Tag: scotus

SCOTUS To Decide If Free Speech Applies To Biology-Affirming Therapists And Their Clients

n Oct. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Chiles v. Salazar. This is the latest in a seemingly unending series of cases from Colorado that my colleagues at Alliance Defending Freedom have argued. The cases stem from the state’s apparent aversion to the First Amendment.

Not content with their failed attempts to coerce speech from artists like Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop or Lorie Smith of 303 Creative, and not deterred by clear rebukes from the Supreme Court in those cases, the state of Colorado has set its sights on professional counselors.

The law in question bans specific, voluntary counseling conversations, silences the viewpoint disfavored by the government, and leaves struggling youth and their parents with only one government-approved option. Colorado’s law bans counselors like Kaley Chiles from helping minors realign their thoughts and feelings with their biological sex — even when that is the young person’s goal for counseling.

Counseling that affirms so-called “gender transition” is fine by Colorado. Counseling that affirms biological reality is fined by Colorado, up to $5,000 per offense, and could include the loss of licensure.

This is not just an esoteric debate for law school faculty lounges; children’s health and well-being are at stake. Colorado’s defense of this blatant viewpoint discrimination and government censorship hinges on the contention, without a hint of irony, that the state is regulating conduct, not speech. How do Kaley Chiles and her clients engage in the “conduct” of talk therapy without it being speech? Perhaps a high-stakes game of charades? The notion would be laughable if the consequences were not so serious.

If government places an authoritarian thumb on the scale, allowing only one viewpoint, invading the vulnerable space between counselor and client, and dictating one outcome, the victims are children and their families. If the Supreme Court does not protect the speech of counselors like Kaley Chiles and her clients, children in Colorado and more than 20 other states with similar censorship laws will be trapped on a one-way journey to the perils of “gender transition.”

The eventual destination is one of irreversible physical damage, potential sterilization, and a lifetime of being a patient. Our nation’s struggling youth deserve compassionate counseling directed by their goals with assistance from loving parents and professionals, not a government-sponsored pathway to chemicals and surgeries that can leave permanent mental and physical scars.

Adding rhetorical insult to injury is the fact that under Colorado’s law, counseling clients to align their feelings with their biology is deemed “conversion therapy,” while counseling a client to transition from his or her sex to the opposite sex is “gender affirming care.” The assault on common sense and the English language may pale in comparison to the harm suffered by Chiles and her clients, but the First Amendment protects speech because words matter, truth matters, and any attempt by government to silence citizens matters.

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‘Blatant Viewpoint Discrimination’: Alito Slams Colorado For Telling Therapists They Can’t Affirm Kids’ Natural Sex

Associate Justice Samuel Alito exposed the absurdity of a Colorado law prohibiting so-called “conversion therapy” for minors during a high-profile case before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The moment came during oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case focused on a legal challenge brought by Colorado resident Kaley Chiles. A licensed therapist who provides counseling to children struggling with issues related to sexual orientation and gender dysphoria, Chiles alleges that the Centennial State’s “conversion therapy” law infringes upon her First Amendment right to free speech by inhibiting the types of discussions she has with her minor clients.

When questioning Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson, Alito posed a pair of hypothetical scenarios undermining the state’s argument that the statute does not engage in “viewpoint discrimination.” Alito’s questioning exposed the state’s policy of permitting therapists to encourage a child’s homosexual- or transgenderism-related behaviors, while at the same time prohibiting therapists from offering counseling that could help a child overcome them.

“So in the first situation, an adolescent male comes to a licensed therapist and says he’s attracted to other males, but he feels uneasy and guilty with those feelings. He wants to end or lessen them, and he asks for the therapist’s help in doing so,” Alito said. “The other situation is a similar adolescent male comes to a licensed therapist, says he’s attracted to other males, feels uneasy and guilty about those feelings, and he wants the therapist’s help so he will feel comfortable as a gay young man.”

The Bush appointee went on to argue that Colorado’s interpretation of the statute “dictates opposite results in those two situations … based on the viewpoint expressed.” “One viewpoint,” he noted, “is the viewpoint that a minor should be able to obtain talk therapy to overcome same-sex attraction, if that’s what … he or she wants,” while “the other is the viewpoint that the minor should not be able to obtain talk therapy to overcome same-sex attraction, even if that is what he or she wants.”

This “[l]ooks like blatant viewpoint discrimination,” Alito said.

In response, Stevenson claimed that both examples would “be permissible” under Colorado’s law “because it didn’t sound like in either case the goal was to actually change sexual orientation.”

“And again, that’s the touchstone because that’s where the harms come from,” Stevenson said.

