Once seen as often dry and sometimes intimidating, personal finance advice is a far cry from what it was in your grandparents’ day.

It’s not just the array of new online tools, from banking apps to exotic new investing options, such as cryptocurrency. Social media has created a platform for “finfluencers” – nonprofessional personal finance influencers who have become an increasingly common source of advice for young people, whether it’s accurate or not.

While most Americans over 64 say they turn to professional financial planners for guidance, a 2025 Gallup poll found that 42% of 18- to 29-year-olds seek financial advice on social media. That’s almost double the share among those ages 30 to 49. Many finfluencers have no formal financial credentials. Instead, their credibility is largely built on their social media followings, engagement metrics and relatability.

There’s also another generational shift afoot: Personal finance is increasingly bound up with political and social issues. Young adults are attempting to navigate a precarious economy – and the finfluencers who try to court them often launch critiques at the institutions and policies that they say created these conditions.

This advice ranges from risky trading-centric approaches to holistic financial practices. But a common thread is their positioning against traditional financial advice.

As a scholar who studies how the digital economy is affecting young adults’ well-being, I argue that Americans who still get their financial advice from more conventional sources – as well as the professional adviser class – need to understand there’s been a sea change in how young people understand money. And the legions of online followers need a better grasp of the risks involved.

Personal finance goes political

“Hey, I’m Rachel and I’m not paying my federal income taxes this year,” begins a TikTok video of an attorney who claims she’s skipping out on her US$8,800 tax bill for political reasons.

Rachel Cohen’s videos have racked up millions of views so far this year. Her video series details her reasons for refusal, specifically citing her disagreement with federal immigration policy and the “military-industrial complex.” On April 15, 2026, Cohen updated her viewers – some of whom had threatened to report her to the IRS – that she filed her return. But instead of paying the amount due, she’s parking the money in a high-yield savings account. Her sign-off: “Stay tuned and find out if I get arrested!”

Cohen’s not alone in her public protest. Millions of viewers have watched “tax resistance” or “tax strike” videos on TikTok that offer advice on how to not pay taxes and walk viewers through the potential consequences they might face.

Although my research suggests most of the tax-protest content on TikTok comes from left-leaning users, it draws influencers across the political spectrum. Examples include dissenters citing anti-war sentiments or disapproval of the government’s handling of the Epstein files.

Other personalities are encouraging their followers to treat their finances as a broader political statement. In some cases, these videos issue a call to action.

Vivian Tu, better known by her followers as “Your Rich BFF,” explains why the price of raspberries has gone up, citing a variety of foreign and domestic policy decisions: the war in Iran, tariffs and a shortage of migrant farmworkers. “If this video made you mad,” she says, “share it with a friend and contact a legislator.”

Tori Dunlap, author of “Financial Feminist,” tells her 2.2 million followers on Instagram: “If you’re freaking out about the world right now, GET RICH. That is your best form of protest is to get financially stable.”

However, Dunlap isn’t peddling get-rich-quick schemes. Much of her advice is run-of-the-mill personal finance tips – such as improving your credit score, paying down debt or automating savings contributions.

Political personal finance content has also extended beyond protests into things such as tracking the financial integrity of members of Congress or avoiding investments that could fund things such as private prisons.

Follow the money

These examples underscore how people’s financial lives are bound up with their values. And finfluencers appeal to their most politically charged beliefs to shape their financial decisions – even if they aren’t the best choices for their bank accounts.

One example is conflicts of interest. What many followers may not be fully aware of is that most finfluencers are incentivized to make highly performative content to monetize their accounts. This funding can come through either sponsored content – often from credit card and fintech companies – or through their own materials and “masterclasses.”

Moreover, full transparency is not a given. Although TikTok and Instagram have “paid promotion” designations for sponsored content, it’s not always so easy to identify potential conflicts of interest.

Crypto promoters, for example, routinely fail to disclose their sponsorships – and it’s common for them to boost coins they have a vested interest in.

