14 Powerful Lines From Justice Jackson's Dissent on Conversion Therapy: 'Like It or Not, Treatment Standards Exist in

[justaprogressive]

America - Ms. Magazine

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth, ruling the law likely violates the First Amendment—a decision advocates warn will put young people at risk.

In a rare and forceful move, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered her dissent from the bench.

Below, we’ve pulled the most powerful, incisive—and yes, spiciest—lines from her 35-page dissent, followed by the full text. Read, share your favorite line, and help lift up a dissent that refuses to mince words about what’s at stake.

1.

Not only is conversion therapy ineffective, former participants report that it causes lasting psychological harm. Gay and transgender children who underwent nonaversive conversion therapy say they were taught to feel shame and self-hatred. Survivors continue to suffer from PTSD, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. As one survivor put it, conversion therapy “‘came close to killing me.’”

2.

Chiles insists that, although she is a counselor licensed by Colorado, she has a constitutional right to flout Colorado’s statute and the standard of care it incorporates if a client asks her to do so.

3.

Talk therapy is a medical treatment. So, why wouldn’t such speech-based medical treatments be subject to reasonable state regulation like any other kind of medical care?

The United States and the majority just insist that a law that undertakes to regulate speech-based medical treatments is presumptively unconstitutional because the treatment is being administered solely through speech. But that reasoning is maddeningly circular, and it is based on happenstance, not logic.

https://msmagazine.com/2026/03/31/conversion-therapy-justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-dissent-chiles-v-salazar/

[Stargleamer]

1. She's likely the best Supreme Court Justice ever. . .

but basically conversion therapy is harmful and she sought to prevent its harms.

[lame54]

16. I hope one day she can shine on a legitimate court

[Stargleamer]

17. as Chief Justice! n /t

[hunter]

2. Conversion "therapy" ought to be a felony with a mandatory prison sentence.

Ten years sounds about right.

[Fiendish Thingy]

3. We will see if other state laws banning conversion therapy stand up in court

If they do, then it would seem to indicate the Colorado law was poorly written, and the 8-1 ruling was the correct one.

My understanding is the Colorado law prohibited therapists from even speaking about conversion therapy, hence the First Amendment challenge.

In California, where I was a licensed therapist, therapists could talk about conversion therapy, but could not perform that type of treatment without losing their license to practice. A therapist could explain there is no evidence to support the efficacy of conversion therapy, and in fact, there is much evidence to show it causes harm. My understanding is the Colorado law does not even allow for this type of speech. It is not clear to me if the Colorado law was a criminal law, with potential punishment such as fines and incarceration, or if was a regulatory statue limiting professional practice.

So, we shall see- will the anti- conversion therapy laws in other states fall in court challenges?

[angrychair]

6. I'm confused

My assumption this makes conversation therapy the law of the land? Do you know exactly what this allows because nothing I've read gives a clear answer.

My assumption, since it's SCOTUS, is this applies nationwide and LGBTQ people can now be forced into conversation therapy.

[ShazzieB]

10. It opens the door to laws prohibiting conversion therapy in other states being contested.

But I don't see why it would automatically strike them all down. I suspect there is something problematic about the wording of the Colorado law in particular that made this 8 -1 decision possible. If so, Colorado lawmakers can pass a new law that will be harder to contest.

TL/dr: I don't see any reason to panic just yet.

[Fiendish Thingy]

12. It's not crystal clear to me either

The Colorado law was the subject of the suit and was struck down as an infringement of free speech.

It’s not clear if this will affect the laws in other states, which would have different language from the Colorado law, which in my understanding, was extremely specific in restricting therapist’s actual speaking on the subject of conversion therapy, not just the practice.

I guess we will have to wait and find out.

[Mblaze]

11. It seems to me that "conversion therapy"

Presupposes that same sex attraction and love is pathological. I think that idea had been made moot by years of testimony.

