SF Appeals Court Hears Second Round of Challenges to 'Gay Conversion Therapy Law'

San Francisco, CA— A 2012 California law that bans sexual orientation conversion therapy for youths under the age of 18 came before a federal appeals court in San Francisco for a second time today.

The law prohibits state-licensed mental health professionals from engaging in "sexual orientation change efforts," sometimes known as gay conversion therapy, with gay and lesbian minors.

In 2013, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected free-speech challenges to the law in a pair of lawsuits filed by parents, therapists and patients.

A three-judge panel said unanimously in 2013 that the law regulates conduct, not speech, and that the state Legislature had a rational basis for concluding the therapy could harm children and using its licensing power to prohibit such treatment.

Thursday, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits asked the same three judge-panel to strike down the law on grounds of additional claims of religious freedom and privacy rights.

The plaintiffs are a minister who is also a licensed family therapist, a therapist who holds religious beliefs that homosexuality is unnatural and changeable, and a man who experienced conversion therapy as an
adult.

They contend the law interferes with their free exercise of religion and with the privacy rights of parents and their children.

All three jurists on the panel - Circuit Judges Alex Kozinski, Susan Graber and Morgan Christen - questioned the plaintiffs' attorney, Kevin Snider, about whether their 2013 ruling hadn't disposed of the issues in the
case.

"If we've already held the law regulates only conduct, period, isn't that the end of the inquiry?" Graber asked.
"I don't believe it is at all," Snider answered.

He argued it is unconstitutional for the law to "target people because of their religious beliefs and practices.

Christen commented, "The Legislature told us what the purpose of the law was - to prohibit a type of therapy that the Legislature determined to be potentially harmful."

Deputy California Attorney General Alexandra Gordon, defending the law, said it would prohibit a minister from providing conversion therapy when acting as a licensed therapist, but would not bar a minister from praying about the subject during a church service.

The panel took the case under submission after hearing about 30 minutes of argument and will issue a written decision at a later date.

The plaintiffs appealed to the 9th Circuit after a federal trial judge in Sacramento last year dismissed the religious freedom and privacy claims remaining in their lawsuit.

The law went into effect in 2014 after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals of the 9th Circuit's 2013 decision.

By Bay City News

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