As Americans’ distrust in financial institutions and regulators grows, many are willing to follow advice that falls into gray areas of oversight. When personal finance tips resonate with a viewers’ values, everyday financial decision-making can become colored with politics and nonconformist sentiments.

Advice, please!

Not everyone turns to finfluencers. Many take advice from anonymous strangers on forums such as Reddit.

The r/personalfinance subreddit alone has 2.8 million weekly visitors who post, respond and read questions posed and answered by everyday people. This is only one of 189 finance-related subreddits my colleagues and I compiled in our recent report.

Unlike finfluencers, Reddit users typically trade tips and opinion in plain text and occasional memes. Users of these forums are rarely monetized. It’s also demand-driven advice – people who post on these forums get to ask questions that directly address their personal financial issues. Credibility is earned though community “upvotes” and endorsements. Rather than one opinion, they can get a variety.

But similar to finfluencers, there’s an anti-institutional sentiment that privileges peer-to-peer learning over credentialed expertise. For example, users on the Bitcoin subreddit harshly criticize the contemporary financial system and advocate for digital currency over conventional forms of money.

Others take aim at the excesses of consumer culture, as seen on the forums for anti-consumption and frugal and simple living.

In this environment, financial education is rarely neutral – it’s deeply intertwined with people’s personal and political lives. As finfluencer Ellyce Fulmore puts it: “The barriers you face, your personal experience, the systems that do or don’t work for you … personal, personal, personal, personal!”

Maximilian Brichta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Most U.S. adults who attend religious services attend multiple congregations, at least occasionally, according to our new research.

As sociologists who research congregational life in the United States, we fielded a nationally representative survey in 2023. We asked over 2,000 adults across many religious affiliations, and those with no religion, a variety of questions about their religious beliefs and activities.

Our analysis, which was published in the Review of Religious Research, found that roughly 12% of all adults who attend services go to multiple congregations “regularly” and 45% attend multiple congregations “occasionally.” Of those who attend multiple congregations, 73% attend two congregations and 27% attend three or more, at least occasionally.

Adults who attend multiple congregations are more likely to be politically liberal, whereas political conservatives are more likely to always attend one congregation. We also found that evangelical Protestants are less likely to attend multiple places of worship than Catholics. About 17% of those attending a single place of worship identified as evangelical Protestant, versus only 10% of people who attended more than one.

Catholics, on the other hand, are more likely to attend multiple congregations. Unsurprisingly, so are people who identify with multiple religious traditions.

Why attend multiple places of worship? Of those who do, 24% said it’s to experience a “different style of service,” and another 24% said “I have friends that attend.” Another common reason was to attend special events at another congregation.

Americans who attend multiple congregations generally give less time and money to each congregation they attend. Cumulatively, however – across all the congregations they attend – they donate and volunteer at similar levels to people who always attend the same house of worship.

Why it matters

Historians and social scientists sometimes refer to religion in the U.S. as a “marketplace” in which different places of worship compete for members. That theory assumes that when people begin attending a new place of worship, they stop attending their old one – that their loyalties are exclusive.

Instead, our research shows that many individuals across regions and religions take a more flexible approach. They might attend one place because they appreciate its worship style, but they also attend another to hang out with a particular friend group.

For researchers, this complicates how we measure and track changes in American religion. Many surveys, for example, ask people only a single question about how often they attend religious services. How do people who attend multiple congregations respond? Do they only report how often they attend their most frequent place of worship, try to add up across the different congregations they attend, or something else?

If surveys are not asking about multiple attendance, then they are likely missing pieces of the puzzle.

What’s next

Our survey results suggest that researchers need to move away from thinking about congregational attendance as exclusive.

While our survey focused on the characteristics and behaviors of individuals, we would like to see future surveys examine what types of congregations are more likely to have exclusive versus nonexclusive attenders. Similarly, our research did not distinguish between in-person versus virtual service attendance, which could provide additional insights into why people attend multiple congregations.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Katie E. Corcoran receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. This article was made possible through the support of Grant 62630 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Christopher P. Scheitle receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. This article was made possible through the support of Grant 62630 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Purple state which recently elected a Democratic governor will now choose whether to replace existing voting maps with ones that favor Democrats

Nearly three months to the day after his term as Virginia’s governor ended, Republican Glenn Youngkin stood in an unshaded corner of an office parking lot to warn dozens of conservative activists that they were in the midst of “the most important election” in the commonwealth’s 237-year history.