[dickthegrouch]

13. Doctors are prohibited from talking about abortion in several States.

We must attack the inconsistencies.
Apply the newly interpreted law in the most inimical (but apparently legal) ways against KKKristians and repugs.
Conversion therapy for KKKristians (lions don't even speak, should be less of a problem for these SCROTUMs).

[dickthegrouch]

4. How could the other two not have joined this dissent?

I am deeply disappointed.
Not to say FURIOUS that normally sane justices appear to have lost their bearings on this one.
Meticulously researched, beautifully argued; Thank you Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

[angrychair]

5. What she said is irrelevant

Because she was in the minority. SCOTUS has now made it legal to torture LGBTQ people.

[Buddyzbuddy]

7. If it was good enough for "Clockwork Orange" ......

For those of you that feel compelled to point out it wasn't "talk therapy" I purposely compare the two sarcastically.

[MarcoZandrini]

8. We need...

…6 more like her!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. Deadline Legal Blog-Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson steps out alone, again - this time on 'conversion therapy'

The Biden appointee made the rare move of dissenting from the bench, in the latest action separating her from her colleagues.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson steps out alone, again – this time on ‘conversion therapy’

💾

©

— Irish News 🇮🇪 (@news-flows-ir.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T16:56:54.000000Z

https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-dissent-conversion-therapy

In her dissent, the Biden appointee wrote that the practice of seeking to “convert” a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity has been “widely discredited within the medical and scientific community” and found to cause “lasting psychological harm.”

Departing from Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion for eight members of the court, Jackson wrote, “The conclusion that a State can regulate the provision of medical care even if, in so doing, it incidentally restricts the speech of some providers, fully comports with the First Amendment’s animating principles.”

She continued: “Ultimately, because the majority plays with fire in this case, I fear that the people of this country will get burned.” Until now, she wrote, licensed medical professionals couldn’t do or say whatever they wanted. States could regulate them, which, she wrote, contributed to the high quality of American care.

“Today, the Court turns its back on that tradition,” Jackson wrote. “And, to be completely frank, no one knows what will happen now.” She accused the majority of reaching this “momentous decision” without “adequately grappling with the potential long-term and disastrous implications of this ruling.”

The justice closed her solo dissent by worrying about the majority having opened a “dangerous can of worms” that “threatens to impair States’ ability to regulate the provision of medical care in any respect,” pushes the Constitution “into uncharted territory in an utterly irrational fashion” and “risks grave harm to Americans’ health and wellbeing.”

I agree with Jackson's dissent. I believe that conversion therapy is close to torture. The fact that you can use "talk therapy" may open a dangerous can of worms. I strongly believe in the First Amendment but here there needs to be limits. Talk therapy is less objectionable compared to other methods of conversion therapy but it has risks

[BurnDoubt]

14. Is it Science or Magic?

Religion is not Government.
Government is not Religion.
Business is not Religion.
Religion is not Business.
Government is not Business.
Business is not Government.

Abomination is the center of this Venn Diagram.
NOTHING good can come from this.
This is why we’re in such a deep hole.
This is why we can’t have nice things.

[eppur_se_muova]

15. Next: SCOTUS rules brainwashing protected by 1st Amendment.

Brainwashing in general, that is, not just in regards to sexual identity, as they have already ruled.

[jfz9580m]

18. Conversion therapy is garbage

Psychiatry is politically abused the world over
as is.
Women who object to creepy shit often have their mental fitness assailed. That happened to me and my being an MJ user made it even easier for those assholes to attack me using a script straight out of Reefer Madness.

I was at this creepy shithole in 2011 that uses China as an excuse to wave through their own extremely competitively creepy, undemocratic Panopticon knockoff out of Si Valley. Google’s soft coup against civilian publically funded academic science that was.

(Btw Toronto did the right thing in shutting down Sidewalks Lab. Those projects would be hotbeds of sexual harassment and abuse if you can connect the dots at all re high surveillance and women without a say ffs. Andy Rubin was the father of the Android. Who are these guys kidding as they send women’s rights 50 decades back? I was used to healthy work and living spaces and was furious. We go on the system of trust a lot in science and medicine. To see that exploited to both push an inquisitor and force creepy methods. Who can this serve except creeps?).

