Kagan turns on liberal ally Jackson with footnote jab over free speech
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson drew fire from an unlikely colleague on Tuesday over her lone dissent in the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision finding Colorado’s ban on so-called "conversion therapy" for...
By Fox News · Fox News
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson drew fire from an unlikely colleague on Tuesday over her lone dissent in the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision finding Colorado’s ban on so-called "conversion therapy" for minors violated free speech rights. Fellow liberal Justice Elena Kagan criticized Jackson for failing to acknowledge case law that governs when speech can be regulated in the medical field, marking a rare public break between two justices typically aligned in cases centered on high-profile cultural issues. "Justice Jackson’s dissenting opinion claims that this is a small, or even nonexistent, category," Kagan wrote in a footnote of a concurring opinion, which Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined. "But even her own opinion, when listing laws supposedly put at risk today, offers quite a few examples." Kagan, an Obama appointee, said Jackson’s view "rests on reimagining—and in that way collapsing—the well-settled distinction between viewpoint-based and other content-based speech restrictions." SUPREME COURT SKEPTICAL OF "CONVERSION THERAPY" LAW BANNING TREATMENT OF MINORS WITH GENDER IDENTITY ISSUES The 8-1 decision on Tuesday arose from a lawsuit brought by Kaley Chiles, a licensed Christian therapist, who argued her conversations with youth clients were a form of protected speech. The Colorado government had said the conversations amounted to professional conduct that the state was allowed to regulate. Jackson’s fiery 35-page dissent, which she read from the bench when the high court announced the opinion, was longer than the majority opinion and Kagan’s concurrence combined. "Professional medical speech does not intersect with the marketplace of ideas: ‘In the context of medical practice we insist upon competence, not debate,’" Jackson, a Biden appointee wrote, later adding, "Treatment standards exist in America." Jackson issued an ominous warning about national implications of the case, as about two dozen other states have laws similar to Colorado's and will now need to take i…