The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to accept an appeal out of Colorado questioning the constitutionality of a law restricting “conversion therapy” for minors turns the spotlight toward two relatively new federal judges who previously sided with the state.

In the case of Chiles v. Salazar, Colorado Springs counselor Kaley Chiles alleged Colorado’s 2019 ban violated her First Amendment rights and sought a preliminary injunction. A trial judge denied that request in 2022, determining the law regulated conduct, not speech, and did not target religion.

That judge was Charlotte N. Sweeney, who had been on the bench for just five months. Deeming such therapy medical treatment, she emphatically rejected the argument that the law affected Chiles’ ability to “talk to her clients.”

“In the case of children who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, cisgender, transgender, or gender nonconforming, they are entitled to treatment — regardless of its outcome — that does not take a cavalier approach to their ‘dignity and worth,'” wrote Sweeney. “And at the bare minimum, they are also entitled to a state’s protection from therapeutic modalities that have been shown to cause longstanding psychological and physical damage.”

Nearly two years later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit affirmed Sweeney’s order by 2-1. The judge who authored the majority opinion, Veronica S. Rossman of Colorado, wrote that Sweeney was not clearly wrong to find conversion therapy “ineffective and harmful to minors” and that the state’s ban “comports with prevailing medical consensus.”

Both Sweeney and Rossman were appointees of Joe Biden, after consultation with Colorado’s Democratic senators. They were members of a wave of judicial appointments focused on professional and demographic diversity — with Sweeney being a longtime employment discrimination attorney and the first openly gay federal judge for Colorado, and Rossman being an immigrant and the first public defender on the 10th Circuit.

The Chiles case marks the first time the nation’s highest court will review an opinion by Rossman and an order by Sweeney.

It is the second-high profile case challenging Colorado’s LGBTQ non-discrimination laws in recent years, following the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis. There, the court narrowed the scope of Colorado’s public accommodations protections in the context of a Christian graphic designer who objected to creating websites for same-sex weddings.

That case, like Chiles, was brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that has litigated on behalf of Christians challenging Colorado’s LGBTQ non-discrimination laws.

House Bill 1129, the 2019 law that gave rise to the latest Supreme Court appeal, prohibits state-licensed psychiatrists and mental health providers from attempting to change a minor patient’s gender identity, sexual orientation or to otherwise eliminate feelings of same-sex attraction. Chiles, however, characterized the law as “censorship,” claiming all she desires to do is talk freely with her patients.

Sweeney concluded Chiles was unlikely to succeed with her constitutional challenge because the law was a public health measure legitimately regulating professional conduct. Rossman’s majority opinion agreed with that conclusion, and traded extensive barbs with the dissent over how much weight to give the scientific consensus against conversion therapy.

“What if the shoe were on the other foot? It was not terribly long ago that the mental-health establishment declared homosexuality to be a mental disorder,” wrote Judge Harris L Hartz, a George W. Bush appointee, in dissent. “A therapist who told a homosexual that he was psychologically sound and should take pride in his being different could presumably have been accused of professional malpractice.”

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Chiles and returns to the case to the trial court for further proceedings, Sweeney will not be the one to implement the directive.

Shortly after the 10th Circuit’s decision last September, Sweeney issued a brief order citing the requirement that a judge must “disqualify herself in certain circumstances in which her impartiality might be reasonably questioned.” Without elaboration, she recused from the lawsuit.

Coincidentally, Sweeney was also reassigned the 303 Creative case after it returned from the Supreme Court, from which she recused due to an unspecified appearance of partiality, as well.