By AZ Mirror
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a conservative Christian counselor who argued that Colorado’s 2019 law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ minors may violate her First Amendment right to free speech.
The court’s 8-1 opinion, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, holds that the Colorado law seeks to “regulate speech based on viewpoint,” and therefore a legal standard known as “strict scrutiny” must be applied to it. The decision sends the case back to a lower court to apply that standard and determine the law’s constitutionality.
“The First Amendment stands as a bulwark against any effort to prescribe an orthodoxy of views, reflecting a belief that each American enjoys an inalienable right to speak his mind and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for finding truth,” Gorsuch wrote. “Laws like Colorado’s, which suppress speech based on viewpoint, represent an egregious assault on both commitments.”
Gov. Jared Polis, who signed House Bill 19-1129 into law in 2019, said in a statement Tuesday that he was “evaluating the U.S. Supreme Court ruling and working to figure out how to better protect LGBTQ youth and free speech in Colorado.” Polis is the first openly gay man elected governor of a U.S. state.
