WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Under the Radar - Episode 36

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

This week on “Under the Radar,” hear about the Supreme Court's decision on the conversion therapy case, the arguments before the Court on the birthright citizenship case, an executive order about college sports and NIL, and more.

This is Under the Radar on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Now, here's your host, Luke Miller. This week on Under the Radar, hear about the Supreme Court's decision on the conversion therapy case, the arguments before the court on the birthright citizenship case, an executive order about college sports and NIL, and more. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and on this show, we'll cover the news you didn't catch this week from the mainstream media. While they're covering the president's latest tweets, here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you.

Welcome to Under the Radar. The first piece of news I have for you this week is a Supreme Court case entitled Chilace v. Salazar, which is the Colorado conversion therapy case. So in 2019, the state of Colorado passed a law that banned conversion therapy, which is what they called it, for minors specifically. And in the law, what they meant by conversion therapy was that they were prohibiting, quote, any practice or treatment that attempts to change an individual sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as any effort to change behaviors or gender.

or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions towards individuals of the same sex. But very importantly, that same law also allows and encourages counselors to provide, quote, acceptance, support, and understanding for identity, exploration, and development, and to assist persons who are undergoing gender transition. So that's a long way of saying two things. First, licensed therapists cannot say anything to a minor that might discourage their gender identity or homosexual expression or anything like that. They're not allowed to do that under this Colorado law. But at the same time, the law also encourages them to promote whatever gender identity that

child wishes to express and to actually help them with the transition if they were transitioning from male to female or female to male. And that's a key distinction made in the decision that was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, where in the simplest terms, he basically just said that that is a free speech violation. There are lots of other problems with the law. But what Gorsuch points out is that the law is a content-dependent free speech restriction, which means that it's not just restricting speech. It's restricting speech based on content, which is very illegal under the First Amendment.

And that's what eight Supreme Court justices agreed with in this decision. And that logic becomes even more obvious when you look at some of the details of Ms. Chilis practice. So Kaylee Chilis is a talk therapist in Colorado. In her case, she points out that she doesn't begin counseling with any predetermined goals, Instead, she sits down with clients, discusses their goals, then formulates methods of counseling that will most benefit them, seeking throughout to respect her client's fundamental right of self-determination. She also writes that on sexuality and gender, her clients, often young people, tend to have different goals. Some are content with their sexual orientation and gender identity and want help with social issues or family relationships,

while others hope to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions or change behaviors. And that's why someone would go to therapy, right? I mean, you're not going to go to therapy to seek help with something unless, one, you want to become more comfortable with yourself, or you want to change something about yourself. And the Supreme Court is quick to point out that because she's a talk therapist specifically, she cannot prescribe medication, use medical devices, or employ any physical methods. So literally, she's just talking to people. And if her practice of just talking to people and helping them talk through things to change behaviors or become more comfortable with themselves is illegal,

then that sets a really bad precedent. Particularly in my mind, this wasn't really pointed out in the court case, but in my mind, that sets a really bad precedent for churches. If you think about going to confession or going to talk to your pastor about a particular issue that you might be facing or trying to work through, you're doing that likely to change a behavior or understand or become more comfortable with yourself. If that's illegal under this law, if there's a state mandated opinion or medical consensus that needs to be enforced by therapists or by pastors when dealing with sexual orientation or gender identity issues, then that puts a lot of churches in jeopardy as well. Because churches do employ counselors. A lot of pastors are certified as, as

as licensed counselors. So if under Colorado state law, licensed counselors are only allowed to affirm people's gender identity, sexual orientation, however they might be feeling about themselves at that particular time, especially as minors who haven't really grown into themselves yet and been able to process what actually being male or female even means, that's going to end up hurting people who are actually struggling with gender dysphoria. From a group of 12 studies published between 1968 and 2024, among children who have struggled with gender dysphoria, on average around 85% of children change their minds and do not continue into adulthood as transgender. So these are kids who have been struggling with gender dysphoria as they were young, as they were minors,

which is who this Colorado conversion therapy law is targeting. Around 85% of those children struggling with gender dysphoria do not continue into adulthood as transgender. And this isn't because of the old school horror stories about conversion therapy where they're hooking kids up to electrode machines and shocking them. Like, it's not that kind of conversion therapy that's causing this. It's because kids don't understand themselves yet when they're young, and as they grow up, they begin to understand themselves and how they relate to other people and what being male and female actually means. They understand that more as they get older. And that's why a lot of these kids grow out of gender dysphoria. But if you're the state of Colorado and you want to lump all of those kids into one safe space reaffirming box that encourages these problems, this mental illness, if you lump these kids into a box that encourages this mental illness, you're not going to see them get relief from it as they give.

