By Wayne Laugesen | Commentary, Wayne’s Word
Colorado will not let a counselor talk. It will force a surgeon to cut.
A group of doctors and dentists just filed suit against Colorado in federal court because the state is trying to conscript them. That we need this lawsuit explains how far Colorado has transitioned from obeying federal civil rights protections to thumbing its nose at them.
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The Christian Medical & Dental Associations and Button Family Practice in Cañon City say the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act requires medical offices that perform certain surgeries — mastectomies, hysterectomies, and other works of real medicine — to perform those same surgeries so a patient can appear to be the other sex. The law also leans on chosen names and pronouns and treats a public statement of medical conscience as illegal discrimination.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is on the case. Bryan Neihart, senior counsel at ADF, nails it: The state is not allowed to conscript doctors to harm the people in their care.
If that sounds like a culture-war slogan, look at what Denver already did to Children’s Hospital Colorado. The hospital stopped puberty blockers and hormones for minors after federal threats to Medicaid. Families sued under the the Colorado anti-discrimination act. The Colorado Supreme Court ordered the hospital to resume. A judge is now weighing contempt because some doctors still will not do it. The state is not asking a hospital to treat a fever. It is ordering a hospital to resume a contested protocol after the hospital concluded it could not.
Hold that picture next to the regulatory framework the same legislature imposed on us.
In 2019, Colorado banned licensed counselors from doing “conversion therapy” with anyone under 18. That meant a state-licensed therapist could lose a license for trying to help a minor make informed decisions about sexual orientation or gender identity.
On March 31, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court said that ban was a problem. In Chiles v. Salazar the Court held that Colorado was punishing talk based on the viewpoint the counselor expressed. The case went back to lower courts. The legislature did not stop. In May 2026 it passed HB26-1322. The governor signed it. It took effect July 1, 2026.
This new law is a lawsuit machine — another gift to trial lawyers by the left-wing politicians they help elect.
If a licensed therapist tries to steer a patient toward a fixed result — for example, toward being straight, or toward accepting the sex on the birth certificate as the destination — the patient can sue.
The patient can collect money for bills, lost wages, and pain. If a judge finds the conduct especially reckless, extra punitive damages are on the table. The clinic that hired the therapist can also be sued.
Most injury cases in Colorado must be filed within about two years. This law says the suit can be filed at any time while the person is alive. There is no deadline. If the patient dies, the estate has five years after death to claim a psyschologist or psychiatrist broke the law — an easy case when the purported victim is dead.
So here is the official morality of Colorado in 2026: A counselor may not even suggest that a boy conceived as a boy will always have XY chomosomes. Yet, a surgeon may be forced to remove healthy genitals so the same boy can pretend otherwise. This is the state forcing physicians to perform genital mutilations no different than those our State Department has tried to stop in primitive countries that mutilate children in the name of religion.
Sex is not a costume. The distress is real. People with gender dysphoria are not a punch line and should not be used as political pawns by cultural revolutionists. They are hurting. Some are children. Some have autism, trauma, depression, same-sex attraction, or a history of social contagion in a friend group. They deserve careful medicine, not a slogan and a scalpel. If a physician decides a medical transition will do more harm than good, and the patient disagrees, the patient can seek another physician.
Every cell with a nucleus carries XX or XY. No legislature can vote away this fact. Hormones can roughen skin and drop a voice. Surgery can remove breasts or a uterus or fashion a cavity that will need dilation for life. None of that writes a new Chromosones. Calling the result “gender affirming care” does not make it care. It makes it a political brand stamped on irreversible work.
England’s National Health Service asked Dr. Hilary Cass, a pediatrician with no prior crusade in the fight, to review the evidence for four years as part of systematic reviews from the University of York. Her 2024 conclusion was: There is not a reliable evidence base on which to make these clinical decisions.
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