Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Christian counselors seeking to overturn conversion therapy bans in Kansas City and Jackson County. The bans, passed in 2019 and 2023 respectively, forbid practitioners from trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of minors, but Bailey’s lawsuit argues that the bans violate the counselors’ First Amendment rights.
The city and county have pledged to defend their bans in court, which punish conversion therapists with $500 to $1,000 fines and up to 180 days in jail if they offer services promising to turn kids straight or cisgender. However, Bailey’s lawsuit follows a recent executive order by President Donald Trump pledging to prosecute anti-Christian bias, something that could aid Christian conversion therapists in their legal battles against the bans.
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“These ordinances not only require counselors to parrot these governments’ preferred views on sexual ethics; they also ban different views,” the 124-page lawsuit states. “That violates the First Amendment [rights to freedom of speech and religion]. Government bureaucrats should not insert themselves into private counseling conversations, much less censor and redirect the exploration of truth on some of the most contentious issues of our day… gender identity and sexual orientation.”
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“Sometimes, the minors ask for help identifying with their sex or redirecting their sexual desires toward the opposite sex,” Bailey’s lawsuit states. “[The bans require] the Counselors to provide counseling services to adults and children who wish to affirm views about sex and gender that conflict with the Counselors’ religious beliefs.”
All major medical and psychological associations in the U.S. have denounced conversion therapy and say that attempts to change one’s LGBTQ+ identity are ineffective, unnecessary, and harmful. However, Bailey’s lawsuit states that it’s unfair that therapists can encourage people to pursue living openly as LGBTQ+ people but not to try to live “consistent with [their] sex.”
As “evidence,” Bailey cites findings from the Cass Report, a 400-page U.K. report that largely opposed gender-affirming psychological and medical support for trans youth. The report was widely criticized for excluding studies that support the benefits of such care.
He also notes that Missouri has a ban on gender-affirming care. As such, counselors should be allowed to “help those
clients navigate their gender identity without resorting to experimental drugs and surgery,” Bailey writes, even though gender-affirming medications and procedures have been safely and effectively administered for decades on cisgender and trans youth with the approval of most major U.S. medical associations.
Bailey filed his lawsuit on behalf of two Christian counselors, Wyatt Bury and Pamela Eisenreich. The lawsuit says their Christian beliefs include “that sexual relationships should be reserved for marriage between one man and one woman, that sex is a biological reality that cannot be chosen or changed, and that living inconsistent with these principles is harmful.”
While the lawsuit claims that neither Bury nor Eisenreich push their religious beliefs onto their non-Christian clients, it says that the counselors neither promote nor encourage clients to pursue same-sex romantic relationships or “attempts to act or identify contrary to their sex.”
In 2023, Bailey issued an emergency order to shut down all trans-affirming healthcare providers, but a judge halted the rule from going into effect. After Missouri passed a ban on gender-affirming healthcare, Bailey asked local police to help enforce the ban, but police declined, saying that they only enforce criminal laws, not civil ones.
In 2024, Bailey began investigating healthcare providers who work with LGBTQ+ youth. A report found that Bailey used flimsy legal pretexts and harmed trans people’s mental health.
Kansas City & Jackson County both oppose Bailey’s lawsuit
A spokesperson from the office of Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas commented on the lawsuit, according to KSHB.
“As Kansas City’s homicide rate soars due to domestic violence challenges in our community, we would hope the state Attorney General would work with our state-run police department to make our community safer,” the spokesperson wrote. “Instead, the Attorney General’s focus remains on culture wars. The only losers in these efforts are Missourians who simply wish the state’s chief crime fighter was as committed to saving lives in our community as he is to making headlines.”
In a separate statement, Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. wrote, “Jackson County stands firmly by our commitment to protect the health, dignity, and well-being of all our residents,” the statement said in part. “We will defend our law banning the harmful practice of conversion therapy to the fullest extent of the law. This ordinance reflects our unwavering belief that every individual deserves to live authentically, free from coercive and damaging practices disguised as therapy.”
Bailey’s lawsuit could be aided by President Trump’s executive order ordering newly-confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” in the government. The order directs the heads of government agencies to identify any “anti-Christian policies” and “develop strategies to protect the religious liberties of Americans.”
While federal officials can’t change city and county ordinances, Trump could use executive and federal power to try and influence the outcome of the case.
Conversion therapists remain active across the U.S.
Even though 22 U.S. states have banned so-called conversion therapy for minors, more than 1,320 such “therapists” remain active across the U.S., including in states with bans in place, according to a December 2023 report from the LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization The Trevor Project.
Many of these individuals avoid identifying themselves online with terms like “reparative therapy,” “ex-gay,” and “unwanted same-sex attraction.” Instead, they discreetly advertise their services using terms like “sexual attraction fluidity exploration,” “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” “sexual addiction,” “sexual wholeness,” “sexual integrity,” and claims to help clients “align their related behaviors with their faith.”
A counselor’s religious affiliation alone isn’t enough to determine whether they’re a conversion therapist, the report’s authors said. Also, the number of conversion therapist may be higher that reported since some likely identify themselves in closed online forums, private social media groups, and message boards or operate primarily via word-of-mouth referrals or some quietly offer remote services online that aren’t publicly advertised.
A 2013 survey showed that 84% of former patients who tried ex-gay therapy said it inflicted lasting shame and emotional harm. Additionally, a March 2022 peer-reviewed study from The Trevor Project showed that 13% of LGBTQ+ youth nationwide had reported being subjected to conversion therapy. Of those, 83% were subjected to it before reaching the age of 18.
The 2022 study showed that young people who underwent conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to attempt suicide afterward. Numerous conversion therapy advocates have later come out as still gay and apologized for the harm that conversion therapy causes.
The methods of so-called conversion therapists include encouraging queer people not to masturbate, redirecting their sexual energy into exercise, “covert aversion” (a fancy name for imagining possible negative consequences of being queer), Bible study, directing same-sex sexual desire onto opposite-sex partners, inflicting pain and humiliation anytime LGBTQ+ feelings arise, and forcing people to act out stereotypical gender roles in behavior and personal appearance.
Some state legislative bans posit that the practice violates state licensing standards because the methods are ineffective and harm patients. Other states have said that practitioners who purport to change an individual’s LGBTQ+ identity are, in essence, using false advertising to market their services, something which can violate other state regulatory business statutes.
The Christian anti-LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — defined as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — is trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn state bans on conversion therapy for minors by claiming that the bans violate practitioners’ rights to free speech and free exercise of religion. The Supreme Court recently turned down one of the ADF’s cases arguing this very thing.
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