Conversion Therapy and State Bans

What Is Conversion Therapy

If Conversion Therapy Affects You

Find your situation

Open the one closest to yours. Each gives a first step.

I am being pushed into it, or I am in it now

1. If you are in danger or thinking about suicide, call 911 or call or text 988.
2. The Trevor Project answers LGBTQ young people at any hour: call 1-866-488-7386 or text START to 678-678.
3. Tell one adult you trust, such as a relative, teacher, or school counselor, what is happening.

I went through it and I am still dealing with it

1. What happened was not your fault, and the research on this page backs that up.
2. Trans Lifeline is peer support run by trans people, at 877-565-8860 on weekdays from 1 to 9 PM Eastern.
3. An affirming therapist can help. The National Center for Lesbian Rights runs the Born Perfect campaign for survivors.

A licensed provider did this to a minor in a ban state

1. You can file a complaint with the state licensing board that licensed the provider.
2. After Chiles v. Salazar, a board may not be able to act against talk-only therapy, and in Michigan a court has barred it. Bans still reach physical or aversive methods.
3. The Movement Advancement Project lists each state's law.

I want to protect kids where I live

1. See the steps at the end of this page, including a letter to Congress.

What Happens in Conversion Therapy

The word “therapy” is doing a lot of work in the name, and it is worth taking apart before anything else. It suggests a counselor and a couch. What the practice has meant, and still means, is narrower and stranger than that.

Through roughly the 1990s it was openly physical. A Minnesota Department of Health review of the scientific evidence records lobotomy and aversive conditioning by electric shock, ice baths, freezing, burning with metal coils, and hard labor. The theory behind aversion therapy was simple, and it is the reason for the electric shocks. Make a person associate attraction with pain, and the attraction stops. It did not stop, and aversion therapy is now abandoned by every mainstream body that once used it.

Those methods are largely historical, and saying so matters. Today most of it is talk. A practitioner treats a young person’s orientation as a symptom of something else, often a distant father, an overbearing mother, or past abuse, and works to trace it back to that supposed cause. Sessions may coach stereotyped masculinity or femininity, assign gender-conforming behavior as homework, and frame the goal as resolving “unwanted same-sex attraction” rather than changing a person. Ex-gay therapy and ex-gay ministry programs run on the same premise. In religious settings the practice can include prayer sessions, deliverance, and exorcism.

That last setting is where most of it now happens, and it is where the law does not reach.

Reading a state ban as “conversion therapy is illegal here” overstates what it does. The bans reach licensed professionals treating minors. A church program, an unlicensed coach, and any provider seeing a 19-year-old sit outside them. Courts have also had to weigh whether banning gender identity change efforts and SOCE is discriminatory toward the practitioners who want to offer it, which is the argument that reached the Supreme Court.

Why Conversion Therapy Does Not Work

Sexual orientation does not change because someone is pressured to change it. Decades of research find it is highly resistant to deliberate attempts at modification, and not a single rigorous study has shown reparative therapy can do it. The American Psychological Association reviewed the literature and found no reliable evidence that sexual orientation change efforts produce change.

The clearest proof is what happened to two published studies that claimed it works: one was withdrawn by its own author, the other by its journal.

The Harm to LGBTQ Youth

Mathew Shurka was 16 when a licensed therapist promised to make him straight and told him to stop speaking to his mother and sisters. The reasoning was that female influence had made him gay. He followed that instruction for three years, and spent five years in treatment, from 16 to 21, that changed nothing about who he was.

The cutting-off was not a side effect. Separating a teenager from the people who accept him is a technique, because the practice needs the young person to believe the therapist over everyone else in the room. What it costs is the thing a person that age needs most.

Shurka now runs Born Perfect, the campaign he co-founded with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and describes the outcome in a way worth sitting with.

That sentence contains the whole injury. In a practice built on the premise that who you are is a problem to be solved, getting better means failing the treatment, and the people who do not fail spend years believing they are the defect. That is the part that follows someone into adulthood, and it is what the research measures across thousands of people like him.