Anyway I was labeled “psychotic” for not being adequately articulate I suppose in communicating: “Oh hey, this place is fucking creepy and it is also invasive as all hell. What sane woman would work here you sleazebags? A self-loathing doormat. That is who.”
Always an awkward sort of thing to have to communicate.

That wasn’t well received and I was packed off to the worst psychiatric hospital in the northern hemisphere where they concluded that I should be on these lobotomizing medications: Abilify and Seroquel.

I told them to fuck off and walked out. I am from India not a goddamn cult. I had/have loving and supportive parents/a parent and my main mentor was one of the most civilized scientists you could find anywhere. You would have to recruit out of those labs associated with Epstein to find girlbosses who would go “Yes! This totally makes sense! I am a fish in this creepy sewage water!”

Fortunately the shrink and therapist they had me see were both pretty decent (the therapist was Jewish I remember - a kindly man. He even tried to help after I left). Neither of them were nails on chalkboard. My psychiatrist was a competent shrink and could tell that there was nothing wrong with me. They both helped at a time when that hospital made me feel like shit.

In 2021, I met a female shrink here in India. She was not a good fit for me, but she was also honest and could tell there was nothing really wrong with me. It is impossible to explain “Yeah I find it really hard to focus on science when handed a bunch of creepy information whose import was that all sorts of creepy and regressive shit is now shilled as inevitable when it really is not except in an accelerated race to the bottom driven by ambitions to hyperscale pointless and creepy drivel.”

The first shrink to whom I had gone to voluntarily for attention issues helped me the most with an Adderall prescription. He was Muslim like my ayurvedic doctor now who helps me with my medical marijuana prescription. It is not available via allopathic psychiatrists yet. I am always pleased that my doctors don’t fit any stereotype - they are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish. But in the main they are just competent, decent and sane doctors. The few exceptions have been in psychiatry and sometimes there is a serious conflict of interest like looking the other way wrt Google etc’s data-mining practices.
Hell I connect even with my medical MJ co via WhatsApp.

But there is nothing shady about it. I am going to the Indian police myself at some point about everything I have seen since I came back in here in 2011, disgusted by what I saw. I am only worried ever if prior to getting some traction legally, creeps start swarming my street in retaliation. This is not an open game world and there will be serious repercussions for the past 14.5 years. I was and am sure that these creepy people in tech etc exploited loophole after loophole and unfortunate passivity in the body politic to get us to the hell we are in today.
Alison Taylor has written one of the best pieces I have ever seen on the topic and it makes an excellent companion piece to one by Ruth Cain on the tendency to pathologize human behaviors that are actually a fairly natural response to this callous, corrupt and undemocratic Idiocracy:

https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1076&context=public_integrity

https://theconversation.com/how-neoliberalism-is-damaging-your-mental-health-90565

In our work and leisure we are urged to feign permanent enthusiasm amid radically lowered expectations. Neoliberal newspeak hollows out the terminology of achievement, mandating boasts about personal “excellence” and “dedication” as actual possibilities for achievement diminish and work becomes stripped of meaning. At my institution, the cleaners’ uniforms are emblazoned with inscriptions announcing that they deliver their work with “passion, professionalism and pride” – as if it were reasonable to demand “passion” from a cleaner on minimum wage whose workload has doubled since 2012.

‘Free choice’

A colleague recently informed me that young children in Bermuda make amends for misbehaviour by intoning, “I want to make good choices”. As criminologists Steve Hall, Simon Winlow and Craig Ancrum have explored, “choices” become life-or-death when a bad choice or two can turn you into an irremediable “loser”. We are told that structural barriers to aspiration, achievement and contentment will melt away in our fantasy “choice” economy.

