June 11, 2014

LGBT Legal Cases Marriage equality Marriage Equality Trials

On June 26, the Supreme Court will hold a conference in which it will discuss, among other cases, two challenges to California’s ban on so-called LGBT ‘conversion therapy.’ Pickup v. Brown and Welch v. Brown have been distributed for that conference, the last until the Court’s “long conference” at the beginning of the next term.

In Pickup v. Brown, the district court denied a preliminary order that would have put the law on hold for the remainder of the case, but in the Welch case, a judge granted a similar order.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that ultimately upheld the conversion therapy ban, but petitions for Supreme Court review were subsequently filed.

The law has been challenged on First Amendment grounds, as a regulation of speech, and defended as simply a common regulation of psychiatry. The Ninth Circuit held that the ban regulates professional conduct, not speech.

It takes four votes to grant review in a case, though the brief opposing review pointed out that there’s no conflict among the lower courts on the issue, nor does the Ninth Circuit’s ruling appear to conflict with Supreme Court precedent.

A final update on comments More Wisconsin updates