The question before the voters casting ballots at an early voting precinct a few yards away in the city of Leesburg ahead of Tuesday’s special election was whether to temporarily set aside Virginia’s congressional maps intended to advantage neither party and replace them with a new version that could allow Democrats to win all but one seat in the 11-member delegation in the November midterm elections.

The CBS television show “It’s What’s Happening Baby” aired a music video featuring Martha and the Vandellas performing their hit song “Nowhere to Run” to kick off its national broadcast dedicated to Detroit on June 28, 1965.

In the video, the Detroit-based trio sang about how they could not escape missing an ex-lover after a breakup while sitting in a white Mustang moving slowly down the assembly line in the Ford Motor Co.’s River Rouge plant.

As a cultural and labor historian, I see the “Nowhere to Run” video as an iconic testament to Detroit’s reputation as the “Motor City” and the role of the autoworker in the American imagination.

Motown founder and CEO Berry Gordy, Jr. worked on the Ford assembly line and used it as inspiration for Hitsville U.S.A., the famed headquarters and music recording studio that served as a space to train performers and perfect the “Motown sound” for the masses.

Martha and the Vandellas were part of Motown’s illustrious roster of artists in the 1960s. Initially comprised of Martha Reeves, Rosalind Ashford and Annette Beard, and with members changing over the next three decades, they helped establish the Black “girl group.” They presented themselves as working class in videos like “Nowhere to Run.”

Their classic anthem “Dancing in the Street” reflected the revolutionary mood of civil rights protesters, especially Black Americans in the 1960s. As lead singer, Reeves also emerged as a pioneering R&B “diva,” helping pave the way for Black female solo vocalists like Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige and Beyoncé.

A patient path to stardom

Martha Reeves was born in Eufaula, Alabama, on July 18, 1941. Soon after, her family moved to Detroit’s east side. Music occupied a central place in her life from childhood.

Reeves writes in her 1994 memoir, “Dancing in the Street: Confessions of a Motown Diva,” about her father serenading her mother with his guitar while she was pregnant with Martha. Her mother, Ruby, also sang. Reeves’ parents passed their love for music to her, and she sang in her church choir and aspired to a life of performance.

“At that young age I was already hooked on pleasing the crowd with my singing,” Reeves wrote.

Reeves graduated from Northeastern High School. As a teenager, she used fake IDs to get into night clubs to watch singers perform, and she sang in open mics and talent shows. She scored her first break after earning a three-night performance at the 20 Grand, a popular Detroit night club located on 14th Street and Warren Avenue.

It was after one of those performances when she met William Stevenson, Motown Records’ executive for discovering new talent. Stevenson invited Reeves to the label’s headquarters.

Reeves came to the studio, but she didn’t audition for reasons that aren’t entirely clear today. Instead, Stevenson told her she could answer the phones. That’s how she got a job in the A&R Department and began working with other Motown artists.

In 1957, Reeves joined her first group, the Del-Phis. Formed by Edward “Pops” Larkins, the Del-Phis also included leader Gloria Jean Williamson, Rosalind Ashford and Annette Beard.

Reeves soon caught another break. In September 1962, Stevenson called for her to fill in for Mary Wells in a Marvin Gaye studio session. Reeves enlisted the other Del-Phis, and they performed so well that they became the supporting vocal group for Gaye.

After the Del-Phis toured with Gaye and recorded “I’ll Have to Let Him Go,” Gordy offered Reeves, Beard and Ashford a recording contract. The group also took on a new name, Martha and the Vandellas.

Martha and the Vandellas enjoyed commercial success soon after, with songs like “Come and Get These Memories,” “Quicksand” and “Heatwave.”

