A well-reasoned piece by Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law:
The fact that conversion therapy is done primarily through words does not mean that it is automatically protected as speech under the First Amendment. Never have the courts treated the First Amendment as an absolute protection for speech, and indeed they have upheld many laws that restrict speech by professionals, such as doctors and lawyers. For example, the Supreme Court has said that once an attorney enters the courtroom, "whatever right to 'free speech' an attorney has is extremely circumscribed." Similarly, doctors may be sanctioned for their speech during treatment, such as when they express an incompetent or false medical opinion to a patient, or fail to provide adequate instructions or ask necessary questions.
With respect to therapists specifically, state licensing boards and courts already enforce a plethora of speech-based restrictions and requirements, including barring false, deceptive, or harmful statements. There is no First Amendment barrier to such regulations, and there is none to SB 1172. Just as a therapist cannot lawfully endanger a person with anorexia by telling her "you are too fat," or treat a condition such as "female hysteria" that has long since ceased to be recognized by modern medical authorities as a psychiatric disorder, so therapists in California cannot subject minors to dangerous practices based on scientifically false and discredited views about sexual orientation.
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