Day in Court for California Law Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’

A federal appeals court in San Francisco heard arguments on Wednesday over whether a California law banning gay "conversion therapy" for minors is an unjustified infringement on free speech or a valid effort to prevent therapeutic malpractice.

The law, adopted last year, was the first of its kind and an unusual effort to regulate a form of talk therapy. It bars licensed therapists from trying to change the sexual orientation of people under the age of 18.

Hailed by gay rights groups as a landmark, the law was based on the conclusions of mainstream professional associations that such efforts have never been proved to work and that the therapy can harm young patients.

But several therapists, along with patients who say they were helped by the treatment, challenged the law in two lawsuits, asserting that it violates the First Amendment and other basic rights.

In December, two federal district judges made contradictory rulings about the law's constitutionality, with one granting a preliminary injunction to delay enforcement of the ban and another upholding the law.

After Wednesday's two-hour hearing before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the three-judge panel will decide whether to continue the injunction or to let the law take effect. Lawyers involved in the case said that whichever way this decision goes, appeals are likely to take the case back to a lower court for a full trial and that final resolution in the federal courts could take years.

The counseling, also known as reparative therapy, is promoted by a small number of therapists who challenge the prevailing scientific consensus that sexual orientation is largely inborn and cannot be changed.

These therapists assert, instead, that gender confusion is a result of childhood trauma and that sexual orientation can be reshaped. Their theory is also promoted by some conservative Christian groups.

But so-called gay cures are notorious among gay men, with many saying they suffered deep harm when their parents pushed them into counseling that left them filled with anguish and guilt.

The lawsuits argued on Wednesday were brought by two conservative legal groups, the Pacific Justice Institute, based in Sacramento, and Liberty Counsel, which is affiliated with Liberty University in Virginia.

"Our case is about protecting the First Amendment rights of young people to get the counseling they feel they need, their parents may feel they need and that a licensed counselor may feel they need," said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, in an interview on Wednesday.

In its brief to the court, Liberty Counsel said: "The state has gone far beyond regulation of the profession to taking sides" in a scientific dispute.

Arguing for the law to take effect, the California government called it "an unremarkable exercise of the states' power to regulate professional conduct."

The law "prohibits licensed mental health professionals from treating children and teenagers with a discredited, ineffective, and unsafe therapy in a misguided effort to change their sexual orientation," said the brief, prepared by the office of Attorney General Kamala D. Harris.

"For more than 40 years," the state said, "every mainstream mental health organization has agreed that same-sex attraction is not a disease in need of a cure."

Similar bills have been introduced in New Jersey and Massachusetts, according to Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a gay rights group based in Vermont.

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