An anthem for revolution set to a groove

“Dancing in the Street,” written by Gaye, Stevenson and Ivy Jo Hunter, was released in the summer of 1964 and became a signature hit for Martha and the Vandellas.

Reeves wrote in her autobiography that she did not like “Dancing in the Street.”

However, she made it her own, and Reeves later acknowledged that the song embodied the spirit of civil rights protests.

“It became the anthem of the decade,” Reeves wrote.

She was right.

At the time of the song’s release, the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. Black Americans in Harlem took to the streets to protest the killing of 15-year-old James Powell by an off-duty New York Police Department officer.

The 1960s set off a string of “long, hot summers” as racial tensions intensified. Black folks in the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles in 1965 protested in the streets in response to police violence.

More than 100 protests were organized in response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, from Chicago to Washington and Baltimore.

Detroit erupted a year earlier, in July 1967, after Detroit police officers raided a “blind pig,” or an unlicensed bar, on 12th Street.

The iconic opening lines of “Dancing in the Street” announced a new attitude among Black folks: “Calling out around the world/ Are you ready for a brand new beat?”

The high-octane, optimistic song is laced with slogans interpreted as invitations to take action. Martha and the Vandellas’ declaration that “Summer is here and the time is right for dancing in the street” reflected Black Americans’ willingness to not only march, but to take measures in their own hands and fight for equality and justice.

Battle for fair pay and recognition

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of transition for Reeves and the Vandellas. The Supremes were on the rise and threatened to displace them as the most prominent girl group on the Motown label. Reeves also experienced creative differences with Motown executives and struggled with drug addiction. Then, in 1972, Gordy moved Motown to Los Angeles so he could try his hand at filmmaking.

Martha and the Vandellas broke up later that year after the release of their album, “Black Magic.” However, Reeves continued as a solo artist, releasing five albums, including her self-titled debut “Martha Reeves” in 1974, “The Rest of My Life” in 1976 and “We Meet Again” in 1978, among others.

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, along with many Motown artists, experienced a resurgence in popularity during the 1980s. Motown Records’ 25th anniversary show in Pasadena, California, in 1983 launched them back into the mainstream. The group reunited and started performing again in 1989.

Also, Reeves and the group sought to resolve their old conflicts with Motown Records. Reeves and various members of the Vandellas sued Gordy and Motown in 1989 for unpaid royalties. Motown Records settled the suit in 1991 for an undisclosed amount.

Four years later, the B-52s inducted Reeves and the Vandellas into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The diva archetype

Martha and the Vandellas played a vital role in laying the foundation for future all-Black female groups like En Vogue, TLC, SWV and Destiny’s Child.

They helped set the standard for turning songs about the trappings of love and heartbreak into anthems. Reeves embraced being an “R&B Diva” long before music critics applied the persona to singers like Mary J. Blige and Beyoncé. Reeves was not just a larger-than-life vocal presence; she showed future generations of Black female vocalists that, to be a diva, one must have control of one’s own career.

“We became the Vandellas and with me being the only lead singer, my name was put out there because I did all the work,” Reeves said in a 2020 interview. “I did all the singing … I managed to just come up with my own destiny, with my own future in show business.”

Austin McCoy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly learning to autonomously design and run biological experiments, but the systems intended to govern those capabilities are struggling to keep pace.

AI company OpenAI and biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks announced in February 2026 that OpenAI’s flagship model GPT-5 had autonomously designed and run 36,000 biological experiments. It did this through a robotic cloud laboratory, a facility where automated equipment controlled remotely by computers carries out experiments. The AI model proposed study designs, and robots carried them out and fed the data back to the model for the next round. Humans set the goal, and the machines did much of the work in the lab, cutting the cost of producing a desired protein by 40%.

This is programmable biology: designing biological components on a computer and building them in the physical world, with AI closing the loop.

