Supreme Court upholds ban of ‘sexual orientation change’ therapy for kids
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to an Appeals Court ruling that upheld a California law banning pro-heterosexual change therapy for minors. This is the fourth time that the highest court has turned back a legal challenge to such a law. The 2012 California law , SB 1172, the first of its kind in the nation, prohibits “mental health provider[s] … from engaging in sexual orientation change efforts” with patients under 18 years old. It was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2013, but was delayed until the next year by a pro-family lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. According to Reuters , “Lead plaintiff Donald Welch, an ordained minister and licensed family therapist, oversees counseling at Skyline Wesleyan Church , an evangelical Christian church in the San Diego area that believes sexuality belongs only in a marriage between a man and a woman. … Welch, along with a Catholic psychiatrist and a man who underwent conversion therapy and now