Justices won’t hear “conversion therapy” case

A divided Supreme Court declined on Monday to decide whether a Washington state law that prohibits licensed therapists from practicing conversion therapy on children violates the First Amendment. The announcement was part of a list of orders released from the justices’ private conference on Friday. The justices granted one new case from that conference, involving the power of federal courts to review a federal employee’s case after he missed a filing deadline, on Friday afternoon.

The conversion therapy question came to the Supreme Court in the case of Brian Tingley, a Washington marriage and family counselor. Tingley went to court in 2021 to challenge a state law, known as Senate Bill 5722, that added conversion therapy – the practice of seeking to change a declined person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling – for minors to the list of violations that can lead to the loss of a therapist’s license. Tingley argued that the law violates the First Amendment, because it would limit his right to speak freely when counseling his younger clients on issues relating to sexual orientation or gender identity.