older and that's what it is. And by the way, what the Supreme Court is doing here is not banning affirmations of gender identity and sexual orientation. It's not doing that at all. If parents want to take their kids to a therapist that will affirm their gender dysphoria, then they're more than allowed to do that in the state of Colorado and pretty much everywhere else. What the Supreme Court decision does here is to protect access for people who actually may want to change how they see themselves, to change their behaviors. If you're a kid who's struggling with gender dysphoria or you're a parent who has a kid who's struggling with gender dysphoria, which by all accounts is a very difficult and painful thing to go through, then as a parent,

you're likely going to want your kid to have relief from that pain. And if you're struggling with particular attractions or behaviors or thoughts about yourself that you don't want to deal with, then therapy, and especially talk therapy, can be a lot of help. But not if the state bans talk therapists from actually talking through these issues with kids. And that's what the Supreme Court struck down. Now, unsurprisingly, the one of the one, the one, One dissent in this decision was Justice Katanji Brown Jackson. You will hear her name several times throughout the show today, and her dissent in this case has basically nothing to do with the constitutional arguments around this case.

If you recall, the majority decision basically hinged on the fact that this law in Colorado was a content-dependent free speech restriction, meaning that the conversion therapy ban was not universal. It was of one type of speech while endorsing another type of speech based off of its content, which violates the First Amendment's free speech guarantee. Katanji Brown Jackson's dissent had basically nothing to do with the First Amendment and was more of just a long essay on why she liked the particular conversion therapy ban. She writes that, quote, conversion therapy stigmatizes the patient, telling them that their gender identity or sexual orientation is something to be fixed rather than accepted. This rejection can lead to shame and guilt, which in turn can cause long-term emotional distress.

Which, first of all, nobody's forcing anybody to go through conversion therapy. If you don't want to, you don't have to. If you don't like a particular therapist, you can go to a different therapist. Second of all, you want to talk about long-term emotional distress. Try having gender dysphoria and not being able to get therapy for it because the state is mandating that therapists only have one medical opinion that they can express. That doesn't allow you to treat gender dysphoria for those who actually want help with it. Her argument is, the science that I like says that conversion therapy is bad. And that's a really bad argument for a couple of reasons. First of all, it actually doesn't address the First Amendment problem at all with the case. Second of all, the science is very much up in the air about conversion therapy, and that's something that's pointed out by the majority in their decision. Third, the majority also points out that under her logic, which was basically that it's okay to ban something that goes against the majority opinion in the medical field, then in a previous era when homosexuality was considered a mental disorder, under her logic, therapists could have been forced to try to rid someone of their homosexuality because that was going with what the majority

in the medical field thought at that time, which obviously just picks apart Katanji Brown Jackson's case, because a law like that would be considered abjectly ridiculous in today's time, especially by somebody like Katanji Brown Jackson. And I can promise you that if a state passed a law that required therapists to discourage homosexuality, Katanji Brown Jackson would be crying free speech, free speech, free speech. And that's why we have free speech, is we don't want to enforce one viewpoint upon people, whether it's through therapy, whether it's through government, whether it's through anything else. And that's also why we have markets.

If you want your therapist to help you change certain behaviors or instincts or intuitions or desires that you might have, then go to a therapist that helps you do that. If you want your therapist to affirm whatever you're feeling, then you can go to a therapist that does that as well. And that was the opinion of the majority of conservative appointed and Democrat appointed Supreme Court justices in this eight to one decision that struck down the Colorado law, which aimed to ban conversion therapy, but only for content the state didn't like. You're listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. The next piece of news I have for you this week is another Supreme Court case being heard entitled Trump v. Barbara. And this is the birthright citizenship case. This is a very, very important case for the Trump administration and has also made huge headlines

because it really does have incredible ramifications for the future of the United States. So to recap some of the history behind this case on January 20th, 2025, so his first day in office for the second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending birthright citizenship, which has been the understood guarantee that anyone who is born in this country is granted citizenship, regardless of the status of the parents. Now, you can trace this all the way back to 1857 with the Dredd Scott case. In that case, the Supreme Court decided that black people whose ancestors were brought to the U.S. as slaves were not entitled to American citizenship and were thus not entitled to protection from the federal courts.

But a decade later in 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified, which includes a provision called the Citizenship Clause, which is what the entire case that we're hearing this week hinges upon. The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, confer citizenship on anyone born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Now, the only real qualification for the parents is that they be domiciled individuals in the United States, meaning that they have some kind of allegiance or intention to stay in the United States. That's at least how the Trump administration has been arguing the domiciled means in the 14th Amendment.

Now, a key distinction is that domicile does not require that they be citizens. So the parents do not have to be citizens if you are an illegal immigrant in the United States, and you have a child, that child is a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment. Now, that is what the executive order is aiming to overturn. The executive order entitled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship and did birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants, as well as immigrants who are in the U.S. legally, but temporarily. For example, people who are here on student visas.

