Appeals court overturns ruling in favor of 'conversion therapy' ban
An appeals court panel has revived a lawsuit from two counselors challenging a Missouri city’s ban on counseling minors away from a transgender or homosexual identity.
A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a per curiam ruling last Thursday reversing a district court ruling against counselors Wyatt Bury and Pamela Eisenreich, citing the Supreme Court’s 8-1 ruling in Chiles v. Salazarin March.
The case involves ordinances of Kansas City and Jackson County that restrict so-called LGBT conversion therapy for minors while allowing therapy for minors that affirm LGBT identity.
In Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado could not ban therapists from counseling minors seeking to change their sexual orientation or treat gender dysphoria.
Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the majority opinion in the decision, writing that “we conclude that the courts below failed to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny in this case.”
“While the First Amendment protects many and varied forms of expression, the spoken word is perhaps the quintessential form of protected speech. And that is exactly the kind of expression in which Ms. Chiles seeks to engage,” Gorsuch wrote.
“Colorado’s law does not just regulate the content of Ms. Chiles’s speech. It goes a step further, prescribing what views she may and may not express.”
Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Bryan Neihart, who represented Bury and Eisenreich before the 8th Circuit panel, said in a statement that the government cannot “single out views they don’t like for disfavored treatment.”
“The Kansas City and Jackson County ordinances allow counselors to push kids down the dangerous path of gender transition, often leading to harmful drugs and surgeries, but they forbid counselors like Wyatt and Pamela from talking with kids to help them accept their bodies,” stated Neihart.
“The 8th Circuit’s decision gives the district court the opportunity to fully uphold counselors’ freedom of speech and the freedom of families and young people to pursue counselors of their choice, and we hope it will do so.”
Last month, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists agreed to withdraw a “Notice of Proposed Disciplinary Action” against therapist Frank Canepa.
Canepa faced disciplinary action in 2024 when he refused to affirm the LGBT self-identification of a client. The withdrawal order also cited Chiles for justification.
