In what is becoming the U.S. Supreme Court’s busiest session yet for LGBTQ-related cases, the high court just added a fifth such case to its 2024-25 session docket. The latest, Chiles v. Colorado, is an appeal that challenges a Colorado law that bans therapists from encouraging minors to change their sexual orientation.

In December, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an appeal that challenged a Tennessee law that bans medical treatment for minors who want to change their sex. In February, it heard arguments in a case to decide whether straight people must provide more proof of discrimination based on sexual orientation than sexual minorities. In April, the court is set to hear two more cases —one involving parental rights to opt out their children from reading classroom books with LGBTQ characters, and another asking whether employers can refuse to cover HIV preventive medicine in their health insurance coverage.

In Chiles v. Colorado, Kaley Chiles, a Colorado Springs therapist who wishes to engage in conversion therapy for patients under 18, is challenging Colorado’s six-year-old law prohibiting such therapy. In 2014, the Supreme Court declined to review a legal challenge to California’s law against conversion therapy; in 2023, it declined to review a challenge to Washington State’s law.

The right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom, which has mounted many anti-LGBTQ cases, says conversion therapy is necessary to help “detransitioners—those who adopted a transgender identity but now identify with their biological sex—[who have] no counseling support whatsoever in much of the United States.”

“Chiles’s clients voluntarily and specifically seek her counsel because they want the help her viewpoint provides,” stated the Alliance in its petition to the Supreme Court. “Yet Colorado’s law forbids her from speaking, treating her professional license as a license for government censorship.”

In Colorado’s brief opposing the petition, the state said its ban on conversion therapy for minors is related to state licensing of therapists to protect patients.

“That conversion therapy inflicts harm has been confirmed by at least twelve research studies, four systematic reviews of that research, and two independent evaluations of conversion therapy and the attendant research,” said Colorado.

According to the Human Rights Foundation, Colorado is one of more than 20 states that ban conversion therapy for minors.

The argument date has not yet been set.

In other Supreme Court news this week, the high court declined to take up an appeal from a group that opposes bias-response teams on college campuses, saying they chill free speech. The appeal, Speech First v. Pamela Whitten, was the latest of several cases attempting to undermine efforts by universities to curb hate speech. This case targets Indiana University’s program that “promotes education and offers support as necessary—all on an entirely voluntary basis—to those reportedly involved in or affected by bias-motivated incidents.” Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito indicated they would have heard the appeal.

In a sixth case this session, Free Speech Coalition v. Texas could potentially implicate LGBTQ websites: In January, the high court held oral arguments in a case testing the constitutionality of a Texas law (HB 1811) that mandates websites with more than one-third of their content consisting of “sexual material harmful to minors”  require users to submit personal identifying data to verify their age. The ACLU, which has led the challenge to the law, says it “even puts educational websites that include sex ed materials or information about LGBTQ identities at risk.”