Or perhaps even more interestingly, it applies to people who engage in what they call birth tourism, which is something that we'll get into further as we discuss the case. Now, before I get deep into the arguments themselves, there's one more case that's a precedent that you need to know about. That case is the 1898 Wang Kim Ark case. Wong Kim Ark was born in the United States in San Francisco to parents who were of Chinese descent who were not citizens of the United States. He went from the United States to China for a visit just temporarily. And when he came back to the United States, immigration officials basically would not let him in. They were challenging whether he was a citizen or not because his parents weren't citizens and he didn't go out of his way to become a citizen.

after that. Now, in that 1898 case, the majority of the Supreme Court decided that Wong Kim Ark was, in fact, the U.S. citizen, because there was no question that his parents were domiciled, individuals in the United States, meaning that they had a permanent home or connection with the United States. But making an argument about the actual 14th Amendment itself, the Trump administration and Solicitor General John Sauer, is pointing out that the 14th Amendment citizenship clause was adopted to overturn the Dred Scott decision to give newly freed slaves and their children, citizenship in the United States. Now, there's a couple important things about that for context purposes.

First of all, these slaves had been living in the United States for a long time at that point. They were not tourists. They were not here on student visas. They were not illegal immigrants. They had been in the United States for generations. So they were very clearly domiciled in the United States. There was no question about that. Second, and I think this absolutely just helps the Trump administration,

and at least contests the Wong Kim Ark precedent, somebody pulled the transcripts from the argument over the 14th Amendment. When the 14th Amendment was presented to Congress in 1866, Jacob Merritt Howard, who was a Republican senator who introduced the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, here's what he had to say when explaining it to Congress. Quote, this amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States and subject to their jurisdiction is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. Here's the important part. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors, or foreign ministers accredited to the government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.

It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. Now, I guess we still have some doubt if we're arguing about it 160 years later, but the person who actually introduced the citizenship clause to the 14th Amendment explicitly said to Congress, it's in the transcript, it was in his original statement to Congress, that the Citizenship Clause will not include persons born in the United States who are foreigners or aliens, which is extremely relevant to the case at hand, because it was intended to be for freed slaves. That was the original purpose of the 14th Amendment and the Citizenship Clause. It was not to give citizenship to illegal aliens and the children of illegal aliens,

or to these birthing tourists, both of whom I want to talk about real quick. First of all, the problem with giving citizenship to the children of illegal aliens is that it makes deportation extremely, extremely difficult because you can't deport U.S. citizens. And if the children of illegal immigrants are U.S. citizens, then we can't really deport the family because we have a policy where we can't separate the parents and the children and deport just the parents and leave the children here with nobody. Which I think is a good policy to have. I don't want to separate families. I don't think anybody really wants to separate families. But that creates a problem when you have criminal illegal aliens in the United States, having children who are U.S. citizens. and using that as an anchor to stay in the United States illegally. The other one, the birth tourists, are also a problem because it is completely legal under U.S. law to travel to the United States, to give birth to a child, so that that child will become a United States citizen.

There is no intent to stay in the United States, not a domiciled individual in the United States. It very clearly violates the 14th Amendment, but that's the precedent that has been said. And that is totally legal and happening in the United States right now. Birth tourism is a thing in the United States. And honestly, why wouldn't you do that? Honest question, why would you not do that? If you're a citizen of Europe, if you're a citizen of South America, if you're a citizen of Africa, why would you not, if you could, fly over to the United States,

have your kid in the United States with better hospitals and better health care, more likelihood of your child surviving with fewer complications, more likelihood that the mother has fewer complications, and your child has U.S. citizenship. Plus, you don't have to have any intention to actually stay in the United States or contribute to the United States. Because if you have a child on file at a hospital in the United States, you get a birth certificate, then they can get a social security number.

And that's how you get American citizenship by birth. Then that kid can vote in the United States, can qualify for Social Security, can receive taxpayer-funded welfare money, all of the above, all of the benefits of being a U.S. citizen without actually needing to contribute to the United States, whether you stay here or not. And that's the problem that the Trump administration was trying to fix with those two things. The birth tourism and the illegal immigrants having anchored children in the United States. Here's Kastanji Brown Jackson's eloquent defense of why you don't actually have to be domiciled for you to have allegiance to a country. and thus somehow this means that you should qualify as a citizen. Take a listen. I was thinking about this, and I think there are various sources that say this,

that you can have, you obviously have permanent allegiance based on being born in whatever country you're from. That's what everybody recognizes. But you also have local allegiance when you are on the soil of this other sovereign. And I was thinking, you know, I, a U.S. citizen, am visiting Japan. And what it means is that, you know, if I steal someone's wallet in Japan, the Japanese authorities can arrest me and prosecute me. It's allegiance meaning can they control you as a matter of law.

