I’ve been thinking this week about Brian Tingley: a Christian counselor who challenged Washington state’s viewpoint-based counseling ban in 2021.
At the time, challenging a counseling ban felt like a cultural “third rail”—especially for a blue state counselor with a reputation to uphold. But Brian knew the harm that would come to families if these bans were upheld. So he sued.
Tingley lost at the district court, then at the 9th Circuit. When @ADFLegal appealed to the Supreme Court, three justices favored taking Brian’s case—just one vote shy of a cert grant. Justices Thomas and Alito wrote dissents from the cert denial, noting the importance of the issue—and the fact that it wasn’t going away.
They were right. Two years later, we appealed a near-identical case from Colorado: Chiles v. Salazar. This time, the Supreme Court took the case.
And just this week, the Court referenced Tingley in its Chiles opinion, ruling 8-1 that Colorado’s counseling ban was an “egregious assault” on First Amendment principles. “The Constitution does not protect the right of some to speak freely; it protects the right of all.”
Sometimes—oftentimes—you have to lose before you can win. And no one can predict when the win will come. It’s a matter of simply stepping out in boldness and faith to do what’s right, come what may.
I’m deeply grateful to every ADF client who makes that choice—whether they walk the path of Brian Tingley or Kaley Chiles. Win or lose, they stand up. They set their comfort aside. They challenge injustice.
It’s people like this who will keep America free.
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