Amicus Praxis Foundry is a nonpartisan research and advocacy initiative dedicated to strengthening constitutional maturity through empirically informed policymaking. Its work focuses on how the State’s regulatory power can evolve in harmony with scientific understanding and human dignity.The Foundry operates as a network of independent “Foundries,” each examining a different facet of constitutional life—from legislative accountability to public health, educational equity, and human rights. In this capacity, the Foundry has studied how governments translate empirical evidence of harm into lawful, narrowly tailored regulation—particularly in domains where professional conduct intersects with speech, science, and identity.The present case, Chiles v. Salazar, lies at that intersection. It asks whether a State may protect minors from practices that contemporary medical and behavioral science have identified as harmful. The Foundry submits this brief to assist the Court in situating that question within a coherent constitutional framework: one that honors free expression while preserving the State’s duty to prevent measurable harm within licensed professions.Amicus files in support of Respondents not as a partisan advocate but as a civic researcher. Its sole interest is in ensuring that constitutional interpretation continues to mature alongside fact—that the Court’s reasoning reflects both empirical truth and the disciplined compassion that sustains public trust. SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT The Constitution is not inert parchment; it is a living system that learns and heals through experience. Its nervous system is the people, whose pain signals appear as evidence of harm. Its mind is the community of interpreters—lawmakers, scholars, and amici—who translate that signal into reason. And its consciousness is this Court, charged with integrating knowledge and principle into a coherent response.Colorado’s statute represents a healthy constitutional reflex. It acts upon clear empirical evidence that “conversion” and other coercive behavioral interventions inflict serious and lasting injury on minors. The law forbids only structured programs designed to change or suppress identity—conduct that predictably causes harm—while expressly preserving the freedom to speak, preach, or counsel. In doing so, the State performs its duty of care without trespassing on the First Amendment.First, the regulation targets conduct, not ideas. It reaches organized, repeated, or billed interventions that function as treatment. Speech is implicated only incidentally, as it is in informed consent or prescription. This Court has long held that “it has never been deemed an abridgment of freedom of speech… to make a course of conduct illegal merely because the conduct was in part… carried out by means of language.” Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Ass’n, 436 U.S. 447, 456 (1978); see also NIFLA v. Becerra, 585 U.S. 755, 772–73 (2018).Second, the empirical record is unequivocal. Contemporary studies show suicide-attempt risk roughly three times higher among minors subjected to structured, change-oriented interventions (Trevor Project 2024), strong correlations with PTSD and major depression (Stanford PRIDE 2024), and parallel harms in coercive inpatient analogues (Lancet Psychiatry 2024). These findings justify prophylactic protection where minors’ consent and power are inherently limited.Third, the statute is viewpoint-neutral and narrowly tailored. It applies regardless of ideology or creed, preserves supportive or faith-based conversation, and confines enforcement to licensed professional contexts where the State’s duty of care is greatest. This reconciles the lower-court split: Pickup (9th Cir.) and King (3d Cir.) correctly treated such laws as conduct regulation; Otto (11th Cir.) misread NIFLA by collapsing treatment into viewpoint policing. Colorado’s rule fits comfortably within the conduct/speech boundary and satisfies even heightened scrutiny.Fourth, practical evidence confirms the State’s compelling interest. Public systems bear measurable costs when harmful practices persist. West Virginia’s FOIA-released data show youth-therapy expenses rising 56 percent from 2018 to 2025 (SE-00Y/00Z)—a fiscal “hostile-climate tax.” Regulation is thus not only constitutionally permissible but fiscally prudent.Finally, the Constitution does not require States to stand idle while licensed actors inflict predictable harm on children. A law that neutralizes proven injury while leaving the body of free expression intact does not violate the First Amendment; it vindicates it. The judgment should be affirmed. ARGUMENT I. THE STATE’S PROTECTIVE REFLEX IS CONSTITUTIONALLY JUSTIFIED. The Constitution protects ideas; it does not constitutionalize every method of imposing them. Colorado’s law draws that boundary with precision. It regulates a professional course of treatment whose object is behavioral change in minors, not the exchange of viewpoints. A. The regulated activity is a course of treatment. The statute reaches organized, repeated, or billed interventions—sessions that function as therapy or its equivalent—directed at changing or suppressing a child’s orientation, gender identity, or intrinsic behavioral traits. Those objective indicia mark conduct, not ideology. As this Court has long recognized, “it has never been deemed an abridgment of freedom of speech … to make a course of conduct illegal merely because the conduct was in part … carried out by means of language.” Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Ass’n, 436 U.S. 447, 456 (1978). NIFLA v. Becerra, 585 U.S. 755 (2018), reaffirmed that States may regulate professional conduct even when that conduct consists largely of words. The constitutional analysis turns not on whether language is used, but on whether the State acts to prevent a documented harm within its sphere of professional responsibility. B. The speech/conduct line after NIFLA. Lower courts have divided on how NIFLA applies. The Ninth Circuit in Pickup v. Brown, 740 F.3d 1208 (9th Cir. 2014), and the Third Circuit in King v. Governor of New Jersey, 767 F.3d 216 (3d Cir. 2014), treated minor-conversion bans as regulations of professional conduct, applying rational or intermediate scrutiny because speech was only incidentally affected. Each court emphasized that the statutes were neutral and aimed solely at protecting minors from harm. The Eleventh Circuit, by contrast, in Otto v. City of Boca Raton, 981 F.3d 854 (11th Cir. 2020), recast the same type of law as viewpoint discrimination and imposed strict scrutiny. That reading misapprehends NIFLA: the decision rejected a free-floating “professional speech” category but expressly reaffirmed the State’s power to regulate professional conduct, even when that conduct includes speech.This Court should reconcile the split by affirming the Pickup/King approach. Regulation of structured, change-directed interventions is regulation of conduct undertaken in a licensed capacity. The incidental burden on expression is constitutionally permissible when the State acts to prevent well-documented harm to minors. C. Empirical and constitutional coherence. The factual record now available validates Colorado’s approach. Contemporary studies show that minors exposed to such interventions face suicide-attempt risk roughly triple that of peers (Trevor Project 2024), with strong correlations to PTSD and depression (Stanford PRIDE 2024) and analogous harms in coercive inpatient settings (Lancet Psychiatry 2024). When the State acts on data this clear, it performs the constitutional function of an immune system—responding to injury while sparing the surrounding body of free discourse. The Constitution demands no paralysis in the face of preventable harm; it requires precision, which Colorado has achieved. II. COLORADO’S STATUTE EXEMPLIFIES NARROW TAILORING AND VIEWPOINT NEUTRALITY. The Constitution permits a State to regulate conduct when its aim is to prevent measurable harm rather than to silence belief. Colorado’s statute draws that distinction precisely. It targets only structured, change-directed interventions—professional programs that function as treatment—and leaves undisturbed the realm of free conversation, religion, and parental guidance. A. Neutral triggers grounded in structure, not ideology. The statute’s operative terms—“structured intervention” and “therapeutic or quasi-therapeutic intent”—are defined by objective indicia: recurring sessions, treatment plans, billing records, advertisements, or scripts that present the activity as therapy. The rule applies regardless of the viewpoint or direction of change. Whether an intervention seeks to enforce conformity or impose acceptance, its structured, clinical format brings it within the State’s legitimate reach. This neutrality prevents ideological favoritism while addressing the concrete behavior that causes harm. B. Preservation of speech and faith. Colorado’s law safeguards supportive, exploratory, and pastoral speech. A counselor may help a minor explore identity; a parent may discuss faith; a pastor may preach doctrine. None of these fall within the statute’s scope unless they are formalized into a program whose stated goal is to change or suppress identity through therapeutic means. By carving this boundary, the State protects both freedom of belief and the safety of children—a balance the First Amendment itself contemplates. C. Tailoring to empirical harm. The regulation is tightly linked to contemporary evidence. Post-2023 data confirm that minors exposed to structured, change-oriented interventions face suicide-attempt risk roughly three times higher than peers (Trevor 2024), elevated PTSD and depression rates (Stanford PRIDE 2024), and comparable effects in coercive inpatient analogues (Lancet Psychiatry 2024). These harms occur even after brief exposure, validating the State’s prophylactic approach. Narrow tailoring does not require waiting for tragedy; it requires acting on predictable danger with precision. D. Licensing channel and enforcement integrity. The statute channels enforcement through professional-licensing systems, where the State’s duty of care is strongest and due-process protections are routine. It does not criminalize sermons or family conversation; it disciplines licensed or quasi-licensed conduct that violates professional norms. Malpractice suits are insufficient substitutes: they arise only after harm and rarely reach unlicensed or rebranded programs. A pre-emptive licensing rule prevents recurrence rather than compensating aftermath. E. Constitutional coherence. This calibration—neutral trigger, empirical grounding, and professional channel—mirrors how a healthy immune system isolates pathogens without attacking healthy tissue. The State neutralizes a demonstrable source of harm while leaving the body of free expression intact. That is not censorship; it is constitutional hygiene. III. QUANTIFIABLE HARMS AND THE “HOSTILE-CLIMATE TAX” The Constitution grants States not only the authority but the responsibility to protect minors from predictable harm. Colorado’s law fulfills that duty with precision, addressing a documented public-health crisis while preserving freedom of thought and faith. The empirical and fiscal record demonstrates that prevention is both constitutionally sound and economically prudent. A. The harms to children are measurable, recurrent, and severe. Recent research shows the risk is not theoretical. Minors subjected to conversion or other coercive, identity-altering interventions experience suicide-attempt rates roughly three times higher than peers (Trevor Project 2024), strong correlations with PTSD and major depression (Stanford PRIDE 2024), and comparable trauma effects in coercive inpatient settings (Lancet Psychiatry 2024). These outcomes occur even after brief exposure, confirming that the danger inheres in the structured nature of the practice itself. Such evidence satisfies any standard of scrutiny the Court may apply: the State’s interest in preventing grave psychological injury to children is compelling by every constitutional measure. B. The “hostile-climate tax”: empirical evidence of fiscal consequence. Public systems bear the cost when harmful practices persist and when States fail to act as protective regulators. West Virginia’s FOIA-released data (2018–2025) show youth-therapy expenditures rising 56 percent overall, correlating with increased emergency-care use in exclusionary climates (SE-00Y/00Z). Comparable behavioral-health line items in other jurisdictions display 15–25 percent upward trends (KFF 2025; NAMI Texas 2025). These figures do not establish causation but reflect a consistent association between minority stress and public-expenditure growth—a measurable “hostile-climate tax.”Colorado’s preventive regulation reduces those costs by neutralizing the source of harm before it burdens public resources. Protecting children from coercive treatment is not only a moral imperative but a fiscal one. C. Federalism and foresight. Federalism presumes local capacity to respond to local harm. States are laboratories of constitutional learning, responsible for detecting and correcting dysfunction in their own regulatory immune systems. When Colorado acts to prevent a documented pattern of child harm through a neutral, professional-conduct rule, it exercises—not exceeds—its sovereign function. D. The constitutional equilibrium. This Court’s precedents recognize that liberty and protection are not adversaries but complements. A rule that shields minors from empirically proven injury, while preserving the space for speech and belief, restores equilibrium between autonomy and safety. Colorado’s statute thus strengthens the constitutional body: it removes a pathogen while preserving the organism’s capacity for expression and growth. The Constitution is stronger, not weaker, when it learns to heal. CONCLUSION The Constitution does not forbid a State from learning. It expects maturity—the ability to perceive harm, to distinguish belief from conduct, and to respond with precision rather than indifference. Colorado’s statute does exactly that. It protects minors from demonstrable injury while preserving the freedom to speak, believe, and counsel in good faith. It is viewpoint-neutral, empirically grounded, and narrowly tailored to the State’s compelling interest in child safety and public integrity.Protecting young people from harm is not censorship; it is governance at its most constitutional. In upholding Colorado’s measured response, the Court affirms the Constitution’s own immune capacity—its power to defend the body politic from injury without impairing its vitality of thought and belief.