As of Friday, the answer is a thundering no.
And the timing — oh, the timing was chef’s kiss perfect. The ruling landed on Transgender Day of Visibility. The Supreme Court picked THAT day to announce that the legal framework protecting gender-affirming therapy from government interference is the exact same framework that now protects conversion therapy. We’d call that poetic justice, but poetry requires subtlety and this was more like a brick through a window.
This marks Colorado’s third humiliating loss to the Alliance Defending Freedom at the Supreme Court. First the baker who wouldn’t make a gay wedding cake. Then the web designer who wouldn’t build same-sex wedding websites. Now this. Colorado Democrats keep marching up to the Supreme Court with their speech-policing laws and keep getting pantsed in front of the whole country. Three strikes and you’re out everywhere except the Democratic Party, where failure is just a reason to try the same stupid thing a fourth time.
The Trevor Project — because of course they weighed in — called the ruling “a tragic step backward for our country that will put young lives at risk.” Oh, spare us the lecture. You know what actually puts young lives at risk? Handing teenagers hormone prescriptions and scheduling them for irreversible surgeries before they’re old enough to rent a car. But sure, WE’RE the monsters because a counselor is allowed to have a conversation.
The Trump administration urged the Court to strike down this law, and Principal Deputy Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan argued explicitly that under Colorado’s legal theory, Tennessee could ban gender-affirming talk therapy tomorrow. Now Tennessee can. And Texas. And Florida. And every red state that spent the last six years watching this case with a notepad and a highlighter.
Democrats spent years building the machinery to control what therapists are allowed to say to their own patients. They just never stopped to imagine that someone else might sit down at the controls. Kagan saw the whole disaster coming from a mile away and wrote it down in black and white so nobody can pretend they weren’t warned.
We’d send them a sympathy card, but we’re fresh out. Must have used the last one after the election.
—