Judge Blocks California Law on Conversion Therapies
Calling a California law that bans gay "conversion therapies" for minors an unconstitutional infringement on speech, a federal judge blocked the law's enforcement late Monday.
The decision by the judge, William B. Shubb, of Federal District Court in Sacramento, was a setback for a law that has been hailed as a milestone by gay rights advocates and mainstream mental health groups that call the therapies useless at best and potentially damaging.
The law is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. Judge Shubb said his decision only applies to the three plaintiffs who had challenged the ban - two practicing therapists and an aspiring one - and until he can hold a full hearing. But his written ruling left little doubt that in his court, as he put it, "the plaintiffs are likely to succeed” and that, if his interpretation of the law prevailed in future appeals, the ban would be effectively overturned.
A second federal judge in California heard a similar challenge last Friday and has not yet ruled, and legal experts predicted a lengthy legal fight over the constitutionality of the law, the first of its kind.
Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, the conservative legal group that challenged the law before Judge Shubb, said his group was “ready to fight this battle all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.”
The California ban on conversion therapies drew the state into murky legal waters, said Eugene Volokh, a professor and constitutional expert at the UCLA law school.
“There’s a good deal of uncertainty about how to apply the First Amendment to professional speech to clients and even more uncertainty in the case of minors,” he said. “It’s not clear how this is ultimately going to play out.”
When he signed the bill this fall, Gov. Jerry Brown, repeating the judgment of the legislature, said that conversion therapies “have no basis in science or medicine, and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery” and that they “have driven young people to depression and suicide.”
Major mental health associations in the state supported the ban on efforts to alter the sexual orientation of youths, while the American Psychological Association and other leading professional societies say these efforts, also known as reparative therapy, have never been shown to work.
Since the 1970s, mainstream mental health societies have accepted homosexuality as a natural and ingrained trait for some. But renegade therapists have promoted the theory that homosexuality is a disorder resulting from family dynamics and childhood trauma that can be “overcome” with the right help.
The California attorney general, in defending the new law, said it did not inhibit free speech, but rather regulated the conduct of licensed professionals, and that the government had an established interest in barring practices deemed ineffective or potentially harmful.
But because the therapy mainly involves speech, Judge Shubb said, the ban must be justified under the most stringent legal standard, called “strict scrutiny.” He said it could bar “a mental health provider from expressing his or her viewpoints about homosexuality” during treatment.
Judge Shubb also questioned the scientific proof behind a central justification for the law - that the therapy causes serious harm to minors. In anecdotal and first-person accounts, many former patients describe extreme distress and depression after trying conversion therapy, and leading professional groups have declared that the therapy “can” or “may” be harmful.
But the evidence of harm may be insufficiently established under the strict scrutiny standard, the judge said. He said the concerns are “based on questionable and scientifically incomplete studies that may not have included minors.”
Gay-rights groups responded to Monday’s ruling with disappointment but expressions of confidence that curbs on the therapy would eventually prevail.
“This is the beginning of a process that we feel confident will end in our favor,” said Wayne Besen, the executive director of Truth Wins Out, a group that has campaigned against conversion therapies. “We have a powerful and incontrovertible case that reparative therapy is a dangerous practice that brazenly stands in direct opposition to standard mental health guidelines and procedures.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, argued by the Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative Christian legal group, are a conservative pastor who is also a licensed family therapist, a psychiatrist who counsels minors “struggling with” homosexuality and a former recipient of such therapy who hopes to train as a therapist on sexual orientation.
A second, similar suit has been brought by Liberty Counsel, a conservative evangelical law group, on behalf of several therapists and two minor patients and their parents.
Source.
The decision by the judge, William B. Shubb, of Federal District Court in Sacramento, was a setback for a law that has been hailed as a milestone by gay rights advocates and mainstream mental health groups that call the therapies useless at best and potentially damaging.
The law is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. Judge Shubb said his decision only applies to the three plaintiffs who had challenged the ban - two practicing therapists and an aspiring one - and until he can hold a full hearing. But his written ruling left little doubt that in his court, as he put it, "the plaintiffs are likely to succeed” and that, if his interpretation of the law prevailed in future appeals, the ban would be effectively overturned.
A second federal judge in California heard a similar challenge last Friday and has not yet ruled, and legal experts predicted a lengthy legal fight over the constitutionality of the law, the first of its kind.
Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, the conservative legal group that challenged the law before Judge Shubb, said his group was “ready to fight this battle all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.”
The California ban on conversion therapies drew the state into murky legal waters, said Eugene Volokh, a professor and constitutional expert at the UCLA law school.
“There’s a good deal of uncertainty about how to apply the First Amendment to professional speech to clients and even more uncertainty in the case of minors,” he said. “It’s not clear how this is ultimately going to play out.”
When he signed the bill this fall, Gov. Jerry Brown, repeating the judgment of the legislature, said that conversion therapies “have no basis in science or medicine, and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery” and that they “have driven young people to depression and suicide.”
Major mental health associations in the state supported the ban on efforts to alter the sexual orientation of youths, while the American Psychological Association and other leading professional societies say these efforts, also known as reparative therapy, have never been shown to work.
Since the 1970s, mainstream mental health societies have accepted homosexuality as a natural and ingrained trait for some. But renegade therapists have promoted the theory that homosexuality is a disorder resulting from family dynamics and childhood trauma that can be “overcome” with the right help.
The California attorney general, in defending the new law, said it did not inhibit free speech, but rather regulated the conduct of licensed professionals, and that the government had an established interest in barring practices deemed ineffective or potentially harmful.
But because the therapy mainly involves speech, Judge Shubb said, the ban must be justified under the most stringent legal standard, called “strict scrutiny.” He said it could bar “a mental health provider from expressing his or her viewpoints about homosexuality” during treatment.
Judge Shubb also questioned the scientific proof behind a central justification for the law - that the therapy causes serious harm to minors. In anecdotal and first-person accounts, many former patients describe extreme distress and depression after trying conversion therapy, and leading professional groups have declared that the therapy “can” or “may” be harmful.
But the evidence of harm may be insufficiently established under the strict scrutiny standard, the judge said. He said the concerns are “based on questionable and scientifically incomplete studies that may not have included minors.”
Gay-rights groups responded to Monday’s ruling with disappointment but expressions of confidence that curbs on the therapy would eventually prevail.
“This is the beginning of a process that we feel confident will end in our favor,” said Wayne Besen, the executive director of Truth Wins Out, a group that has campaigned against conversion therapies. “We have a powerful and incontrovertible case that reparative therapy is a dangerous practice that brazenly stands in direct opposition to standard mental health guidelines and procedures.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, argued by the Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative Christian legal group, are a conservative pastor who is also a licensed family therapist, a psychiatrist who counsels minors “struggling with” homosexuality and a former recipient of such therapy who hopes to train as a therapist on sexual orientation.
A second, similar suit has been brought by Liberty Counsel, a conservative evangelical law group, on behalf of several therapists and two minor patients and their parents.
Source.