Trump Judges Strike Down Bans On LGBTQ ‘Conversion Therapy’

The court ruling concerned ordinances in Palm Beach County and Boca Raton, Florida, governing sexual orientation change efforts, which expressly prohibit licensed counselors from “treating minors with ‘any counseling, practice or treatment performed with the goal of changing an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity’” due to the health risk such treatment poses.

A federal district court upheld those bans after several therapists sued Palm Beach and Boca Raton over the ordinances, but the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling Friday, finding that the local Florida bans “violate the First Amendment because they are content-based regulations of speech that cannot survive strict scrutiny.”

Judges Britt C. Grant and Barbara Lagoa, who were both appointed by President Donald Trump, wrote that while they “understand and appreciate that the therapy is highly controversial…the First Amendment has no carveout for controversial speech.”

The judges cast skepticism on evidence provided by the defendants showing conversion therapy is harmful enough to justify the speech restrictions, claiming there has not been enough research done on the topic to show actual evidence of the danger it poses, and saying the court “cannot rely” on professional organizations that oppose the practice because organizations can “do an about-face” on their views, as the American Psychiatric Association did when it reversed its opposition to homosexuality.

In her dissent, Judge Beverly C. Martin pushed back against this argument and noted that performing the research that the majority judges requested “ignores the harm such studies would have on children,” and it “is ‘not ethically permissible’ to conduct” studies that could more conclusively prove the practice is harmful.

The Florida ordinances were “backed up by a mountain of rigorous evidence,” Martin argued, noting that organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association Council of Representatives, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American School Counselor Association, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the World Health Organization have all found SOCE “pose[s] real risks of harm on children.”