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Eric Holder Says Democrats Should Make Packing And Rigging Supreme Court Part Of 2028 Platform

Former Attorney General Eric Holder said the next Democratic nominee for President should make “reform” of the Supreme Court a major item in their 2028 platform.

Then-President Joe Biden proposed reforms to the Supreme Court in a July 2024 op-ed in the Washington Post, citing the court’s ruling in United States v. Trump that granted immunity from prosecution for a president’s official acts and claiming the reforms, including 18-year terms for Supreme Court justices, were necessary to “strengthen the guardrails of democracy.” Holder said the conservative jurisprudence of the Supreme Court had to be stopped when former Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison asked if Democrats should target the court in the next presidential race.

“I think the Supreme Court has to be reformed, potentially, you know, expanded. We cannot simply allow this court to continue to do that which it has done,” Holder responded.

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Deranged Leftist Arrested with 200 Explosives, Molotov Cocktails, and Manifesto in Tent Outside Annual Red Mass for Supreme Court

Another deranged leftist was arrested Sunday outside of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., before a mass for the Supreme Court.

Several SCOTUS Justices were likely to attend the special mass.

Leftist Louis Geri was positioned outside the cathedral in a tent filled with 200 explosives, containers filled with chemicals, and a manifesto.

Geri warned the police to move so they would not be hurt:

Via Chillinois: LOUIS GERI told police, “You might want to stay back and call the federales, I have explosives,” according to an affidavit.

A member of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Bomb Squad then told him he needed to move because of a special event.
He replied, “I’m aware of that (referring to the Red Mass),” police wrote, and threatened to throw a bomb into the street as a demonstration, adding, “I have a hundred plus of them.”

Police said they would remove him against his will, and he replied, “Several of your people are gonna die from one of these.”

With a lighter in one hand, he handed them nine pieces of paper that amounted to a manifesto entitled, “Written Negotiations for the Avoidance of Destruction of Property via Detonation of Explosives.”

The threat against the Red Mass caused the justices to skip the annual event.

DC detectives found several canisters inside Geri’s tent, including containers with nitro methane. The detectives discovered what they described as grenades and explosives.

Louis Geri used a rubber band to secure a fuse on the explosives.

The deranged leftist also had modified bottle rockets with aluminum foil heads treated in Thermite solution.

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Supreme Court to Decide If Colorado Ban on ‘Conversion Therapy’ Violates Free Speech

The Supreme Court is scheduled to consider on Oct. 7 a free speech case involving a Colorado law that bans therapists from providing so-called conversion therapy to minors experiencing same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria.

A therapist challenging the law argues that it violates her First Amendment rights. On the other side of the debate, Colorado contends that it has the right to regulate mental health treatments for minors that it deems harmful and ineffective. It is among more than 20 states with such bans.

Colorado’s Prohibit Conversion Therapy for a Minor law, passed in 2019, prohibits licensed therapists from trying to “change an individual’s sexual orientation, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”

Therapists who violate the law could be stripped of their licenses and face fines of up to $5,000.

Colorado has stated that its regulation was enacted in response to “overwhelming” scientific evidence that conversion therapy for minors is unsafe and not effective in the long term.

A practitioner of such therapy told The Epoch Times that the therapist’s work focuses on mending psychological wounds and is not coercive or harmful.

Opponents of conversion therapy, including the American Medical Association, point to practices such as electric shock and negative feedback methods such as smelling salts or chemically induced nausea to create a psychological aversion to the unwanted behaviors or attractions.

However, according to licensed counselor Christopher Doyle of the Institute for Healthy Families, modern therapists avoid these methods and instead favor exploring clients’ attitudes on sexuality, trauma, self-perception, and relationships.

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US Supreme Court Takes Up Challenge to Hawaii’s Gun Law

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Oct. 3 to take up a new Second Amendment case related to a Hawaii law that bars the carrying of handguns on private property open to the public, such as restaurants, malls, and many businesses.

The nine justices took up an appeal by three Hawaii residents who have concealed carry licenses, and a state-based gun rights advocacy group challenging Hawaii’s law while seeking to reverse a lower court’s determination that the state law complies with the Second Amendment.

Hawaii’s gun law bans firearms on private property unless the owner has specifically allowed them on the premises. It also blocks firearms in places such as beaches, parks, bars, and restaurants that serve alcohol.

Hawaii’s measure was challenged by state residents Jason Wolford, Alison Wolford, and Atom Kasprzycki—who own firearms and have concealed carry licenses—along with the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, a gun rights organization. The defendant is listed as Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez.

In a petition to the high court submitted earlier this year, the plaintiffs ask whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the state law, “erred in holding … that Hawaii may presumptively prohibit the carry of handguns by licensed concealed carry permit holders on private property open to the public.”

