The U.S. Supreme Court’s new term is underway, and on Tuesday, the justices were set to hear oral arguments in a First Amendment case touching on hot-button topics such as gender identity and sexual orientation.

As Fox News reports, at issue in the case is a free speech challenge brought by a Colorado therapist of a state statute that bans “conversion therapy,” a technique used by some to change or eliminate what patients deem to be unwanted propensities or identities, including homosexuality.

Therapist challenges ban

Licensed Christian therapist Kaley Chiles has been battling in the courts against Colorado’s 2019 law, which is similar to statutes currently in effect in roughly two dozen other states.

Chiles, according to Fox News, utilizes a “faith-informed” approach to counseling, engaging in “talk therapy” with young patients who are “seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body.”

Lawyers for Chiles have indicated that she is someone who “believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex,” contending that those views are integral to the counseling technique she employs.

Attorneys for the therapist argue that the statute in question – and its “overly broad” definition of conversion therapy -- is akin to unconstitutional “viewpoint censorship” that has effectively silenced her and threatens her ability to practice her profession in the state.

Whereas Chiles asserts that her work is a form of constitutionally protected speech, the state of Colorado views it as professional conduct that it is able to regulate via the aforementioned statutory provisions.

State questions safety, effectiveness

In its bid to counter Chiles’ claims, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser warned that a ruling against the ban would jeopardize similar statutes elsewhere, but would also put patients in harm’s way, as NBC News noted.

Weiser wrote, “For centuries, states have regulated professional healthcare to protect patients from substandard treatment.”

He continued, “Throughout that time, the First Amendment has never barred states’ ability to prohibit substandard care, regardless of whether it is carried out through words.”

In support of that position, the state asserted that conversion therapy is “ineffective and associated with depression, anxiety, loss of faith and suicidality, regardless of how it is performed,” according to CBS News.

Colorado officials further cited opinions from medical associations declaring that attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity are “potentially harmful to young people and not supported by credible scientific evidence.”

Trump administration weighs in

The Trump administration has not sat on the sidelines of this dispute, with Solicitor General John Sauer writing in a court filing, “Colorado is muzzling one side of an ongoing debate in the mental-health community about how to discuss questions of gender and sexuality with children.”

He continued, “Under the First Amendment, the State bears a heavy burden to justify that content-based restriction on protected speech,” and whether a majority of justices believe Colorado has met that standard will not be known until the court issues its ruling next summer.