In the largest study of its kind, the Trevor Project surveyed 22,462 LGBTQ youth and found that those subjected to conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to attempt suicide in the past year. It was the strongest predictor of multiple attempts in the study, even after accounting for discrimination, physical threats, and parents who used religion to condemn being LGBTQ.

44 of 100 Subjected to conversion therapy

17 of 100 Not subjected to conversion therapy

Attempted suicide in the past year, after conversion therapy Did not attempt suicide

Source: The Trevor Project survey of 22,462 LGBTQ youth (43.6% vs 17.3%). Shown per 100 youth.

For transgender people the pattern holds and sharpens. A JAMA Psychiatry study of more than 27,000 transgender adults found that gender-identity change efforts doubled the odds of a lifetime suicide attempt. For those targeted before age 10, the odds were more than four times higher.

Suicide is not the only measured outcome. Modeling for the Minnesota review attributed about $83,000 in additional lifetime costs per person exposed, driven by suicidal ideation, anxiety, severe psychological distress, depression, and substance abuse. Across the population that came to roughly $9.23 billion in economic burden, which is what happens when a practice sold as psychotherapy produces the conditions real psychotherapy treats.

The clearest verdict came from the people who ran it. Exodus International was the largest ex-gay ministry in the world, operating for 37 years across dozens of countries. In June 2013 its president, Alan Chambers, shut it down and apologized to the people it had treated.

Chambers also apologized for promoting sexual orientation change efforts and the reparative theories behind them. An organization does not close after 37 years and apologize to its own clients because the practice was working.

698,000 Have Been Through Conversion Therapy

Conversion therapy is still happening at scale. The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates that 698,000 LGBTQ adults have undergone it, and that 16,000 more teens will be put through it by a licensed professional before they turn 18, where it remains legal.

A 2023 systematic review found that 13% of LGBTQ people in the U.S. have experienced conversion practices at some point. For transgender and nonbinary people the rate runs about three times higher than for cisgender people. It happens in churches, camps, and prayer groups, but also in regulated counselors’ offices.

Which States Have Bans

Whether a teenager is protected depends on where they live. As of October 2, 2026, the Movement Advancement Project counts 22 states and the District of Columbia that ban conversion therapy for minors, covering 46% of LGBTQ youth. Another 11% live in five states that restrict it without a full ban, and 26% live in states with no law at all.

Conversion Therapy Bans for Minors

• Full ban for minors (22 states + DC)
• No full ban (28 states)

Source: Movement Advancement Project, October 2, 2026.

Conversion Therapy Bans for Minors

State	Status	Detail
California	Full ban for minors	First state to ban it for minors, 2012.
Colorado	Full ban for minors	Ban sent back to the lower courts after Chiles v. Salazar (2026), which held it limits talk therapy by viewpoint.
Connecticut	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Delaware	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
District of Columbia	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Hawaii	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Illinois	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Maine	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Maryland	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Massachusetts	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Michigan	No full statutory ban	Restricts but no longer fully bans it. A July 31, 2026 federal judgment bars enforcing the 2023 ban against licensed professionals whose therapy is only talk.
Minnesota	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Nevada	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
New Hampshire	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
New Jersey	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
New Mexico	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
New York	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Oregon	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Pennsylvania	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Rhode Island	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Utah	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Vermont	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Washington	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Wisconsin	Full ban for minors	Conversion therapy is prohibited for minors.
Alabama	No full statutory ban	11th Circuit blocked enforcement of local bans on free-speech grounds.
Alaska	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Arizona	No full statutory ban	Executive order bars state funding, but no statutory ban.
Arkansas	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Florida	No full statutory ban	11th Circuit blocked enforcement of local bans on free-speech grounds.
Georgia	No full statutory ban	11th Circuit blocked enforcement of local bans on free-speech grounds.
Idaho	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Indiana	No full statutory ban	State law deters local-level bans.
Iowa	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Kansas	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Kentucky	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Louisiana	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Mississippi	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Missouri	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Montana	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Nebraska	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
North Carolina	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
North Dakota	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Ohio	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Oklahoma	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
South Carolina	No full statutory ban	State law deters local-level bans.
South Dakota	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Tennessee	No full statutory ban	State law deters local-level bans.
Texas	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Virginia	No full statutory ban	2020 ban left unenforceable under a 2025 settlement.
West Virginia	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.
Wyoming	No full statutory ban	No state law protects minors from conversion therapy.

