Things are moving quickly with our petition which was docketed at the Supreme Court on February 27th. Thereafter, the AG’s office filed a waiver of their right to respond to the petition. Shortly thereafter, the petition set for conference on March 28th, which seems very quick. However, today, apparently after review of the petition, the Court requested that the AG submit an response to be filed by April 16th. Ell, they at least think there is enough merit that they want to hear the other side’s view of why the Court should not take the case. Another small step in the right direction, perhaps.

The other news is that early last week, the Supreme Court accepted cert in a professional speech chase Chiles v. Salazar. Here is the link to that case.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/24-539.html

The case involves the same sexual orientation change therapy speech as the Ninth Circuit’s Tingley v. Ferguson, and the Eleventh Circuit’s Otto v. City of Boca Ratan. Chiles agreed with Tingley that the speech was unprotected conduct, while Otto held the speech to be fully protected.

The difference between those cases and Kory is that our case involves information and recommendations, where the speech is not the actual treatment. Tingley actually says that Pierre Kory’s speech is protected, but alas the 9th Circuit’s decision in Kory did not see it that way; hence the cert petition. Adding Kory to the docket would allow the Supreme Court to address both kinds of speech, which they should want to do, and might be the reason, our case is moving so fast.

Fingers crossed.

Rick Jaffe, Esq,