SCOTUS Voids Another Colorado Attack on the First Amendment

On March 31, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Chiles v. Salazar. The court voided a Colorado statute that permitted mental health counselors to help children transitioning toward homosexuality and away from their biological gender, but banned counselors from assisting those shifting back to their biological gender...

This is the third time since 2018 that the high court has slapped down Colorado officials for violating the First Amendment. Additionally, on the same day the Supreme Court decided the Chiles case, a federal district judge ruled that a Colorado law restricting political parties’ freedom of association also violated the First Amendment...

During the decade from 2011 to 2020, however, Colorado’s politics changed drastically. In part, this was the result of careful planning and funding by four progressive billionaires—one of whom is now governor. In part, it was due to demographic changes, caused by a massive in-migration of left-leaning voters from other states. Ironically, Colorado’s libertarian policies—including the legalization of recreational marijuana and a low-regulation, low-tax business climate—helped fuel the progressive in-migration.

As a result, left-leaning Democrats now control every statewide office and hold a near supermajority in the state legislature...

Colorado’s progressives attacked the First Amendment in other ways as well. In 2016, they successfully sponsored Proposition 108. This measure enabled the state’s mostly liberal independent voters to cast ballots in Republican primaries in order to prevent the nomination of conservative candidates...

Although the justices did not question the motivation behind the law, they likely recognized that its purported justification may have been a pretext...

Thus, the justices may have concluded that the real purpose of the Colorado law—like the real purpose of Proposition 108—was political. This is because two effects of the measure were highly predictable: First, it would punish conservative therapists and drive them out of the state; and, second, it would increase the share of the state’s population permanently depending on gender transition drugs and on government policies concerning, and payments for, those drugs. Both effects likely would drive up the share of Colorado’s population voting for "progressive" candidates.