Kansas City, Missouri is now attempting to use its public accommodation ordinance to compel licensed Christian counselors to provide affirmative counseling for same-sex marriages and transgender clients — and the law they're using is essentially a carbon copy of the Colorado statute the Supreme Court already struck down in Chiles. Because apparently "no" from the highest court in the land just means "try again in a different zip code."
You have to admire the sheer audacity. They didn't even bother to get creative with it. They just changed the letterhead from Colorado to Missouri and called it a day.
Two licensed counselors — Wyatt Bury and Pamela Eisenreich — are fighting back with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom. Their argument is simple and, frankly, obvious: the government cannot force a Christian counselor to speak messages that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. This isn't complicated constitutional theory. The Supreme Court literally just said this.
But Kansas City's legal team seems to have missed that memo entirely. When pressed in court, Kansas City attorney Kelly claimed, "I know of nothing coming out of our civil rights enforcement division" that would affect counselors' speech. Kelly further argued that Chiles doesn't affect "the application of the public accommodation ordinance."
Sure it doesn't, pal. The Supreme Court just happened to strike down the identical law in Colorado for fun.
The appeals judge wasn't buying it either, pointedly asking, "Why wouldn't Chiles have a bearing on the proper disposition of this relief that's been requested?" Good question. We'd all love to hear the answer to that one.
Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Bryan Neihart is leading the legal challenge, and based on the existing Supreme Court precedent, this should be a slam dunk. The Chiles decision made it crystal clear that the government cannot weaponize public accommodation laws to compel speech that contradicts a person's religious convictions. Kansas City's ordinance does exactly that.
This is what we're dealing with now, folks. It's government-by-tantrum. The Supreme Court rules against them, and instead of accepting the decision like adults, they just repackage the same unconstitutional garbage and ship it to a new city. Colorado gets slapped down? Fine, let's try Missouri. Missouri gets slapped down? They'll try Ohio next. Then Michigan. Then wherever else they think they can sneak it through before someone notices.
They're playing legal whack-a-mole with the First Amendment, and we're all supposed to pretend this is normal governance.
The Jackson County case is still working its way through the courts, but District Judge Ketchmark is overseeing the proceedings. Given that the appeals panel already seemed skeptical of Kansas City's position — and given that the Supreme Court has already ruled on this exact issue — the outcome should be predictable.
Should be. But we've learned never to underestimate the left's ability to forum-shop their way to a sympathetic judge.
Here's the bottom line: Wyatt Bury and Pamela Eisenreich are licensed counselors who want to practice their profession according to their faith. Kansas City says that's illegal. The Supreme Court says Kansas City is wrong. And Kansas City's response is to plug its ears and keep going. Not the Bee first reported on this latest round of constitutional copy-paste, and thank God someone's paying attention — because if these people had their way, every Christian professional in America would need a government permission slip to hold a biblical worldview.
They won't stop until we make them stop. Every single time.