MADISON – A conservative law firm filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to overturn a ban on conversion therapy in Wisconsin, calling the prohibition an “unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty said in a May 13 media release that the lawsuit was filed on behalf of Wisconsin-licensed counselors Terri Koschnick and Joy Buchman.
“Government officials should not be allowed to police the private conversations I have with my clients who voluntarily seek out my advice as a Christian counselor,” Koschnick said in the release. “They have no right to punish me for saying something they disagree with. That was again confirmed by our nation’s highest court.”
Wisconsin’s rule deems conversion therapy as “unprofessional conduct” for counselors, and bans them from attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling.
Both of the counselors provide talk therapy and integrate their Christian faith into their practice, along with their clinical training, according to the release. Koschnick lives in Oconomowoc and Buchman lives in La Crosse.
The lawsuit follows a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for young people infringes on the free speech rights of Christian counselors.
The Supreme Court held that the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should have applied a stricter constitutional test to evaluate the state’s law. The court sent the case back to the appeals court to be reconsidered under the tougher test, which it is unlikely to pass.
WILL and Wisconsin Family Action argue the Chiles ruling makes Wisconsin’s ban “unconstitutional and unenforceable.”
“Wisconsin’s rule is materially indistinguishable from Colorado’s statute held to be viewpoint discrimination by SCOTUS. 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,” said WILL Deputy Counsel Rebecca Furdek. “However, Wisconsin counselors have every right to provide Christ-centered talk therapy to the clients who seek them out for that type of counseling.”
Earlier this month, Evers rejected a demand from WILL and WFA that the state stop enforcing its ban on the widely discredited practice through which counselors instruct LGBTQ+ patients to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.
In his response, Evers said in a letter he was disappointed the groups “wasted no time enthusiastically taking up the mantle to restore a long-disavowed and outdated practice that decades of scientific and medical research has demonstrated is, at best, ineffective and, at worst, dangerous.”
Evers said that the Supreme Court’s decision “intentionally — and specifically — stopped short of striking down any applications of Colorado’s law,” and said that repealing Wisconsin’s rule before the the Denver appeals court reconsiders the case “would be premature.”
The governor also noted the Colorado case specifically addresses the counselor’s talk therapy practice.
“Like Colorado’s conversion therapy ban, [Wisconsin’s administrative rule] covers much more than just talk therapy, and so it undoubtedly continues to have many valid applications,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for Evers referred reporters back to the comments in his letter from earlier this month when asked for comment on the lawsuit.
Wisconsin’s conversion therapy ban has withstood legal challenges at the state level.
Evers sued lawmakers last year over whether a Republican-controlled legislative committee acted unconstitutionally when it blocked his administration’s rule. In a 4-3 ruling last summer, the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court limited the ability of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules to block regulations issued by the executive branch and, in doing so, allowed the conversion therapy ban to stay in place.
More than a dozen major mental health and medical organizations, including the American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association, have renounced conversion therapy as ineffective and harmful.
Laura Schulte can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and on X @SchulteLaura.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Law firm WILL sues to overturn Wisconsin’s conversion therapy ban
Reporting by Laura Schulte, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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