If ‘Conversion Therapy’ Is Free Speech What Isn’t?: Noah Feldman

Based on oral argumentsthis week, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seems likely to hold that the First Amendment protects so-called conversion therapy for gay and transgender minors when it is conducted entirely through conversation. If so, it would be the first time the court has ever held that talk therapy is fully protected speech, rather than a form of medical treatment conducted through words.

That result, in Chiles v. Salazar, would undermine numerous regulations that govern professional conduct performed verbally, from law to the provision of financial services and transactions. Driven by culture-war concerns over gender and sexual orientation, ...