Washington LGBTQ Conversion Therapy Ban Upheld by Ninth Circuit

A Washington law that prohibits state-licensed medical professionals from practicing conversion therapy on LGBTQ patients under 18-years old is valid, the Ninth Circuit said Tuesday.

States don’t “lose the power to regulate the safety of medical treatments performed under the authority of a state license merely because those treatments are implemented through speech rather than through scalpel,” the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said, holding that the law doesn’t violate the First and 14th Amendments.

Conversion therapy includes treatments intended to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay to straight, or to change their gender identity from ...