But this falsehood of “free choice” demotivates and depoliticises. In such a world, depression, anxiety, narcissism (the primitive defence of the infantile self against overwhelming attack) are entirely logical responses. It has been confirmed that neoliberal societies make their citizens physically as well as mentally sick; the effect is magnified the more unequal the society and the more unprotected its citizens from free-market “competitiveness”.

I have emerged from this prejudiced only against Google etc and well, I suppose those are prejudices I can live with.

I could do without MJ easily. I am fine on no medication, but it does keep me away from booze and given how much cancer there is in my family I like that. Since that sobriety bullshit on top of the constant stresses of unwanted rot..just no. The ceo of my medical MJ co is a decent man and they sell a useful product and service at a reasonable price unlike most contemporary tech and worthless pseudo policing by creeps.

Now I supplement it with Modafinil from a small pharmacy my family has known for over 20 years with no connection with anything. They do not insist on a prescription as it is a safe drug and they know me.

And Modafinil just generally helps with my confidence which suffered as a result of years of maltreatment, neglect and degradation. I am pretty resilient because it is hard to overwrite 33 years of pure democracy, a loving home, decent friends and colleagues. I am close friends with my ex-husband. I had a pretty happy life before Si Valley with only ordinary troubles so I hope to survive this eventually and be back in a decent science lab if I can get moving. But it was uphill. I was a pretty mediocre scientist, but I am entirely honest and it strains me to have to endure backwardness and dishonesty justifying it. I am pretty uncompromising on sleaziness and creepiness. Who would accept a completely creepy social and professional contract after 33 years of actual, real democracy. A genuinely stupid and sleazy woman - that is who. Bullshitting all the time. Tech will change the world! I mean yes-not in any positive ways though.
And one can become less mediocre. As for age, when I see the kinds of people who succeed in these systems outside the best parts of the hard sciences (I.e. just plain fare not social engineering and mind games, theatre etc), I feel hard science should have more non-pi scientist jobs in publicly funded science. But anyway my mentor used to encourage putting one’s mind into one’s work rather than this “cart before the horse” overthinking along the lines of “how would I think were I the type of person I despise?” Which is what the last 14.5 years was like. Autopilot “How would a brainless douchebag who is subjugated by sleazy creeps think?”
Not very well it turns out. Anyway I am filing complaints. Such brainless assholes.

Ironically China deals with its “troublemakers” the same way.


https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr46npx1e73o

When Zhang Junjie was 17 he decided to protest outside his university about rules made by China's government. Within days he had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and treated for schizophrenia.

Junjie is one of dozens of people identified by the BBC who were hospitalised after protesting or complaining to the authorities.
Many people we spoke to were given anti-psychotic drugs, and in some cases electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), without their consent.

While there have been reports for decades that hospitalisation is used in China as a way of detaining dissenting citizens without involving the courts, a leading Chinese lawyer has told the BBC that the issue - which legislation sought to resolve - has recently seen a resurgence.

He was accused of "picking quarrels and troublemaking" - a charge frequently used to silence criticism of the Chinese government. Junjie says he was forcibly hospitalised again for more than two months.

After being discharged, Junjie was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs. We have seen the prescription - it was for Aripiprazole, used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
"Taking the medicine made me feel like my brain was quite a mess," he says, adding that police would come to his house to check he had taken it.

I had a similar expression. When you aren’t mentally ill beyond being an ordinary woman struggling to be competitive in this overpopulated and uneven hellscape, hospitalization and forced drugging actually make you feel sick. I was perfectly fine going in. By the time I left my self-esteem was in tatters.
And I could not register it as the whole thing was so cliche. I would have understood being yelled at and fired for incompetence.

That my brain would have easily processed and accepted. I am still a pretty shitty scientist, but I have not lost hope entirely that in a civilized workplace like my main lab, I would be a non-pi type of reasonably acceptable scientist. Very few people become pis because you have to be really bright to be a pi. A real pi like most of the pis I have seen in my field. Not these corner cases you find at the MIT Media Lab etc. Their talent is in something else.