The Supreme Court has kicked off its new term with two extremely important but difficult cases involving sex, race, and partisan power in Congress.
One is a First Amendment case dealing with “conversion therapy,” plunging the Court once again into trans issues. The other deals with redrawing House districts along racial lines and could determine which party wins the 2026 midterms. Here’s what you need to know to make sense of both cases.
Chiles v. Salazar concerns the constitutionality of a 2019 Colorado statute banning what the state calls “conversion therapy” for minors. Unfortunately, the statute is not a model of clarity or honesty.
In the old days, conversion therapy referred to medical efforts to change people’s sexual orientation from gay to straight, predicated on the notion that homosexuality was a disease to be cured. Various caring techniques were employed in these so-called therapies, including pairing homoerotic stimulation with painful, convulsive electroshocks. After the medical profession finally stopped calling homosexuality a disease in the 1970s, conversion therapy was broadly repudiated.
Colorado’s statute, however, broadens this well-understood definition of conversion therapy. It bans efforts at changing not only kids’ sexual orientation, but also their “gender identity.” Yet the statute also says that “assistance to a person undergoing gender transition” does not count as conversion therapy.
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