Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach recently sent letters to three Kansas mayors demanding each city repeal local ordinances banning so-called “conversion therapy,” in the wake of a United States Supreme Court decision earlier this year overturning Colorado’s ban on the practice.
The letters to the mayors of Lawrence, Roeland Park and Prairie Village cite the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Chiles v. Salazar, which struck down a nearly identical Colorado law as a violation of the First Amendment. The Court held that such bans improperly censor therapists’ speech based on viewpoint and that therapist speech is constitutionally protected. 
The Sentinel contacted all three mayors; Brad Finkeldei, of Lawrence; Erik Mikkelson, of Prairie Village; and Michael Poppa, of Roeland Park, asking if they would be moving to repeal their conversion therapy bans.
None responded.
“The First Amendment applies to everyone – therapists, patients and everyone else. A city violates the Constitution when it attempts to forbid a therapist from providing the counseling that the therapist believes is in the best interest of the patient,” Kobach said in a release. “The government may not declare that some words and ideas are forbidden. And now the Supreme Court of the United States has squarely ruled on the subject.”
In the letter to Finkeldei, Kobach wrote: “Lawrence’s ordinance seeks to control speech in a nearly identical way. In other words, only one viewpoint is allowed to be expressed. Thus, the ordinance engages in viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.”
The letters to Roeland Park and Prairie Village contain substantially similar analysis, noting that each city’s ordinance defines “conversion therapy” to include any counseling that fails to affirm a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. But, according to Kobach, it expressly permits counseling that supports identity exploration or gender transition — thereby allowing only one viewpoint to be expressed.
Kobach requested that each city inform his office within 60 days whether the conversion therapy ordinance has been repealed. The letters were also copied to the respective city council members.
Supreme Court voted 8-1 that bans on conversion therapy are ‘viewpoint discrimination’
Writing the majority decision for the court, Justice Neil Gorsuch said Colorado’s law “censors speech based on viewpoint,” the BBC reported.
“The First Amendment stands as a bulwark against any effort to prescribe an orthodoxy of views, reflecting a belief that each American enjoys an inalienable right to speak his mind and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for finding truth,” the opinion reads.
The court majority maintained that Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor and Christian in Colorado Springs, that talk therapy “involves no physical interventions or medications.”
According to Politico, Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concurred with the court’s conservative bloc but added in a separate opinion that a complete ban on therapy aimed at a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity might be lawful. Kagan said the key flaw in Colorado’s law was that it allowed some such counseling while prohibiting other professional approaches.
“Kagan also repeated a point she made during oral argument in the case: Upholding Colorado’s ban might bless efforts by conservative states to prohibit talk therapy aimed at affirming patients’ gender identity,” Politico said.
“It does not matter what the State’s preferred side is,” she wrote.
