• An appeals court upholds Washington state’s ban on conversion therapy for children.
• The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the ban acted rationally and did not violate free speech.
• Licensed health care providers can be disciplined for trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of young people.

Tuesday saw a unanimous decision by a U.S. federal appeals court upholding Washington state’s ban on conversion therapy for kids, rejecting a therapist’s argument that it violated his right to free speech and singled out him because he is Christian.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that by enacting the ban to safeguard children’s “physical and psychological well-being,” Washington’s legislature behaved reasonably and did not transgress the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Enacted in 2018, the law makes it illegal for licenced healthcare professionals to attempt to modify the sexual orientation or gender identity of anyone under the age of 18. Penalties include possible fines and licence suspensions or revocations.

There are prohibitions banning conversion therapy in more than 20 US states.

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Circuit Judge Ronald Gould ruled for a three-judge panel that “Washington, like other states, has concluded that health care providers should not be authorised to treat a child by such means as telling him that he is “the abomination we had learned about in Sunday school.”

He continued, “States do not lose the jurisdiction to control the safety of medical procedures carried out in accordance with a state licence solely because those procedures are carried out through speech rather than through scalpel.

Brian Tingley, a psychiatrist with offices in adjacent Fircrest, Washington and Tacoma, claimed that the prohibition amounted to censorship. The state retorted that the prohibition targeted behaviour and shielded kids from a hazardous habit.

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