Colorado’s latest Supreme Court loss adds to growing string of culture war defeats
Colorado’s loss in the Supreme Court’s Kaley Chiles case last week marked the third time in recent years the justices have rebuked the state in a major culture-war dispute, adding...
By Fox News · Fox News
Colorado’s loss in the Supreme Court ’s Kaley Chiles case last week marked the third time in recent years the justices have rebuked the state in a major culture-war dispute, adding to a growing pattern of high-profile reversals in cases over speech, religion and anti-discrimination law. The high court's decision was the latest in a trio of lawsuits that backfired for Colorado, after the Colorado Civil Rights Commission lost in court to a cake baker in a key religious liberty case and after a website designer won a similar battle against the state's civil rights division. Conservative legal experts said the legal setbacks for the state were not a coincidence. "Colorado seems hell-bent on enforcing its own new orthodoxy of thought, and the Supreme Court has had to come back time and time again to correct them and to remind them that the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, even when the state may disagree with a person's opinions," Carrie Severino, president of the legal watchdog JCN, told Fox News Digital. The Supreme Court last week found that Colorado’s conversion therapy ban, signed into law in 2019 by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, violated the First Amendment because it only restricted talk therapy when the therapy aimed to prevent minors from embracing being transgender or gay. SUPREME COURT BLOCKS COLORADO'S SO-CALLED ‘CONVERSION THERAPY’ BAN ON FIRST AMENDMENT GROUNDS In response to a question from Fox News Digital about the apparent theme, Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jim Campbell said the state "has proven itself to be no respecter of the First Amendment." "I don't think at this point that it's coincidental," said Campbell, who represented Chiles before the Supreme Court during oral arguments. "The State of Colorado has shown an utter disregard for the First Amendment rights of people like Kaley Chiles." JONATHAN TURLEY: THIS BLUE STATE'S LATEST ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH IS AWFUL AND SNEAKY, TOO In Chiles v. Salazar, the high c…