Colorado’s latest Supreme Court loss is not some random legal hiccup. It is another entry in a now-familiar pattern: progressive state actors try to use government power to force ideological compliance, get hauled into court, and then act stunned when the Constitution still exists.
The most recent blow came in Chiles v. Salazar, where the Supreme Court ruled against Colorado in a challenge to the state’s 2019 law restricting certain counseling conversations with minors. The Court found that the law ran headfirst into the First Amendment, with Justice Neil Gorsuch warning against the state enforcing orthodoxy in thought and speech. That was not a close call in tone, and it was not exactly subtle.
This Is Not a One-Off. It Is a Pattern.
The Fox News piece gets the larger point exactly right. Colorado is not just losing isolated disputes. It keeps showing up in the same kind of case, with the same censorious instincts, and getting smacked down for the same constitutional blind spot.
Before Chiles, Colorado lost 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis in 2023, when the Supreme Court held that the state could not force a website designer to create expressive content she disagreed with. Before that, Colorado lost Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in 2018, when the Court found unconstitutional hostility toward Jack Phillips’ religious beliefs. And outside the pure speech cases, Colorado also got reversed in Trump v. Anderson, where the Supreme Court unanimously tossed the state effort to knock Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot.
The Real Problem Is the Mindset
The issue here is bigger than any single plaintiff. The recurring problem is a governing mindset that treats dissent as a defect to be corrected rather than a liberty to be protected. Colorado keeps behaving like the Bill of Rights is a set of suggestions that can be suspended whenever the right experts, activists, or bureaucrats decide a competing worldview is too offensive to tolerate.
That is why these cases matter. They are not just about a counselor, a website designer, a baker, or Trump. They are about whether a state can weaponize anti-discrimination law, licensing power, or ballot procedure to punish people who refuse to mouth the approved slogans of the current culture war regime.
When the State Wants Obedience, the Court Keeps Saying No
In Chiles, the Court made clear that Colorado cannot regulate speech by pretending it is merely regulating professional conduct. In 303 Creative, the Court made clear that Colorado cannot compel speech just because the state wraps that compulsion in civil rights language. In Masterpiece Cakeshop, the Court made clear that open contempt for religious belief by state decision-makers is still unconstitutional. In Trump v. Anderson, the Court made clear that states do not get to freestyle federal disqualification rules because they are emotionally committed to taking out one political opponent.
That is the throughline. Different cases, same disease. Colorado’s political class keeps trying to turn culture war preference into legal command. The Supreme Court keeps reminding them that America is still supposed to be a constitutional republic, not a graduate seminar with subpoena power.
Culture War Defeats Have Consequences
Every one of these losses chips away at the credibility of the people who insist they are merely protecting democracy, inclusion, fairness, or safety. If that were really the full story, they would not keep ending up on the wrong side of core constitutional protections. What these cases expose is a habit of using noble language as camouflage for coercion.
And voters notice that. Normal people can tell when a state government is less interested in protecting rights than in disciplining wrongthink. They can tell when the people screaming about tolerance somehow always end up demanding compelled speech, viewpoint filtering, or selective enforcement. Colorado’s losing streak is not just a legal embarrassment. It is a political warning.
The Bottom Line
Colorado’s latest Supreme Court loss adds to a growing pile of defeats because the state keeps making the same arrogant mistake. It keeps assuming that progressive cultural priorities automatically outrank free speech, religious liberty, and basic constitutional limits. They do not.
The Court has now said so repeatedly. At some point this stops looking like bad luck and starts looking like what it is: a state government so drunk on culture war righteousness that it keeps walking straight into the First Amendment and blaming everybody else for the concussion.
That is not principled governance. That is ideological overreach with a law license.
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