April 1, 2026

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson couldn’t get a single colleague to join her dissent warning of “catastrophic” fallout from upholding a Christian counselor’s free speech rights.

The Supreme Court found 8-1 Tuesday that Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” was viewpoint discrimination against Kasey Chiles, who was barred under the law from offering talk therapy encouraging gender-confused kids to feel comfortable in their bodies.

“Ultimately, because the majority plays with fire in this case, I fear that the people of this country will get burned,” Jackson wrote in her 34-page solo dissent.

“It is baffling that we could now be standing on the edge of a precipitous drop in the quality of healthcare services in America,” Jackson wrote. “But the Court sees fit to bring us one step closer to that fate today. Stranger still is the fact that this possibility looms in the 21st century—given what science now enables us to know about medical conditions and treatments, what our cases say, and what we all should have learned by now from history.”

 

In a dazzling display of Supreme Court theater, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered a lone, Shakespearean soliloquy warning that upholding a Christian counselor’s right to chat kids into feeling at home in their own gender might just torch the whole healthcare system—because nothing says “catastrophe” like a therapist’s couch and some good old-fashioned free speech. Meanwhile, Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, clearly unimpressed with the apocalypse forecast, shrugged on their constitutional spectacles and reminded Jackson that the First Amendment isn’t exactly a choose-your-own-adventure novel. So, while one justice envisions a medical doomsday, the rest prefer their rights like their coffee: strong, unfiltered, and legally protected—even if it tastes like a controversial blend.

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