NEW YORK — New York City lawmakers will repeal a local law banning conversion therapy in an effort to quash an anti-gay group’s legal fight against it.
At the request of LGBTQ advocates, the City Council will get rid of the 2017 measure to foreclose the possibility of a federal court siding with the Alliance for Defending Freedom, the conservative group challenging the law, Council Speaker Corey Johnson said Thursday.
While Johnson called the decision “painful,” he said it is the smartest move given the alliance’s history of waging protracted legal battles. He said a new state law will continue to protect LGBTQ youth from dangerous conversion therapy practices, which have been widely assailed as unscientific and anti-gay.
“The courts have changed considerably over the last few years, and we cannot count on them to rule in favor of much-needed protections for the LGBTQ community,” Johnson, a Chelsea Democrat who is himself gay, said in a statement. “To be clear, this alleged therapy is barbaric and inhumane, but repealing this law seemed to be the best path forward.”
Politico New York first reported the repeal plans on Wednesday.
The council approved the law two years ago barring anyone in the city from charging for therapy services that try to alter a person’s sexuality or change their gender identity to match their sex assigned at birth. The measure took effect last year.
The Alliance for Defending Freedom — which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group — brought a lawsuit challenging the statute’s constitutionality in Brooklyn federal court this January. That same month, the state Legislature banned professionals from practicing conversion therapy on minors.
While it’s uncertain whether it would have been successful, the alliance has a record of fighting cases all the way to the Supreme Court, which has shifted to the right in recent years, Johnson’s office argues.
The city’s law was particularly vulnerable to a challenge because it is broader than other statutes, the council says. It was also duplicative because state consumer fraud laws already provide legal recourse for adults subjected to conversion therapy, said Mathew Shurka, the co-founder of Born Perfect, an advocacy group that fights the practice.
Shurka, a West Village resident who spent five years in conversion therapy starting when he was 16, said repealing the city’s law makes strategic sense. The conversation about striking it from the books began “the moment the state law passed” earlier this year, he said.
“My goal is to minimize lawsuits, put more resources into laws that we have already like the one specifically protecting minors,” Shurka said. “Those are the people who are most threatened, or most vulnerable.”
Roger Brooks, the senior counsel for the Alliance for Defending Freedom, said the repeal is a “great result” for Dovid Schwartz, the Crown Heights psychotherapist whom the group represented in its lawsuit.
“We’re pleased,” Brooks said. “We went to court saying that censoring private conversations, totally voluntary private conversations, is pretty much a textbook First Amendment violation.”
The alliance also contested its classification as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been accused of deceptive practices. Jeremy Tedesco, the alliance’s senior counsel and vice president of U.S. advocacy, called the SPLC “thoroughly discredited and unreliable.”