I can also rely on them if my wallet is stolen to, you know, under Japanese law, go and prosecute the person who has stolen it. So there's this relationship based on, even though I'm a temporary traveler, I'm just on vacation in Japan. I'm still locally owing allegiance. I don't know. Are you convinced that if you come to the United States and steal somebody's wallet, that means you're under U.S. law, so that means that if you have kids here,

you should be a U.S. citizen? I don't know, but I do think it's an eloquent metaphor for what is actually happening in the United States. Illegal immigrants coming over and committing crimes in the United States, Supreme Court Justice, using that as an analogy to say that you should have citizenship because you have allegiance to a country that you go and commit crimes in. It's honestly unbelievable. But based on the last 150 years of precedent in the United States, it's going to be very difficult for the Trump administration to win this case. It just is. The court has pretty universally ruled that anyone who's born in the United States,

Unless you're born in a province, by the way, that's the exception that the courts have been willing to make. You're not a U.S. citizen if you're born in Guam. But if you're born in the United States on the mainland, then you are qualified to be a citizen of the United States. So in spite of the original intent of the framers of the 14th Amendment, and in spite of the abuses that are incurring, it seems very unlikely that the Trump administration is actually going to win this case. And last thing about this, the ramifications of this case are not for the executive order. Yes, the executive order is what's being challenged in this case, but an executive order ending birthright citizenship is just going to to be overturned in a few years when there's another Democrat president. The executive order

doesn't really matter. What matters is forcing the Supreme Court to actually make a decision on birthright citizenship, because this has been a problem for a while now. And this is the most direct chance the Supreme Court has had to address this issue, at least in 125 years. So we'll see what the Supreme Court has to say. It's not looking good for the Trump administration and the executive order, but it really could have major ramifications on the future of immigration in the United States. The last few of news I have for you this week is an executive order signed by President Trump, April 3, 26, entitled

Urgent National Action to Save College Sports. The executive order targets what President Trump calls a financial arms race that's happening in college athletics right now. It's only been a few years since NIL started, which is name, image, and likeness deals that can go to athletes from businesses or from collectives that are affiliated with the athletic department at a particular school to essentially pay college players to play their sport. Now, this has had other secondary effects, particularly with the transfer portal.

They're incentivized to enter the transfer portal, go to a different school where they can be paid to play or who will pay them to play. Now, you can't actually pay an athlete to play their sport. And that's something that the executive order makes very clear, but you can pay them through scholarship or independent businesses, like McDonald's, for example, can make a deal with a particular athlete for advertisement at a fair market value that they provide to the business for doing the advertisement or the endorsement. Another secondary effect of this is that people are staying in college longer, and they're taking more years that they otherwise might not have taken. Here's what the executive order does. First, it prohibits fake or inflated NIL deals, which is what they call pay for play disguised as an endorsement.

So, for example, a lot of the major like SEC, ACC schools use NIL collectives, which is fans contributing to a big pool of money that the athletic department then uses to buy players, essentially. This executive order would pretty much make that impossible. That's pay for play. What name image and likeness deals are supposed to be is allowing players to profit off of their likeness by making advertisement deals with independent businesses that are not affiliated with the athletic department.

Now, this part of the executive order is meant to protect smaller schools that don't have as large NIL collectives to pay for players. Also in the executive order, schools that violate those athletic rules with eligibility or NIL deals, risk elimination of federal contracts or grants. So the federal government will pull money if you violate the NIL rules. And lastly, the executive order prompts the NTAA to institute eligibility limits. That would mean that athletes could only play up to five seasons in a five-euvre your window instead of allowing all the red shirt workarounds that are allowing some players to

receive seven or eight years of eligibility at the collegiate level. And it suggests a rule that athletes can have one free transfer so they can transfer one time before they graduate without having to sit out a season. And then they could transfer again after they graduate. President Trump obviously likes college sports. He attends college football games every year. And he wants to see them succeed, as we all do. We'll see how this turns out whether the NCAA adopts some of those rules. The NIL rules are enforceable by the federal government. But if adopted some of the These rules could have a major impact on collegiate sports. So to recap this week, we cover the Supreme Court's free speech defense in the Colorado

conversion therapy case. We cover the arguments before the Supreme Court in the birthright citizenship case. And we covered an executive order aimed at reigning in spending in college sports. Tune in next week for more. Well, that's all I have for you today on Under the Radar. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and I want to thank you for listening and encourage you to tune back in next time for more coverage of the news that fell under the radar. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale,

101.7 FM. Thanks for listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller, here on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.