Supreme Court Upholds Washington’s Conversion Therapy Ban

The Supreme Court let stand a Washington State Law barring licensed healthcare professionals from performing conversion therapy on minors, the practice of “converting” a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity to cisheteronormative standards. According to the law, “licensed counselors cannot voice anything other than the state-approved opinion on minors with gender dysphoria without facing punishment.”

The final vote was 6-3, with opposing Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas stating they would have taken the case.

Thomas wrote a five-page dissent stating the case could have been a First Amendment challenge. “Although the Court declines to take this particular case, I have no doubt that the issue it presents will come before the Court again,” he wrote. “When it does, the Court should do what it should have done here: grant certiorari to consider what the First Amendment requires.”

Thomas added there is “a fierce public debate over how best to help minors with gender dysphoria” and that Washington has “silenced one side of this debate.”

Alito dissented as well, stating this case could have settled issues happening in lower courts. “In recent years, 20 States and the District of Columbia have adopted laws prohibiting or restricting the practice of conversion therapy,” Alito wrote. “It is beyond dispute that these laws restrict speech, and all restrictions on speech merit careful scrutiny.”

The challenge was brought by Brian Tingley, a Christian and licensed family and marriage counselor who seeks clients who “want to become comfortable with their biological sex” or seek “help to direct their focus to opposite-sex relationship.” Tingley believes the law violates his freedom of speech and religion. Lower courts stated the law regulates “a therapist’s conduct, not their speech.”