Clarence Thomas is outraged that the Supreme Court refused to take up conversion therapy case

He believes the First Amendment should protect a pseudoscientific form of psychological torture.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
Photo: U.S. Supreme Court

The Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to a Washington state law banning conversion therapy for minors, and Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a blistering dissent.

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,” Thomas wrote in his dissent. “Yet, under S.B. 5722, licensed counselors cannot voice anything other than the state-approved opinion on minors with gender dysphoria without facing punishment.”

The challenge to the Washington law known as S.B. 5722 was filed by Brian Tingley, a licensed family counselor who practices conversion therapy. He argues that the state’s ban on licensed therapists performing conversion therapy on minors violates his constitutional rights. He is represented by the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom.

Tingley’s case was dismissed by a U.S. district court in Washington in 2021, with Judge Robert Bryan ruling that the state has the authority to regulate medical practice and that the law does not target Tingley on the basis of his religion as it applies to providers of all faiths. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the Washington law last year, and the full appeals court refused to rehear the case in January.

Tingley asked the Supreme Court to hear his appeal, but six of the justices voted not to hear his case. Three — Thomas and…

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