Bench Memos

Law & the Courts

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—August 29

2013—In a challenge to a California law that prohibits mental-health counselors from engaging in “sexual orientation change efforts” with clients who are minors, a Ninth Circuit panel rules (in Pickup v. Brown) that talk therapy is “professional conduct” that is unprotected by the First Amendment.

Five years later, in its opinion in National Institute of Family Life Advocates v. Becerra, the Supreme Court will criticize Pickup by name for “except[ing] professional speech from the rule that content-based regulations of speech are subject to strict scrutiny.”

Ed Whelan holds the Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and is a regular contributor to National Review’s Bench Memos blog.
Exit mobile version