Chiles v. Salazar | Case No. 24-539 | Argued: 10/7/25 | Decided: 3/31/26 | Docket Link: Here

Question Presented: Whether the First Amendment permits Colorado to ban licensed talk therapists from expressing viewpoints that attempt to change a minor's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Overview: Colorado's conversion therapy ban prohibited licensed counselors from saying anything designed to change a minor's sexual orientation or gender identity while expressly permitting affirming speech — a textbook viewpoint-based restriction on professional speech.

Posture: District court and Tenth Circuit denied preliminary injunction applying rational basis review; Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve circuit split.

Holding: 8-1 decision reversed the Tenth Circuit and remanded for further proceedings. Justice Gorsuch authored the majority opinion joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

Majority Reasoning: (1) Colorado's law regulated the content of Chiles's speech and discriminated based on viewpoint — permitting affirming speech while forbidding speech designed to change a client's sexual orientation or gender identity; (2) licensed professionals retain full First Amendment protection and professional speech does not occupy a lesser-protected constitutional category; (3) Colorado's analogies to licensing, informed-consent, and malpractice traditions failed to establish a historical basis for suppressing professional viewpoints.

Separate Opinions:

Justice Kagan (concurring, joined by Sotomayor): Agreed Colorado's law constituted viewpoint discrimination; reserved for another day whether content-based but viewpoint-neutral laws regulating therapist speech would warrant strict scrutiny, signaling a potential path for states to regulate therapeutic speech without running afoul of the First Amendment.

Justice Jackson (dissenting): Argued Colorado's law incidentally restricted speech as a byproduct of regulating a harmful medical treatment; contended states retain traditional police power to set standards of care for licensed providers even when those standards restrict treatment-related speech, and warned the majority's ruling threatened broad categories of healthcare regulation.

Implications:

• Every state conversion therapy ban covering talk therapy now faces strict scrutiny — the Constitution's most demanding standard.
• Talk therapists, psychiatrists, and other speech-based healthcare providers across approximately 26 states gain powerful new First Amendment arguments against professional discipline.
• States seeking to regulate therapeutic speech may pursue viewpoint-neutral restrictions, though that question remains open.
• The ruling leaves undisturbed conversion therapy bans targeting physical or aversive techniques.
• Future litigation will test where the line falls for viewpoint-neutral medical speech regulation.

Oral Advocates:

• Petitioner (Chiles): James A. Campbell
• United States (Amicus Curiae): Hashim M. Mooppan, United States Department of Justice
• Respondent (Colorado): Shannon W. Stevenson, Colorado Solicitor General

The Fine Print:

• Colo. Rev. Stat. § 12-245-202(3.5)(a): "any practice or treatment . . . that attempts . . . to change an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity," including "efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex."
• First Amendment, U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech."

Primary Cases:

• National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra (2018): Professional speech does not occupy a separate, lesser-protected constitutional category; states cannot compel or restrict professional speech without satisfying ordinary First Amendment standards.
• Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of University of Virginia (1995): Viewpoint discrimination represents an egregious form of content-based regulation from which governments must nearly always abstain; the First Amendment forbids government from favoring one perspective over another on a given subject.

Trump v. Barbara | Case No. 25-365 | Docket Link: Here | Argument: 4/1/26

Question Presented: Does the Executive Order denying birthright citizenship to children of undocumented or temporary-visa mothers comply with the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause?

Overview: President Trump's Executive Order attempts to redefine birthright citizenship, challenging 150 years of constitutional understanding that birth on American soil—with narrow exceptions—creates citizenship.

Posture: District court enjoined Order; First Circuit unanimously affirmed; Supreme Court granted certiorari before judgment.

Oral Advocates:

• Petitioner (United States): D. John Sauer, United States Solicitor General;
• Respondent (Barbara): Cecilia Wong, American Civil Liberties Union

Main Arguments:

Government:

• (1) "Subject to the jurisdiction" requires complete political allegiance, not mere obedience to law;
• (2) Founding-era commentators excluded children of "transient aliens" from birthright citizenship;
• (3) Wong Kim Ark addressed only domiciled aliens—temporary visitors and undocumented immigrants fall outside that holding.

Families:

• (1) English common law granted citizenship based on birth, not parentage—the Framers enshrined that rule;
• (2) Wong Kim Ark specifically rejected any domicile requirement, holding temporary visitors fall under U.S. jurisdiction;
• (3) 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a) independently guarantees citizenship based on prevailing 1940 understanding.

