Supreme Court Returns to Culture Wars on LGBT, Guns and Race

By Jan Wolfe | Reuters

WASHINGTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court is set to wade back into the nation’s culture wars during its new nine-month term that begins on Monday with a series of contentious cases on issues including transgender athletes, gay conversion therapy, guns and race.

The first of these goes before the court on the second day of its term. Arguments are slated for Tuesday over the legality of a Democratic-backed Colorado law banning “conversion therapy” aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Republican President Donald Trump‘s administration is supporting the Christian professional counselor who challenged the law.

“Like last year, this term the Supreme Court again will face issues that arise from the culture wars and the Trump presidency that deeply divide our country,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, during its last term that ended in June upheld Tennessee’s Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors and let parents keep their children out of classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read. Acting on an emergency basis, it also allowed Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military.

The Colorado case plaintiff challenged the state’s law as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government abridgment of free speech, saying it unlawfully censors her communications with clients. While lower courts upheld the measure, the First Amendment argument is expected to find a receptive audience in the Supreme Court’s conservative justices.

“I predict a 6-3 vote in favor of the counselor,” Georgetown University law professor Stephanie Barclay said at an event sponsored by the Federalist Society legal group.

Barclay said the case centers on client-led talk therapy, not coercive methods.

“There is no evidence that the state has marshaled that this type of talk therapy, with client-directed goals, would be harmful,” Barclay said. “Colorado might be continuing its losing streak when it comes to these First Amendment cases.”

The Supreme Court in recent years has ruled in favor of Christian plaintiffs who challenged state anti-discrimination measures in Colorado – a website designer who did not want to provide custom web designs for same-sex weddings and a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. It backed the website designer on First Amendment free speech grounds and the baker on First Amendment religious freedom grounds.

Colorado’s law subjects mental health professionals to discipline if they perform on children any treatment that “attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” even when the client seeks out treatment and desires that change.

Democratic Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a court filing that conversion therapy is associated with increased depression and suicide attempts, and “the First Amendment allows states to reasonably regulate professional conduct to protect patients from substandard treatment, even when that regulation incidentally burdens speech.”

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