Federal Court Upholds New Jersey Ban on "Ex-Gay" Therapy for Minors

A federal judge upheld New Jersey's law banning therapist from subjecting minors to fraudulent "ex-gay" therapy, rejecting claims that the ban violates the rights of free speech and religious expression.   The law protects minors from being forced to undergo dangerous and bogus "therapy" by their self-centered and often religiously extreme parents.  Similar laws need to be enacted nationwide just as every state has laws against other forms of child abuse.  I applaud the ruling because it recognizes that children have rights and should not be treated as chattel belonging to parents.  The National Center for Lesbian Rights has a press release detailing the court's ruling.  Here are highlights:

(Trenton, NJ, November 8, 2013)—Today, Judge Freda Wolfson of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey upheld a 2013 New Jersey law prohibiting licensed therapists from attempting to change the sexual orientation or gender identity or expression of a patient under 18 years old. The ruling dismissed a legal challenge to the law filed on behalf of therapists who wish to engage in these dangerous and long-discredited practices. The judge also granted a request by Garden State Equality, the state’s largest civil rights organization and the leading organization supporting passage of the law, to intervene in the case in defense of the law.

In today’s ruling, Judge Wolfson concluded that the New Jersey law “restricts neither speech nor religious expression.”  She noted that the therapists’ challenge to the law “runs counter to the longstanding principle that a state generally may enact laws rationally regulating professionals, including those providing medicine and mental health services.”

In August, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision upholding a similar law in California protecting youth from these harmful practices by licensed therapists.  Judge Wolfson’s decision applied similar reasoning in ruling that the New Jersey statute does not violate therapists’ constitutional rights.

NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter, who represents Garden State Equality in the case, added: “This law protects youth from practices that have been rejected by all leading medical and mental health professional organizations. The court issued a clear and thorough decision explaining that state-licensed therapists do not have a constitutional right to engage in discredited practices that do not improve patients’ health and put young people at risk of severe harm, including depression and suicide.”