For decades, biology mostly moved from observation toward understanding. Scientists sequenced the genomes of organisms to catalog all of their DNA, learning how genes encode the proteins that carry out life’s functions. The invention of tools like CRISPR then allowed scientists to edit that DNA for specific purposes, such as disabling a gene linked to disease. AI is now accelerating a third phase, where computers can both design biological systems and rapidly test them.

The process looks less like traditional benchwork in a lab and more like engineering: design, build, test, learn and repeat. Where a traditional experiment might test a single hypothesis, AI-driven programmable biology explores thousands of design variations in parallel, iterating the way an engineer refines a prototype.

As a data scientist who studies genomics and biosecurity, I research how AI is reshaping biological research and what safeguards that demands. Current safety measures and regulations have not kept pace with these capabilities, and the gap between what AI can do in biology and what governance systems are prepared to handle is growing.

What AI makes possible

The clearest example of how researchers are using AI to automate research is AI-accelerated protein design.

Proteins are the molecular machines that carry out most functions in living cells. Designing new ones has traditionally required years of trial and error because even small changes to a protein’s sequence can alter its shape and function in unpredictable ways.

Protein language models, which are AI systems trained on millions of natural protein sequences, can quickly predict how mutations will change a protein’s behavior or design new proteins. These AI models are designing potential new drugs and speeding vaccine development.

Paired with automated labs, these models create tight loops of experimentation and revision, testing thousands of variations in days rather than the months or years a human team would need.

Faster protein engineering could mean faster responses to emerging infections and cheaper drugs.

The dual-use problem

Researchers have raised concerns that these same AI tools could be misused, a challenge known as the dual-use problem: Technologies developed for beneficial purposes can also be repurposed to cause harm.

For example, researchers have found that AI models integrated with automated labs can optimize how well a virus spreads, even without specialized training. Scientists have developed a risk-scoring tool to evaluate how AI could modify a virus’s capabilities, such as altering which species it infects or helping it evade the immune system.

Current AI models are able to walk users through the technical steps of recovering live viruses from synthetic DNA. Researchers have determined that AI could lower barriers at multiple stages in the process of developing a bioweapon, and that current oversight does not adequately address this risk.

Risk from bio AI

Experienced scientists are already using AI to plan and design biological experiments. The question of whether AI can help people with limited biology training carry out dangerous lab work is the subject of active research.

Two recent studies have reached different conclusions.

A study by AI company Scale AI and biosecurity nonprofit SecureBio found that when people with limited biology experience were given access to large language models, which is the type of AI behind tools like ChatGPT, they were able to complete biosecurity-related tasks, such as troubleshooting complex virology lab protocols with four times greater accuracy. In some areas, these novices outperformed trained experts. Around 90% of these novices reported little difficulty getting the models to provide risky biological information, such as detailed instructions on working with dangerous pathogens, despite built-in safety filters meant to block such outputs.

In contrast, a study led by Active Site, a research nonprofit that studies the use of AI in synthetic biology, found that AI help did not lead to significant differences in the ability of novices to complete the complex workflow to produce a virus in a biosafety laboratory. However, the AI-assisted group succeeded more often on most tasks and finished some steps faster, most notably on growing cells in the lab.

Hands-on work in the lab has traditionally been a bottleneck to translating designs into results. Even a brilliant study plan still depends on skilled human hands to carry out. That may not last, as cloud laboratories and robotic automation become cheaper and more accessible, allowing researchers to send AI-generated experimental designs to remote facilities for execution.

Responding to AI-driven biological risks

AI systems are now able to run experiments autonomously and at scale, but existing regulations were not designed for this. Rules governing biological research do not account for AI-driven automation, and rules governing AI do not specifically address its use in biology.

In the U.S., the Biden administration had issued a 2023 executive order on AI security that included biosecurity provisions, but the Trump administration revoked it. Screening the synthetic DNA that commercial providers make to ensure it cannot be misused to make pathogens or toxins remains mostly voluntary. A bipartisan bill introduced in 2026 to mandate DNA screening does not yet address AI-designed sequences that evade current detection methods.

