Wisconsin Democrat Gov. Tony Evers is doubling down on seemingly defying a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on so-called “conversion therapy” for children.
The moment came during a Monday “Pride Flag Raising” event at the State Capitol. While flanked by attendees waiving rainbow flags, the left-wing governor bragged about vetoing bills passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly that he claimed “target[ed]” so-called “trans kids” and “harm[ed] the health, safety, and security of LGBTQ Wisconsinites.”
In doing so, Evers went on to tout a June 2021 executive order he signed “banning the use of state and federal funds for conversion therapy on our kids.” The governor’s administration also adopted a rule declaring it “unprofessional conduct” for any state Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board licensee to provide therapy that tells the truth about sex and gender ideology. The regulation took effect last year following a favorable ruling from Wisconsin’s liberal Supreme Court.
In his Monday remarks, Evers decried efforts “fighting against” his attempts to prohibit the practice and reaffirmed his intention to maintain his administration’s ban.
“I have no intention of repealing the ban on … conversion therapy on kids. Period. End of story. And no question,” Evers said.
The Democrat governor’s comments appear to be in response to criticisms from the Wisconsin Institute for Life & Liberty (WILL) and Wisconsin Family Action.
The two conservative groups sent a joint letter to Evers on April 14 contending that the “unconstitutional and unenforceable” rule “substantively mirrors” a Colorado statute that the U.S. Supreme Court recently found to be unlawful. They demanded that, in light of the high court’s decision, Evers and his team must repeal the regulation.
In Chiles v. Salazar, SCOTUS ruled (8-1) that Colorado’s prohibition on therapists counseling gender-confused kids on getting out of “trans” ideology “regulates speech based on viewpoint, and the lower courts erred by failing to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny.”
As The Federalist’s Breccan Thies observed, the Colorado statute essentially “used the state’s licensing power to enact an ‘affirmation’ only approach to gender confusion in minors, instead requiring doctors and therapists to provide ‘Acceptance, support, and understanding for … identity exploration and development,’ and ‘Assistance to a person undergoing gender transition.’”
Evers responded to WILL and Wisconsin Family Action in a May 5 letter, in which he said that his administration “has no intention of repealing Wisconsin’s conversion therapy ban.” He further asserted that the rule would remain in effect “because Chiles is continuing in the lower courts,” and that Chiles “concerned only Colorado’s conversion therapy prohibition as it applied to talk therapy — not to other treatment, such as physical or medication interventions.”
WILL responded with action of its own a week later, filing a federal lawsuit challenging the rule’s legality on behalf of two state-licensed therapists. The group argued that the Wisconsin regulation “is materially identical to the Colorado law” and “is unconstitutional under the First Amendment as impermissible viewpoint discrimination.”
“When we notified the Evers administration of this fact, we were met with a blatant refusal to follow the Supreme Court holding, along with inflammatory, baseless rhetoric accusing WILL of ‘bullying’ children and Wisconsinites,” WILL Deputy Counsel Rebecca Furdek said in a statement at the time. “However, Wisconsin counselors have every right to provide Christ-centered talk therapy to the clients who seek them out for that type of counseling.”
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