Implications:

• Government victory transforms citizenship from a birthright into a privilege contingent on parental immigration status—potentially questioning the citizenship of millions born to immigrant parents over generations.
• Family victory preserves 150-year constitutional bedrock: birth on American soil, with narrow exceptions, makes you American.

The Fine Print:

• Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
• 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a): "The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: (a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

Primary Cases:

• United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898): U.S.-born child of Chinese immigrant parents obtained citizenship at birth; the Citizenship Clause enshrines the common-law rule of birthright citizenship.
• Elk v. Wilkins (1884): Tribal Indians born on American soil lacked citizenship because they owed allegiance to their tribes—a sovereign-to-sovereign exception inapplicable to ordinary immigrants.

Timestamps:

00:01:11: United States Opening Statement

00:03:14: United States Free for All Questions

00:27:47: United States Round Robin Questions

01:09:57: Barbara Opening Statement

01:12:46: Barbara Free for All Questions

01:41:51: Barbara Round Robin Questions

02:06:10: United States Rebuttal

Pitchford v. Cain | Case No. 24-7351 | Docket Link: Here | Argument: 3/31/26

Overview: Death row inmate Terry Pitchford argues prosecutor Doug Evans deliberately excluded Black jurors in his 2006 capital murder trial and that no court ever fairly examined that claim because Mississippi's courts called it forfeited.

Question Presented: Whether Mississippi's courts unreasonably declared forfeited a racial jury-selection challenge the trial court itself blocked.

Posture: Fifth Circuit affirmed denial of federal habeas relief; Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Oral Advocates:

• Petitioner (Pitchford): Joseph Perkovich of Phillips Black
• Respondent (Cain): Scott Stewart, Mississippi's Solicitor General
• United States (as Amicus Curiae): Emily M. Ferguson, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Department of Justice

Main Arguments:

Pitchford:

• (1) Three on-the-record Batson objections cannot constitute intentional waiver of a known constitutional right;
• (2) Mississippi wrongly blocked comparative juror analysis on appeal, contradicting Miller-El v. Dretke (2005) and Snyder v. Louisiana (2008);
• (3) Batson violations constitute structural error requiring automatic reversal.

Mississippi:

• (1) Mississippi courts applied a lawful, long-standing rule requiring defendants to raise pretext arguments before the trial court or forfeit them; (2) Pitchford's own post-conviction filings admitted he failed to preserve the Batson record, and his trial attorney swore under oath she never raised those arguments; (3) The cert grant covers only the AEDPA waiver question — not the underlying Batson merits or the form of habeas relief.

Implications:

• A Pitchford victory sends the case back to Mississippi courts for the first Batson Step Three examination in nineteen years — testing whether Evans's race-neutral explanations for striking four Black jurors amounted to pretext.
• A Mississippi victory leaves Pitchford on death row and establishes that AEDPA deference shields state forfeiture rulings even when trial courts themselves foreclosed the underlying challenge — chilling Batson enforcement at Step Three nationwide.

The Fine Print:

• 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) (AEDPA): "An application for a writ of habeas corpus...shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law...or resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts."
• U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1: "No State shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Primary Cases:

• Batson v. Kentucky (1986): The Equal Protection Clause prohibits prosecutors from exercising peremptory strikes to exclude jurors on the basis of race; courts must assess purposeful discrimination through a three-step inquiry.
• Flowers v. Mississippi (2019): Courts must consider a prosecutor's history of racially discriminatory strikes in assessing a Batson challenge; the same prosecutor Doug Evans removed 41 of 42 Black jurors across six trials of Curtis Flowers before the Court reversed.

Timestamps:

[00:00:00] Argument Preview

[00:01:07] Oral Advocates

[00:01:21] Argument Begins

[00:01:29] Pitchford Opening Statement

[00:03:49] Pitchford Free for All Questions

[00:28:09] Pitchford Round Robin Questions

[00:54:35] Cain Opening Statement

[00:56:46] Cain Free for All Questions

[01:15:43] Cain Round Robin Questions

[01:34:48] United States Opening Statement

[01:35:51] United States Free for All Questions

[01:45:22] United States Round Robin Questions

[01:48:42] Pitchford Rebuttal