The 1975 Biological Weapons Convention, an international treaty prohibiting the production and use of bioweapons, contains no provisions for AI. The U.K. AI Security Institute and the U.S. National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology have both called for coordinated government action.

The safety evaluations that AI labs run before releasing new models are often opaque and unsuited to capture real-world risk. Researchers have estimated that even modest improvements in an AI model’s ability to help plan pathogen-related experiments could translate to thousands of additional deaths from bioterrorism per year. Timelines for when these capabilities cross critical thresholds remain unclear.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative has proposed a managed access framework for biological AI tools, matching who can use a given tool to the risk level of the model rather than blanket restrictions. The RAND Center on AI, Security and Technology outlined a set of actions researchers could take to improve biosecurity, including improved DNA synthesis screening and model evaluations before release. Researchers have also argued that biological data itself needs governance, especially genomic data that could train models with dangerous capabilities.

Some AI companies have started voluntarily imposing their own safety measures. Anthropic activated its highest safety tier when it released its most advanced model in mid-2025. At the same moment, OpenAI updated its Preparedness Framework, revising the thresholds for how much biological risk a model can pose before additional safeguards are required. But these are voluntary, company-specific steps. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, wrote that the pace of AI development may soon outrun any single company’s ability to assess the risk of a given model.

When used in a well-controlled setting, AI can help scientists quickly reach their research goals. What happens when the same capabilities operate outside those controls is a question that policy has not yet answered. Overreact, and talent and investment may move elsewhere while the technology continues advancing anyway. Underreact, and the risks of that technology could be exploited to cause real harm.

I am applying for grants in this area.

In an 8-1 decision authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court held on March 31, 2026, that a Colorado law prohibiting licensed counselors from performing “conversion therapy” on minors was likely unconstitutional as applied to talk therapy. Justice Elena Kagan filed a separate concurrence, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

I am a law professor and political scientist who teaches and writes on free expression and discrimination. I see this holding as a potentially important decision at the intersection of free speech and health care.

Colorado’s law defines conversion therapy broadly. It bans practices that attempt not only to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity” but also to reduce same-sex attraction. The law allows therapists to provide “acceptance, support, and understanding” of gay or transgender identity. However, they may not help a client suppress those identities. Penalties include fines, probation and loss of license.

Kaley Chiles challenged the law as a violation of her First Amendment free speech rights. As a therapist who only offers talk therapy, Chiles’s objection was limited to her talk therapy. She didn’t contest the ban on what she called “long-abandoned, aversive” conversion practices. And – notably, considering she is an evangelical Christian – Chiles said she never set out to convert her clients. She says she respects her clients’ “fundamental right of self-determination” and determines her therapy approach only after a client identifies his or her own objectives. But she argued that some of her clients wish to “reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions (or) change sexual behaviors,” and the law prevents her from expressing support for any of those goals.

Colorado’s failed ‘professional speech’ argument

Colorado faced a major obstacle in defending the Colorado conversion therapy law. The law was transparently driven by the government’s views about the well-documented inefficacy and harmful effects of conversion therapy. And outside of certain contexts, such as government grants, public employees, advertising and threats, courts have treated such viewpoint-based laws as constitutionally dead on arrival.

Colorado’s best hope in defending the law, then, was to argue that it wasn’t principally a restriction on speech at all. Rather, the state framed the law as a restriction on professional conduct — an area where states have broad regulatory latitude. That framing would mean the law burdened Chiles’ speech only incidentally.

In NIFLA v. Becerra, decided in 2018, the court rejected the argument that professional speech was a less-protected category. But it acknowledged that laws “regulating conduct in ways that incidentally sweep in speech” – particularly where they “fall within the traditional purview of state regulation of professional conduct” – might survive under a lower standard of scrutiny.

Colorado attempted to demonstrate such a tradition here, citing medical licensing laws, informed-consent requirements and malpractice liability.

