Supreme Court Could Gut Abortion, LGBTQ Protections With These 3 Cases—Analysis

The Supreme Court opens its 2025-2026 term on Monday, Oct. 6.

If the early lineup of cases is any indication, the Court’s conservative majority plans to pick up where it left off last term in rolling back bodily autonomy and democratic norms. Three cases in particular are demonstrative of how conservative legal advocates are working hand-in-hand with the conservatives on the Roberts Court to further enshrine a conservative, Christian worldview into the U.S. Constitution.

All three cases come from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian nationalist legal group. The cases it petitioned the Court to address this year will litigate constitutional arguments around conversion therapy, transgender athletes, and “crisis pregnancy centers.”

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1. Conversion therapy

The first case to watch is Chiles v. Salazar, a case challenging Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy. Colorado is one of 23 states, along with Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, that bans conversion therapy, an umbrella term for the practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Colorado’s 2019 law, like many others nationwide, prohibits state-licensed mental health professionals from attempting to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity, but does not apply to non-licensed religious counselors.

It includes a clause that allows providers to help young people explore their sexual orientation or gender identity ethically by offering “acceptance, support, and understanding for the facilitation of an individual’s coping, social support, and identity exploration and development” as long as counselors do not “seek to change [the patient’s] sexual orientation or gender identity.”

In 2022, a Christian therapist named Kaley Chiles sued Colorado, saying its conversation therapy ban violates the First Amendment because it is a viewpoint-based restriction on her speech. ADF attorney Erin Hawley represents Chiles in her case.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears appeals from Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Utah, ruled against Chiles in September 2024. It upheld a lower court decision finding that Colorado’s ban regulates conduct—that is, the particular practices associated with conversion therapy—not speech.

Nationwide, federal courts have split on the question of whether bans on conversion therapy regulate speech or conduct.

Like the 10th Circuit, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 held that these types of bans regulate conduct. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found the opposite, ruling that bans on conversation therapy do target speech as an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction and therefore violate the First Amendment. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in 2014 found that a New Jersey ban also targets speech, but they classified it as professional speech thus making it subject to a lower constitutional standard.

This deepening split creates an opening ripe for Supreme Court intervention.

In 2023, the justices declined to take a case out of Washington that is almost identical to Chiles, Tingley v. Ferguson. Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh all dissented, indicating that they would have granted review and heard the case in order to strike down Washington’s ban on conversion therapy.

Arguments in Chiles v. Salazar begin Oct. 7. A decision is not expected until June. A broad ruling on behalf of Chiles and the Alliance Defending Freedom here could threaten to strike down not just Colorado’s conversion therapy ban, but similar laws nationwide.

2. Trans athletes

The second Alliance Defending Freedom case the Court has teed up, West Virginia v. B.P.J., involves the issue of access to school sports for transgender athletes.

A West Virginia law—the Save Women’s Sports Act—bars trans girls from participating in all-girls’ sports teams from middle school through college. In 2021 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the law on behalf of Becky Pepper-Jackson, West Virginia’s only openly transgender athlete.

The ACLU argued that West Virginia’s ban violates both Title IX of the Civil Rights Act—which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program that receives federal funding—and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, because it categorically excludes transgender girls from participating in certain sports or teams.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina, agreed with the ACLU and blocked West Virginia’s ban.

In July 2024, West Virginia, with ADF’s help, asked the Supreme Court to step in. The justices agreed to do so in July 2025, almost a full year after West Virginia’s request was first filed. The case is not yet scheduled for argument.

If the ADF prevails in this challenge, the Supreme Court could greenlight laws nationwide that direct sports teams be based on biological sex. It could even create a pathway for excluding transgender athletes from school sports entirely, including in states without trans athlete bans, if sports leagues fall into line with the law.

3. Anti-abortion ‘pregnancy centers’

The third Alliance Defending Freedom case on the Court’s docket is a bit of a sleeper, but it has potentially significant consequences.

First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin involves a fight between so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” and the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. The question the Court will answer in Platkin is whether the federal court has the power to rule on a claim by one of those anti-abortion center networks, the First Choice Women’s Resource Centers.

The group argues that a New Jersey subpoena seeking its fundraising records violates its First Amendment rights. Typically, state courts resolve fights over state-issued subpoenas. First Choice and the ADF are looking to create an exception to that rule as a way to avoid complying with New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s subpoena.

The state attorney general’s office in 2023 began investigating whether the group was violating New Jersey consumer protection laws by misleading donors and potential clients into believing they were providing “certain reproductive health-care services.” First Choice challenged the subpoena in federal court, but the district court dismissed the challenge, holding that only a state court has the power to enforce or block a state-issued subpoena.

The following year a divided panel of judges on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals—which hears cases from Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and the U.S. Virgin Islands—upheld the district court’s ruling and dismissed the case. First Choice then petitioned the Supreme Court, which granted review in June 2025. A date for argument has not yet been set.

If successful, ADF’s case will dim one of the only remaining powers states have to investigate fraud allegations surrounding “crisis pregnancy centers” by creating a new First Amendment objection to subpoenas in those investigations.

What else is on SCOTUS’ docket

This term the justices will also hear challenges to the Voting Rights Act, and decide what limits, if any, President Donald Trump has to fire independent agency officials. This is all fresh off a summer of shadow docket rulings issued by the justices, which largely endorsed many of this administration’s most appalling policies, including violent and patently discriminatory immigration raids.

This October also marks Chief Justice John Roberts 20th year at the Court. Under his leadership, corporations have gained unprecedented legal rights, through Citizens United v. F.E.C. and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores. Voting has become more difficult and elections are more racist following the Court’s unraveling of the Voting Rights Act and states’ subsequent gerrymandering.

Then there’s the human rights crisis unleashed by overturning Roe v. Wade three years ago. We haven’t witnessed the full devastation from that decision yet.

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Under Roberts’ watch, the very legitimacy of the Supreme Court is unravelling—new polling shows it’s never been less trusted—along with our democratic norms. Roberts, who famously promised during his confirmation hearing to only “call balls and strikes, not to pitch or bat,” instead will likely see his tenure go down in history alongside Chief Justice Roger Taney as one of the Court’s most partisan and destructive eras ever.

And he’ll have no one but himself to blame.

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