A Christian counselor is challenging the U.S. Supreme Court to remove a state law that punishes those who advise against gender transitioning amid the transgenderism debate.
Brian Tingley, a marriage and family counselor, is asking the Supreme Court to hear his challenge to a 2018 Washington law that bans conversion therapy for minors and prohibits licensed professionals from encouraging individuals to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Tingley faces a $5,000 fine and potentially the loss of his license should he violate the law.
TODAY: ADF attorneys asked #SCOTUS to reverse the 9th Circuit's ruling in the case of Brian Tingley, a licensed counselor whose speech has been censored by a WA state law that prohibits certain private conversations with clients regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.
— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) March 27, 2023
“The government can’t control a counselor’s speech. Washington’s counseling censorship law violates freedom of speech and harms counselors as well as clients,” said John Bursch, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious liberty law firm representing Tingley.
“Brian has counseled all types of people for more than 20 years, and those conversations are private—certainly not open for the government to censor. The government has no business dictating what personal goals a client can pursue in counseling,” Brush added.
On the other hand, state Attorney General Bob Ferguson has defended the law, saying that conversion therapy doesn’t work and that the 9th Circuit delivered a victory for civil rights by upholding the law.
“It is deeply wrong and harmful to deny young people their identity. Today’s ruling protects LGBTQ+ youth from this practice,” Ferguson wrote in a Facebook post last September. “‘Conversion therapy’ means psychological interventions that seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”
This comes as transgender issues have become hot-button discussions in recent years. Most recently, Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee signed a law prohibiting transgender students from using restrooms at public schools that match their gender identity.
“The Governor has said she will sign laws that focus on protecting and educating our kids, not indoctrinating them and believes our schools are no place for the radical left’s woke agenda,” Alexa Henning, Sanders’ spokesperson, said in a statement. “Arkansas isn’t going to rewrite the rules of biology just to please a handful of far-left advocates.”
This makes it the first of several states to enact such bans this year amid a flood of bills nationwide targeting transgender people.
