Speech, Not “Conduct”: Supreme Court Rules On Conversion Talk Therapy

Jane Bambauer and Eugene Volokh analyze the US Supreme Court’s new Chiles v. Salazar decision, which struck down (by an 8-1 vote) a law banning sexual orientation/gender identity conversion therapy, including therapy that consists entirely of speech.

The Court held that the First Amendment protects professional-client speech, including counselors’ use of conversion therapy with minor patients when that therapy consists solely of speech.  In the process, the 8-justice majority rejected the state’s argument that such speech can be regulated as “speech integrally related to unlawful conduct” – and in the process, cited Volokh’s discussion of the speech integral to unlawful conduct exception in a friend-of-the-court brief that he filed.