Michigan Becomes First State to Stop Enforcing Ban On Conversion Talk Therapy

By Gary Gately

Michigan has become the nation’s first state to stop enforcing a ban on so-called conversion talk therapy, which seeks to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ minors.

The law itself hasn’t been repealed. But under an order filed in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids and signed off on by a federal judge, the state agreed that it will not act against counselors who practice conversion therapy through talking alone.

The order comes two years after Catholic Charities of Jackson, Lenawee and Hillsdale Counties sued Governor Gretchen Whitmer and other state officials to challenge the state law. The Catholic Charities affiliate argued that the law effectively required its counselors to either affirm a client’s gender identity, even when it conflicts with Catholic teachings, or decline to treat the client.

U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering signed off on the order after ruling that Michigan’s ban on “efforts to change behavior or gender expression” violates counselors’ First Amendment right to free speech.

Beckering called the Michigan case “materially identical” to a Colorado dispute in which the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a Christian therapist in March in a case centered on Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy.

“This is a major victory for children, counselors, and common sense,” said Luke Goodrich, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented Catholic Charities in the Michigan suit. “Now counselors can offer compassionate counseling without fearing that state bureaucrats will come knocking.”

The Michigan order permanently bars the state from enforcing the ban on conversion talk therapy by licensed counselors, including those working for the Catholic Charities affiliate, whose treatment “consists exclusively of talking.” Practices involving medication remain banned. The state also agreed to pay the plaintiffs’ attorneys $750,000 in fees and costs.

Emily McJones — a Lansing-based Catholic therapist who owns Little Flower Counseling and treats children with gender dysphoria, discomfort or distress that they feel over their biological sex — joined Catholic Charities as a plaintiff in the suit challenging the Michigan law.

McJones said in a statement that she provides therapy “rooted in my faith and the best available scientific evidence.”

In counseling, she says, she seeks to identify the underlying causes of their discomfort, ease their distress and, if possible, help them embrace their bodies without resorting to irreversible medical procedures.

Catholic Charities argued that Michigan’s law let counselors offer “acceptance, support, or understanding” of a minor’s self-identified gender, but barred them from offering counseling aimed at helping them accept their gender assigned at birth. The suit argued that this effectively forced counselors to affirm lifestyles that conflicted with their faith.

The original lawsuit argued the ban violated counselors’ rights to free speech and religious freedom.

But the rulings that ultimately unwound Michigan’s law — Beckering’s and that of a federal appeals court — were based on free speech, not religion.

Michigan’s law had barred licensed mental health professionals from providing therapy that “seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” including efforts to alter a minor’s behavior or gender expression, even at a client’s own request. It explicitly permitted counseling that helps a minor “undergo a gender transition.”

Violators of the law faced fines of up to $250,000 and possible loss of their license.

Beckering initially rejected Catholic Charities’ request to block the law in January 2025, ruling that the therapy was conduct the state could regulate, not protected speech.

But the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed her decision in December 2025.

The Michigan case had been on hold awaiting Chiles v. Salazar, a challenge to Colorado’s conversion therapy ban. The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in March 2026 that Colorado’s law, as applied to a licensed counselor’s talk therapy, took sides on what a counselor could say — and that laws doing so must clear a much higher bar than the one lower courts had employed.

The high court sent the case back down for another look under that tougher bar but didn’t strike down Colorado’s law outright, so it remains in effect.

Michigan pushed back even as it agreed to stop enforcing that state’s law.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Dana Nessel, Kimberly Bush, said the office was “deeply disappointed” and warned of consequences for children’s safety, while maintaining that the new agreement simply recognized what the Supreme Court’s ruling required. Nessel said in a statement that conversion therapy has been shown to increase the risk of suicide and depression among young people and that her office is weighing whether to appeal.

Whitmer’s office also criticized the outcome, saying in a statement that the Democratic governor believes young people deserve to “grow up safe, supported, and free to be themselves,” and that the state “will never support any practice that harms or shames LGBTQ+ youth.”

Michigan became the 22nd state to adopt a conversion therapy ban when its Democratic-led legislature passed the law in 2023 along mostly party lines.

Becket points to research that shows harm to children from receiving drugs, hormones and surgeries through gender-affirming care, including sexual dysfunction, permanent sterilization, increased risk of cancer and loss of bone density.

But supporters of gender-affirming care note that major medical groups including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics publicly support the current medical guidelines for gender transition-related care.

In April 2024, the Vatican condemned gender theory and sex-change surgery as “grave threats” to human dignity in a highly anticipated document signed by Pope Francis.

In the 20-page “Dignitas Infinita” (“Infinite Dignity”), five years in the making, the Vatican’s doctrinal office emphatically states that gender theory, or the idea that one’s gender can be changed, “intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”

“Any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception” as an “irrevocable gift from God” and amounts to succumbing “to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.”

At the same time, Pope Francis had made reaching out to LGBTQ people a hallmark of his 11-year papacy and urged Catholics to treat them with compassion, dignity and respect.

In April 2026, Pope Leo XIV told reporters in response to a question on the Church’s view of same-sex marriage that “the unity or division of the Church should not revolve around sexual matters,” adding: “I believe there are much greater and more important issues such as justice, equality... that would all take priority before that particular issue.”

But the Church has not veered from its position that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and that sexual relationships outside heterosexual marriage are sinful.

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