Tingley v. Ferguson

Brief Filed: 1/22
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
Year of Decision: 2022

Read full-text amicus brief (PDF, 447KB)opens in new window

Involves a legal challenge to Washington state’s ban on conversion therapy, either seeking to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, on minors.

Sexual Orientation/Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE)

Alliance Defending Freedom (“ADF”) represents a marriage and family counselor in a constitutional challenge to the Washington law. The challenge argues that the law violates the First Amendment by restricting therapists’ professional speech and infringing on therapists’ religious practice, and that “gender identity” and other terms in the law are unconstitutionally vague in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

APA’s brief incorporates research from the prior amicus briefs filed on the lack of demonstrated effectiveness and the psychological risks to minors of sexual-orientation and gender identity conversion therapy, as well as the APA’s 2020 Resolution on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Parents and their Children and 2021 Resolutions on Sexual Orientation Change Efforts and Gender Identity Change Efforts.

On the issue of standing, the panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Tingley did have standing to bring a claim that the ban on conversion therapy violated his right to free speech, but did not have standing to bring claims on behalf of his minor clients. On the subject of conversion therapy, the panel held that Washington’s licensing laws concerning health care providers did not violate the First or Fourteenth amendments of the Constitution. The panel further held that the well-established tradition of constitutional regulations on the practice of medical treatments through state licensure does not end "merely because those treatments are implemented through speech rather than through scalpel."