A judge blocked the Hawaii law after it was challenged in court by the gun rights group and the three Maui residents. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, largely reversed that decision and allowed Hawaii to enforce the law.

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Forcing baker to make same-sex wedding cake recreates printing press censorship: scholars to SCOTUS

hirty-five years ago, Justice Antonin Scalia led a Supreme Court majority to gut the free exercise of religion under the rubric of “neutral” and “generally applicable” law, a decision that most members of the current court “have called into doubt” even as lower courts employ the 1990 Smith precedent “to permit government oppression.”

So say a former federal appellate judge, the allegedly fifth-most cited legal scholar of all time and a dozen other First Amendment and antidiscrimination law scholars, who together urge SCOTUS to “emphatically cast aside” Smith in accepting a case whose central question it has repeatedly decided.

They are joined by 16 states and several religious denominations and advocacy groups in supporting Tastries baker Cathy Miller’s SCOTUS petition to hear her eight-year legal saga, after the California Supreme Court refused to review an appeals court ruling that overturned a trial ruling in Miller’s favor for refusing to design a cake for a same-sex wedding.

The Golden State “has repeatedly compared Cathy’s religious beliefs about marriage to racism,” her lawyers at religious liberty law firm Becket said. California made the same comparison when female inmates sued to block its law incarcerating males with them.

The California appeals court distinguished its ruling from SCOTUS precedents in favor of Jack Phillips’ Masterpiece Cakeshop and Lorie Smith’s 303 Creative, against Colorado’s compelled creation of cakes and websites for same-sex weddings respectively, by claiming the cake Miller refused to make “conveyed no particularized message about the nature of marriage.”

Miller’s petition asks SCOTUS to resolve whether “compelled participation in a ceremony” is banned only when third parties view that participation as “endorsement,” if Miller must show “unfettered discretion or categorical exemptions for identical secular conduct” to prove a law is not generally applicable, and if 1990’s Smith should remain at all.

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Supreme Court Stays Ruling That Could Lead to Retrial of Death Row Prisoner

The Supreme Court on Sept. 26 temporarily stayed a federal appeals court ruling requiring that Alabama death row inmate Michael Sockwell be retried for murder.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had ruled on June 30 that Sockwell’s conviction was unconstitutional because prosecutors engaged in racial discrimination during jury selection.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who oversees emergency appeals from Alabama, issued an administrative stay of the 11th Circuit ruling. An administrative stay gives the justices more time to consider an emergency appeal.

A divided three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit had ruled that Alabama prosecutors violated Sockwell’s constitutional rights by excluding blacks from the jury at his trial.

The ruling made Sockwell eligible for retrial. He was convicted in the 1988 killing of Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff Isaiah Harris. Although Sockwell was sentenced to death, his lawyers said their client’s IQ is low enough to make him ineligible for the death penalty.

The panel majority specifically found that prosecutors violated Sockwell’s 14th Amendment rights when they “repeatedly and purposefully” turned away potential black jurors who were deemed more sympathetic to him because of their shared race.

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Trump asks Supreme Court to determine whether he can end birthright citizenship

resident Donald Trump on Friday asked the Supreme Court to take up his executive order on ending birthright citizenship, after a lower court deemed the order unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court previously narrowed the scope of injunctions against the executive order, finding that lower courts likely lacked the authority to issue sweeping injunctions, but did not rule on the constitutionality of the order.  

“The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court in an appeal obtained by CNN. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”

The Supreme Court has not weighed in on whether it will take up the overarching issue of ending the practice so far.

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Supreme Court Rules That Trump Can Withhold $4 Billion in Foreign Aid

The US Supreme Court on Friday ruled 6-3 that President Trump can withhold $4 billion in foreign aid approved by Congress.

The three liberal justices, Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson, dissented.

Earlier this month, US District Judge Amir Ali, a Biden appointee, blocked President Trump from cutting billions of dollars in USAID and foreign aid that Congress authorized.

Judge Ali ordered Trump to spend the money by the end of the month. Trump immediately appealed.

According to CNBC, the Supreme Court said, “the asserted harms to the Executive’s conduct of foreign affairs appear to outweigh the potential harm.”

CNN reported:

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed President Donald Trump to freeze $4 billion in foreign aid payments, handing the White House a significant victory in its months-long quest to claw back spending that was approved by Congress last year.

At issue is $4 billion in foreign aid, including for global health and HIV programs, that was allocated by Congress, but that Trump deemed wasteful and has been fighting on two fronts. In addition to defending the aid cuts in federal court, his administration is also seeking to “rescind” the money through Congress.

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