A court out of step with science and humanity by Virginia Robertson

In a decision that feels less like jurisprudence and more like a regression, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors, a practice widely condemned as ineffective, coercive and deeply harmful. The ruling does not merely erase a state safeguard; it sends a message that ideology may now outrank evidence and that vulnerable children can once again be subjected to discredited interventions under the guise of “therapy.”

Let’s be clear about what conversion therapy is and what it is not. It is not therapy in any meaningful clinical sense. It is not grounded in credible science. It is not endorsed by any major medical or psychological association. What it is, instead, is a collection of practices built on the premise that being gay, lesbian or bisexual is a defect to be corrected. That premise has been rejected for decades by the very institutions tasked with understanding human health and behaviour.

Yet the Court’s decision effectively elevates that rejected premise into something permissible, even defensible under constitutional protection. In doing so, it sidesteps not just scientific consensus but basic moral reasoning. When the state steps back from protecting minors, especially in matters of mental health, it is not neutral. It is complicit.

The defenders of this ruling will likely cloak their arguments in the language of liberty: parental rights, religious freedom and free speech. These are serious principles, deserving of protection. But they are not absolute, and they have never been interpreted as a license to harm. Society routinely draws lines when children are at risk, whether in medicine, education or basic welfare. We do not allow parents to deny life-saving treatment based on belief alone. We do not permit professionals to practice methods proven to cause harm. Why, then, should this be any different?

What makes this ruling particularly troubling is not just its outcome but its underlying implication: that sexual orientation is mutable, suspect, or in need of correction. This is not simply a legal stance; it is a cultural signal. It tells LGBTQ youth, already at higher risk for depression, anxiety and suicide that their identities remain negotiable in the eyes of the highest court in the land.

There is also a deeper institutional concern. Courts are not meant to operate in a vacuum of expertise. When decades of research, clinical data and professional consensus converge on a single conclusion that conversion therapy is ineffective and harmful, a decision that ignores that body of knowledge raises uncomfortable questions. Is the Court interpreting the Constitution, or is it selectively filtering reality through an ideological lens?

The damage of this ruling will not be abstract. It will be felt in therapy rooms where children are told they are broken. It will echo in households where parents, emboldened by legal validation, seek to “fix” what was never broken to begin with. And it will linger in the quiet, internal struggles of young people who are forced to reconcile their identities with a system that refuses to fully accept them.

History has a way of judging such moments with clarity that contemporaries often lack. This decision will likely be remembered not as a triumph of freedom, but as a failure of responsibility, a moment when the Court chose to look past both science and compassion.

The question now is not just what the Court has done, but what the rest of the country will do in response.