It Has Started…

The attack on our rights by the judges appointed by Trump and McConnell. McConnell held up all of Obama and now our worst fear are being realized a federal court overturn the ban on Conversion Therapy.

There is something called judicial precedent which LawTeacher.net said is…

Judicial precedent means the process whereby judges follow previously decided cases where the facts are of sufficient similarity. The doctrine of judicial precedent involves an application of the principle of stare decisis ie, to stand by the decided. In practice, this means that inferior courts are bound to apply the legal principles set down by superior courts in earlier cases. This provides consistency and predictability in the law.

There have been dozens attempts to overturn bans from the practice of conversion therapy

U.S. top court rejects 'gay conversion' therapy ban challenge
Reuters
By Andrew Chung
May 2017


The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact California’s ban on “gay conversion” therapy aimed at turning youths under age 18 away from homosexuality, rejecting a Christian minister’s challenge to the law asserting it violates religious rights.

The justices, turning away a challenge to the 2012 law for the second time in three years, let stand a lower court’s ruling that it was constitutional and neither impinged upon free exercise of religion nor impacted the activities of clergy members.

The law prohibits state-licensed mental health counselors, including psychologists and social workers, from offering therapy to change sexual orientation in minors. The Supreme Court in 2014 refused to review the law after an appeals court rejected claims that the ban infringed on free speech rights under U.S. Constitution’s the First Amendment.

So the nations highest court upheld the challenge of the based on the First Amendment not just once but twice.

Down in Florida federal judges threw out the judicial precedent ban on conversion therapy…

Federal court strikes down conversion therapy bans in Florida
Conversion therapy aims to change people’s sexual orientations or gender identities and is prohibited for minors in 20 states and Washington, D.C.
NBC News
By Reuters
November 22, 2020


A divided federal appeals court on Friday declared unconstitutional two south Florida laws that banned therapists from offering conversion therapy to children struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identity.

In a 2-1 decision, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with two therapists who said the laws in the city of Boca Raton and Palm Beach County violated their free speech rights.

Circuit Judge Britt Grant said that while enjoining the laws “allows speech that many find concerning — even dangerous,” the First Amendment “does not allow communities to determine how their neighbors may be counseled about matters of sexual orientation or gender.”
[…]
Republican President Donald Trump appointed both judges in Friday’s majority.

Circuit Judge Barbara Martin, appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, dissented, citing a compelling interest in protecting children from a “harmful therapeutic practice.”

This is horrible!

It flies in front of a long history of cases that rejected the First Amendment arguments and will cause endless grief of LGBTQ+ youth.

Let’s Look at this Appeals Court’s Incredibly Stupid Opinion Protecting ‘Conversion Therapy’
This outrageous twisting of facts by judges vetted by religious extremists may not be an outlier for long.
The Daily Beast
By Jay Michaelson
November 23, 2020


To understand the wrongness, ignorance, and just plain stupidity of the Eleventh Circuit’s decision to strike down a ban on so-called “conversion therapy,” consider this hypothetical:

A 15-year-old boy, “voluntarily” but actually forced by his parents, goes to see a therapist offering a “therapy” that has been condemned by the American Psychological Association and shown in numerous studies to be ineffective and indeed counterproductive. When the boy reveals he is considering suicide, the therapist says “You should just do it. If you’re feeling suicidal, that shows you are weak and undeserving to live. You’re pathetic.”

Should this be legal? Of course not. What a therapist says to a vulnerable client, especially an underage one, isn’t constitutionally protected “free speech.” It’s medical practice, like prescribing medication. And it’s malpractice to say something so dangerous and wrongheaded. Obviously.

Yet that is exactly the convoluted logic that two Trump-appointed judges just applied in Otto v. City of Boca Raton, which ruled that it was the constitutional right of two therapists to practice “conversion therapy” (now known as ‘sexual orientation change efforts’ or SOCE) and thus unconstitutional for two Florida municipalities to ban it.

Unbelievably, the court described the bans not as protections of the mental and physical health of children but as “the government… choosing favored and disfavored messages,” as if a therapist guiding a vulnerable teenager were no different from a protester on the street. They categorically denied that therapy is not speech but “conduct,” which of course it is; therapy is a medical practice. They said that the bans “limit a category of people—therapists—from communicating a particular message,” again, as if the therapists were simply writing an op-ed in a newspaper.

There is not one professional organization* that supports conversion therapy, not the American Medical Association (AMA), not the American Psychological Association (APA), not the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, not the American Academy of Pediatrics, American School Counselor Association, and not the National Association of Social workers (NASW).

Yet Trump’s judges have used rejected arguments that have been upheld by the Supreme Court and ignored the damage this will do LGBTQ+ children. My prediction is that this case will go all the way to the Supreme Court and win. The Supreme Court since the refusal to overturn the California case had three ultra conservative added to the bench who put their religious beliefs above the Constitution added to the bench.

*The American College of Pediatricians is against the ban and supports conversion therapy, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center the ACP is…

The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group that masquerades as the premier U.S. association of pediatricians to push anti-LGBTQ junk science, primarily via far-right conservative media and filing amicus briefs in cases related to gay adoption and marriage equality.