A divided 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had agreed with Colorado’s argument, as did Jackson in her dissent. But the Supreme Court majority rejected it. Gorsuch wrote that a government cannot evade First Amendment scrutiny by relabeling restricted speech as “conduct,” “treatment” or a “therapeutic modality.” Quoting the dissent of U.S. Circuit Judge Harris Hartz, he called Colorado’s argument a “labeling game.”

For Gorsuch, the key question is whether the law restricts speech in practice. And in Chiles’ case the answer was yes. Colorado was plainly restricting what she wished to tell her clients about their sex and gender issues.

Not just content but viewpoint discrimination

More than that, the majority noted, Colorado’s law doesn’t regulate therapists’ speech based on its content. The law discriminates based on viewpoint, permitting expressions of acceptance and support for a client’s self-identity while forbidding expressions that attempt to change it.

Under 1995’s Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, viewpoint discrimination is an “egregious form” of content regulation. Governments must “nearly always abstain” from it. The court remanded the Colorado case back to the 10th Circuit to resolve the case under this standard.

Jackson’s dissent: Medical treatment, not speech

Jackson’s solo dissent emphasizes that states have long enjoyed broad power to regulate how licensed medical professionals treat patients. To Jackson, the First Amendment should not interfere simply because a treatment is applied through words rather than instruments.

The court’s 2018 NIFLA decision, she argues, distinguished between speech restricted “as speech” and speech restricted “incidentally” as part of a medical treatment the state is otherwise entitled to regulate. According to Jackson, the majority arbitrarily collapses that distinction simply because the treatment is delivered orally. A talk therapy session and a drug infusion are both medical treatments, she argues, and the analysis should not turn on whether the provider uses a syringe or a sentence.

Jackson’s dissent also raises difficult line-drawing problems, such as the validity of less controversial potential prohibitions, such as those on encouraging a patient to smoke or to take their own life.

Implications are broader, narrower than most believe

First, only talk therapy is implicated.

The holding is narrow in this sense. It leaves room for policymakers still hoping to limit the practice of conversion therapy. Because Chiles challenged the statute only as applied to her, the majority’s analysis does not invalidate conversion therapy bans wholesale – neither Colorado’s nor those of more than 20 other states – but applies only to the extent they ban conversion talk therapy.

State legislatures can define conversion therapy a bit more narrowly, for example, by prohibiting the physical and more coercive techniques that initially gave rise to these bans. States can then leave the regulation of talk therapy to other legal and professional mechanisms, such as malpractice or enforcement of professional ethics.

Second, the standard of scrutiny that the lower court must now apply is not strict scrutiny; it is more demanding. Strict scrutiny is a legal test that validates a law if it is “narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.” Contrary to what some legal commentators have implied, Gorsuch never directs the lower court to use strict scrutiny.

The opinion emphasizes that the law doesn’t just discriminate against certain types of content – a trigger for strict scrutiny; it discriminates based on viewpoint. The strict scrutiny standard is demanding, but laws sometimes survive it. Viewpoint discrimination, on the other hand, is subject to a near-absolute prohibition: Governments must “nearly always abstain” from it. This language is stronger and more categorical than that for strict scrutiny. The implication is that the law should certainly be invalidated as applied to talk therapy.

Not a clear win for conservatives

Finally, the holding is a double-edged sword for conservatives with traditional views of gender identity. And for those discouraged by the outcome, seeing it only as a victory for religious conservatives, the holding’s logic offers a silver lining.

Kagan’s concurrence makes explicit that a “mirror image” law – one barring talk therapy that affirms gender identity – would raise the same constitutional problems.

The majority makes a similar point. As late as the 1970s, the American Psychiatric Association still classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Under Colorado’s position, a law from that era prohibiting counselors from affirming gay clients’ identities would have been constitutionally sound.

Today, more than 20 states have moved to restrict gender-affirming care, and the federal government is pressuring state medical boards to adopt skeptical positions on gender transition. It’s not implausible that a legislature would attempt to ban gender-affirming, talk-based therapies. If and when conservative policymakers attempt that move, Chiles will be a formidable obstacle.

Read more of our stories about Colorado.

Kevin Cope does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.