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.” But that won’t stop a Ninth Circuit panel from invoking Pickup as precedent in its 2022 ruling in Tingley v. Ferguson that holds that a Washington statute that prohibits so-called “conversion therapy” counseling for minors does not violate the First Amendment.
(The Supreme Court will address the First Amendment rights of counselors in Chiles v. Salazar, to be argued on October 7, 2025.)