It’s Time for the Supreme Court to Stop Censorship in Science and Medicine
Kaley Chiles’s challenge to Colorado’s efforts to censor her counseling conversations with her clients is a chance for the Court to stem a dangerous trend.
I recently published this piece in National Review on an important medical freedom case that the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear. It opens:
When government censors science and medicine, patients pay the price. And censorship is frighteningly widespread today, from a humble counseling office to the upper reaches of the scientific establishment. That problem is at the heart of Chiles v. Salazar, a pivotal case that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed on March 10 to take up.
Kaley Chiles is a licensed therapist in Colorado with a mission to help troubled young people. Some clients want professional help as they try to recover comfort with the body and the sex they were born with. Even Chase Strangio, the lead ACLU advocate for childhood gender transitions, admitted to Justice Samuel Alito during December’s argument in United States v. Skrmetti, that people’s understanding of their gender “shifts.” And, in the same hearing, the solicitor general of the United States noted to Justice Brett Kavanaugh that “some people might detransition or regret this care.”
They might, but Colorado wants to stop them. Colorado prohibits Kaley from talking with her clients to help them through any such “shifts” or “regrets.” As the Alliance Defending Freedom notes, Colorado’s law now “allows counseling conversations that aim to steer young people toward a gender identity different than their sex but prohibits conversations that aim to help them return to comfort with their sex when they desire that.” In addition, the state law threatens Kaley with stiff fines and even loss of her license if her conversations help a client to detransition or to reject transgender ideology. This constitutes an unwarranted state intrusion into the relationship between therapist and client, and between doctor and patient, which harms patients by compromising their autonomy. The government wants to censor speech about identity and mental health and control the narrative even inside the privacy of a therapist’s office.
Colorado is not the only state with such laws: my own state of California has a similar law that tries to censor and control conversations about gender and sexuality between therapists and patients. Most commentators have framed this case in terms of debates about gender ideology and so-called “gender affirmative care,” and that is obviously relevant. Those debates are important, but I believe this case is also about censorship and free speech. In the article, I relate this case to similar trends from my own experience with censorship in science and medicine, which readers of Human Flourishing are familiar with.
I then broaden the discussion to describe our free speech case and the experience of my co-plaintiffs:
And it wasn’t just me. Even those in the scientific community who enjoyed the highest levels of prestige and respect were not immune. When Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration urging focused protection strategies instead of universal mandates, prolonged school closures, and lockdowns, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins personally disparaged Dr. Bhattacharya and urged Dr. Antony Fauci to orchestrate “a quick and devastating . . . take down” of the Declaration.
And indeed, Dr. Fauci and others stirred up a wave of media slander directed against Dr. Bhattacharya and his colleagues; the goal was to silence their voices and control the narrative. As Dr. Bhattacharya has said, they made his life “a living hell.” “They systematically tried to make it seem like everyone agreed with their ideas about Covid policy, when in fact there was deep disagreement.” With poetic justice, Dr. Bhattacharya has now been tapped to direct the NIH, pending Senate approval.
Americans at every level need to stand up against government efforts to define truth and control speech about science and medicine. I myself became a plaintiff in a case -- along with Dr. Bhattacharya and his Great Barrington co-author Martin Kulldorff -- challenging the government pressure behind social media censorship during the Covid years. Sadly, while the Supreme Court acknowledged that there was overwhelming evidence that White House officials had pressured tech giants to censor disfavored opinions, they dismissed the request for an injunction for technical reasons. The case continues to be litigated at the district court.
Now, Kaley Chiles is challenging Colorado’s efforts to censor her counseling conversations with her clients, and to “make it seem like everyone agrees” with the state’s opinions about the best path to mental health for young people suffering confusion and pain over their gender and sexuality. The Supreme Court should take this opportunity to send a much-needed message to the government and medical establishment: Free speech is as essential in science and medicine as it is in politics and culture, for all our sakes.
The fight for medical freedom and free speech continues in the courts. As I have said here many times, good science and progress in medicine are incompatible with censorship. A physician or therapist with a government-issued gag order is not a doctor you can trust.
Thanks for this post Aaron and all your other efforts to raise awareness about these threats to all our freedoms. I see it as quite a bit worse than a "dangerous trend". Covid 19 was nothing less than the end of democracy, as we have known it, since the 1776 revolution, certainly the end of the US constitution, and, very sadly the death of free speech. From here on freedom is a distance memory fast fading in the rear view mirror of history. Clever little devils in the CIA "intelligence community" figured out that by making the enemy a "pathogen" and the battle ground the "human body" and 'victory", "saving millions of humans lives", they could have all the power and wealth ( for them) advantages of old style war without the bother of fighting anybody. They could suspend the constitution and murder us at will; all in the name of the "public good". No more free speech for us. Obviously once they got going with this evil plan anybody who disagrees would, of course, have to be silenced and that is what has happened to you and may other brave doctors like you. How can a a doctor be told what drug to give, what procedure to recommend and what they can and cannot say, by some faceless administrator? That is tyranny right there. Perhaps freedom was always an illusion but perhaps not, and perhaps it is the internet more than anything else that killed it. By altering the power balance in favor of the people, a free internet had to be stopped or perhaps - heaven forefend - universal peace and harmony might have broken out in the world since for the first time in history to slaves could organize and communicate and do away with their owners. Covid 19 has roundly put us back into our place. Free speech has gone. Doctors have been crucified in public to shut all the others up. Another "pandemic' can be declared at any time. If you do not comply you can expect digital exile or forced injections. Sorry to be so gloomy but this seems to me, at least, the real state of things now. If I were you I would quit doctoring - who wants to be the instrument of a drug pusher tyranny - and get as far away from "medicine" as you can. Good luck to you and thanks again for speaking out.
Chiles’s’s’s’s’s’s’s’s’s?
"people’s understanding of their gender “shifts.”"? People can't distinguish he, she, it, and they? When was the day grammar died?
What does Colorado's declaration of rights say? Why is this at the _United States_ Supreme Court? Was Kaley Chiles charged with libel?
Why does this not cover it?
ARTICLE II
Bill of Rights
Section 10.
Freedom of speech and press. No law shall be passed impairing the freedom of speech; every person shall be free to speak, write or publish whatever he will on any subject, being responsible for all abuse of that liberty; and in all suits and prosecutions for libel the truth thereof may be given in evidence, and the jury, under the direction of the court, shall determine the law and the fact.