Nearly 200 congressional Democrats have filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to maintain state bans and restrictions on conversion therapy for minors currently in place in 27 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico.
A Tuesday press release announcing the amicus brief notes that 167 House members and 20 senators signed the court brief. The brief notes that the court will soon hear a challenge to Colorado’s conversion therapy ban from Kaley Chiles, a Christian licensed professional counselor who says that the state’s conversion therapy ban prohibits her from advising clients with unwanted “same-sex attractions or gender identity confusion” who “prioritize their faith above their feelings.”
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The press release notes that Chiles filed a pre-enforcement challenge against the state’s ban — that is, she hasn’t been prosecuted under the law yet. However, her case has nonetheless been championed by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the anti-LGBTQ+ Christian Nationalist law firm that has successfully gotten the court to overturn abortion rights, contraceptive rights, and other pro-LGBTQ+ policies in the name of “religious freedom.”
The amicus brief says that Chiles has misrepresented Colorado’s ban as an attack on her free speech when the case is actually about maintaining the long (and legally supported) history of allowing states to establish and enforce clear professional standards when licensing therapeutic care counselors. While speech is a part of counseling, the brief states, the court has long recognized the difference between a person’s protected speech and regulated professional conduct that involves speech.
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The Colorado law merely follows professional standards of care, seeing as conversion therapy has been denounced by all major national medical organizations including the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, among many others.
“These laws are aimed at halting a range of discredited practices that have long been known to cause significant and lasting psychological harm to patients, including those purported to force patients to change their sexual orientation or gender identity,” the brief states. “These practices are not only harmful, providing them is violative of medical ethics. Licensed practitioners should not be performing them.”
“The public must be able to trust that when they seek treatment, their health professional will provide competent services in accordance with modern standards of medicine,” the brief adds. “Patients should have that confidence whether the service is rendered with a scalpel or through speech…. Talk therapy sessions are not immunized from state regulation merely because the healthcare is provided by way of language.”
The brief also points out that both Congress and the States have long legislated against unfair or deceptive trade practices. Since conversion therapists claim that someone can “heal” or “recover from” their unwanted same-sex attraction through prayer, aversion therapy, or other discredited and pseudoscientific methods — claims which have been repeatedly disproven, debunked, and disavowed by medical and psychological associations — conversion therapists are essentially conducting illegal false advertising.
“In seeking that care, patients should be confident that their healthcare providers are not working to ‘change’ them to fit the provider’s own religious beliefs,” the brief continues. “The Colorado law does not prohibit a religious adviser from offering methods advocated by Petitioner in a nonmedical setting.”
The letter’s and brief’s signatories include numerous out Democratic Congress members such as Sen. Tammy Baldwin (WI), Rep. Becca Balint (VT), Rep. Angie Craig (MN), Sharice L. Davids (KS), Robert Garcia (CA), Sarah McBride (DE), Mark Pocan (WI), Mark Takano (CA), Ritchie Torres (NY), and others alongside numerous pro-LGBTQ+ Democratic legislators as well.
“More than 20 states across our nation have already taken action to protect young LGBTQI+ people from the very real harms of so-called ‘conversion therapy,’” Rep. Takano, chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus and lead sponsor of the Equality Act, wrote in a statement.
“The Supreme Court must uphold these states’ laws and allow them to continue protecting young LGBTQI+ people from harmful and cruel practices that are opposed by every major medical association,” Takano added.
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