A case involving Colorado’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law will soon be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, Chiles v. Salazar, reaches the nation’s high court by way of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. The law prohibits mental health professionals from engaging in conversion therapy with clients under 18 years of age.
Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado, alleges that the law violates the free speech clause and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. She maintains that because of the law, she has been “forced to deny voluntary counseling that fully explores sexuality and gender to her clients and potential clients in violation of her and her clients’ sincerely held religious beliefs.”
She moved for a preliminary injunction to stop the enforcement of the law. The district court found that she hadn’t met her burden of showing a likelihood of success on the merits of her First Amendment claims, and the 10th Circuit agreed.
In a dissent, 10th Circuit Judge Harris Hartz wrote that the wordplay in the majority’s opinion in the case posed a serious threat to free speech and that the issue in the case was whether the courts recognized an exception to freedom of speech when the leaders of national professional organizations declare certain speech to be dangerous and demand deference to their views by all members of their professions. In Hartz’s view of controlling Supreme Court precedent, the answer is no.
The nation’s high court is now set to decide.
The Supreme Court also granted a writ in the case of Harold Berk v. Wilson Choy. In that case the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of the district court’s dismissal of Harold Berk’s medical malpractice suit, because Berk failed to provide an affidavit of merit as required under Delaware law.
In addition, a summary disposition was given in David Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. The Supreme Court vacated the judgment in the case and remanded it to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for further consideration in light of California Assembly Bill 2867. In 2022, the nation’s high court vacated a previous decision from the 3rd Circuit in the case.
The case involves a valuable painting that the Nazis stole from Lilly Neubauer in 1939. Neubauer, a Jewish woman, was attempting to flee the Nazi regime. Following a series of transactions, the family’s painting ended up in the possession of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Spain.
In 2000, Claude Cassirer, a California resident and Neubauer’s sole heir, learned that the painting was on display and filed a petition with TBC and Spain for the return of the painting, which was denied. Cassirer brought suit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in 2005.
The 2024 opinion, now vacated, concluded that, under California’s choice-of-law test, that Spanish law applied to determine ownership of the painting and that TBC had acquired prescriptive title to the painting.