High Court offers protections for therapy speech
Klekamp Law professor weighs in on the recent decision
Jennifer Bard, a professor in the Donald P. Klekamp College of Law and the UC Department of Internal Medicine, spoke with journalists at Time News and Science News about the US Supreme Court ruling granting first amendment protections for speech offered during therapy sessions.
The High Court in an 8-1 majority opinion for Chiles v. Salazar, determined that regulating a therapist’s speech can run afoul of constitutional protections. The case looked at Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors which attempts to change sexual orientation or gender identity.
Traditionally medical care has been viewed as a set of procedures and conduct subject to state licensing boards, the US Supreme Court has now carved out a distinction for talk-based interventions. Opponents of the ruling fear the shift curtails the state’s ability to prohibit harmful, non-evidence-based practices—specifically “conversion therapy” for minors.
Klekamp Law Professor Jennifer Bard.
Bard told Time News that this removes the state’s ability to identify and regulate a form of therapy as harmful and ineffective. For patients, this may erode the trust that their providers are following an evidence-based standard of care, potentially rendering the state-issued medical license “meaningless” in the context of talk-based treatment.
Bard teaches courses in public health law, health law, torts, insurance law, remedies, FDA law, and vaccine law at UC.
She told Science News that while the majority opinion recategorized talk therapy as speech and not conduct, it did not provide guidance for “what other kinds of laws or actions are now going to be different for health care delivered through speech.”
One thing that is concerning, Bard adds, is that “this takes away a state’s ability to identify [and regulate] a form of therapy as harmful and ineffective.”
Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have statutes that prohibit “conversion therapy” for minors, reports Science News.
Read the story on the Times News website.
Read the story on the Science News website.
Bard’s comments on the Supreme Court case were also reported by Yahoo.
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