A federal lawsuit is challenging Michigan’s ban on conversion therapy for minors, alleging that it violates free speech protections.
House Bill 4616 which was enacted in 2024, allows the state to revoke the licenses of therapists or impose sanctions on those mental health providers who try to change a young person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Conversion therapy is widely discredited by scientists and mental health professionals including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association.
Lansing therapist Emily McJones and Catholic Charities of Jackson, Lenawee and Hillsdale Counties have gone to court to question the validity of the ban in court. The suit alleges the law violates the Free Speech Clause because “it targets religious speech and interferes with the right of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children.”
“They simply can't practice under that sort of a cloud where the state is saying, if you say the wrong thing, you'll lose your license and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages,” said Luke Goodrich, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty who is representing the plaintiffs. “It's just impossible to practice.”
The plaintiffs in the suit claim the law forces counselors to affirm children who may be questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity and goes against the plaintiff’s religious values.
“Plaintiffs believe that when a client comes to them and seeks to change her gender identity or gender expression to align with her biological sex or seeks to change her behavior to refrain from acting on same-sex attraction, it is their ethical and religious duty to help that client live the life she desires to live,” states the lawsuit.
Today, twenty-two states have outlawed conversion therapy, and many medical experts reject the practice.
“What we do know about treatment for people that are queer through actual peer reviewed research studies is that affirmative therapy works,” said licensed therapist Jess Stevens.
Stevens primarily works with LGBTQ+ people and says he’s experienced firsthand the effects conversion therapy can have on a person.
“Working with a survivor of conversion therapy is almost as hard as it gets, because you are listening to someone tell you about how the caregivers, that vowed to protect them, harm them,” said Stevens. “They subjected their child to abuse because their identity was not what they would call normal and it's really sad and it's hard.”
Stevens takes an affirmative therapy approach when working with clients who are questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“It's assisting people with navigating harmful systems, normalizing their identity and the effects of the minority stress that they face, and providing a safe and welcoming environment where they can be their true, authentic selves,” Stevens said.
Nearly 700,000 adults have gone through conversion therapy with more than half receiving it as minors according to a 2018 study from The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. Individuals who underwent conversion therapy were nearly twice as likely to contemplate and attempt suicide than those who did not experience the therapy.
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