Will SCOTUS Allow Conversion Therapy for Minors?
Strict Scrutiny
Strict Scrutiny
4.6 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 13 October 2025
⏱️ 109 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Leah, Melissa, and Kate are back in business, breaking down this term’s first week of arguments at SCOTUS, including a challenge to Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. Also covered: the indictment of New York’s Attorney General Letitia James, the continuing legal fights against Trump’s efforts to send the National Guard into Portland and Chicago, and Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi’s pugnacious testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Then, Kate and Leah speak with Yale Law Professor John Fabian Witt about his book The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America, which chronicles how philanthropist Charles Garland bankrolled progressive causes through his American Fund for Public Service.
- If you want to learn more about Buck v. Bell (the 1927 case Justice Alito referenced in the Chiles arguments), listen to our deep dive from 2020
Favorite things:
Leah: Protest videos from Portland and Chicago; The Sentimental Garbage podcast on The Life of a Showgirl
Kate: Writers & Lovers by Lily King, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner; Red Clover Ranch in Wisconsin; wine and cider from Las Mujeres
Melissa: Vision & Justice; Miss Toy Poodle on Instagram
Leah will be in conversation with UCLA Law Professor Rick Hasen at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Oct 14, 2025 at 7:30 PM. Details here.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!
- 3/6/26 – San Francisco
- 3/7/26 – Los Angeles
Learn more: http://crooked.com/events
Order your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Strict scrutiny is brought to you by Americans United for a separation of church and state. |
| 0:04.3 | You don't destroy 250 years of secular democracy without gutting some precedents, shattering |
| 0:09.4 | some norms, and dropping a few billion. The same people in groups that back Project |
| 0:14.4 | 2025 are part of a larger shadow network that is relentlessly pushing to impose a Christian |
| 0:20.2 | nationalist agenda on our lives |
| 0:22.3 | and our laws. Church state separation is the bulwark blocking their agenda. One of the last bastions |
| 0:28.6 | of church state separation is our public school system. So they are pushing vouchers everywhere. |
| 0:34.3 | They are arguing for religious public schools. Yes, you heard that right, religious |
| 0:38.9 | public schools, and they're doing it at the Supreme Court, as we've covered on this podcast. |
| 0:43.8 | If you're listening to us, you already see the writing on the wall, and you know that we can |
| 0:48.7 | and we must fight back. Join Americans United for separation of church and state and their |
| 0:53.5 | growing movement, because church state separation |
| 0:56.1 | protects us all. You can learn |
| 0:58.1 | more and get involved at a.u.org |
| 1:00.3 | slash crooked. |
| 1:02.3 | Mr. Chief Justice, may |
| 1:04.1 | please support. |
| 1:06.1 | It's an old joke. |
| 1:08.0 | When I argue, man argues against two |
| 1:10.0 | beautiful ladies like this, |
| 1:11.5 | they're going to have the last word. |
| 1:14.9 | She spoke not elegantly, |
... |
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