Unpacking The Supreme Court’s Conversion Therapy Decision

In 2019, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, the first openly gay governor elected in the U.S., signed a bill banning conversion therapy in the state. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that ban may be unconstitutional.

Conversion therapy seeks to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The practice has been deemed unethical and ineffective by most major mental health groups. And a study from the Trevor Project found that young people who go through conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to have reported attempting suicide compared to those who did not.

Only one Supreme Court justice dissented in this case. Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that this decision “opens a dangerous can of worms” and “threatens to impair states’ ability to regulate the provision of medical care in any respect.”

What’s behind the Supreme Court’s decision that will likely overturn this ban? And how might this decision affect nearly two dozen other states that have similar bans?

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