Michigan is the newest change. A federal court’s final judgment on July 31, 2026 bars the state from enforcing its ban against licensed professionals who only talk with clients, and MAP now lists Michigan as restricting rather than banning the practice.

Chiles v. Salazar and What the Ruling Means

On March 31, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Chiles v. Salazar that Colorado’s ban, applied to a licensed counselor’s talk therapy, restricts speech based on viewpoint, and that the lower courts were wrong to judge it by a lenient test. Laws that limit speech by its content generally must pass strict scrutiny, the hardest standard in constitutional law. Under that test, the Court wrote, it is “rare” that such a law “will ever be permissible.”

Justice Gorsuch wrote the majority. The key fact for the Court was what Colorado’s law allows and what it forbids. A counselor may express acceptance and support for a client exploring their identity, but may not say anything that tries to change a client’s “sexual orientation or gender identity.” That, the opinion said, lets the state favor one view and silence the other, so it “censors speech based on viewpoint.” Justice Jackson dissented alone, warning that the decision “could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care.”

The ruling is narrower than the headlines. It covers the law “as applied to” Kaley Chiles, who uses only talk therapy. Chiles did not challenge the ban on what she called “long-abandoned, aversive” physical methods, and the Court noted that in many applications the law “may address conduct.” Justice Kagan, joined by Justice Sotomayor, wrote separately that a law limiting the subject without taking a side, one that is “content-based but viewpoint-neutral,” would raise “a different and more difficult question” (Chiles v. Salazar).

The Court did not strike Colorado’s ban outright. It reversed the Tenth Circuit and sent the case back for “further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” A ban in another state that applies the same way to talk therapy can be challenged on the same grounds.

The fight did not start in 2026. It runs from the day psychiatry stopped calling gay people sick to the day the Court reopened the question.

1. 1973 Homosexuality removed from the DSM The American Psychiatric Association stops classifying being gay as a mental illness.
2. 1998 Ex-gay ad campaign A national campaign promotes "change" and fuels the conversion therapy industry.
3. 2012 First state ban California becomes the first state to ban conversion therapy for minors.
4. 2012 The signature study is retracted Spitzer repudiates his own 2001 study and apologizes.
5. 2013 Exodus International closes The largest ex-gay ministry shuts down and apologizes for the harm it caused.
6. 2025 The last pro-change study falls The 2021 Sullins analysis is retracted for methodological flaws.
7. 2026 Chiles v. Salazar The Supreme Court rules 8-1 that Colorado's ban, applied to talk therapy, limits speech by viewpoint.

From a diagnosis to a Supreme Court reversal, 1973-2026: 1973: Homosexuality removed from the DSM (The American Psychiatric Association stops classifying being gay as a mental illness.). 1998: Ex-gay ad campaign (A national campaign promotes "change" and fuels the conversion therapy industry.). 2012: First state ban (California becomes the first state to ban conversion therapy for minors.). 2012: The signature study is retracted (Spitzer repudiates his own 2001 study and apologizes.). 2013: Exodus International closes (The largest ex-gay ministry shuts down and apologizes for the harm it caused.). 2025: The last pro-change study falls (The 2021 Sullins analysis is retracted for methodological flaws.). 2026: Chiles v. Salazar (The Supreme Court rules 8-1 that Colorado's ban, applied to talk therapy, limits speech by viewpoint.).

1973: The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. A membership referendum confirmed it in 1974. Being gay was no longer a disorder to be cured.

2012: California passed the first state ban on conversion therapy for minors. The same year, Robert Spitzer retracted the 2001 study that the entire “change is possible” movement had leaned on.

2025: The last study claiming conversion therapy worked, a 2021 analysis, was retracted. The scientific case for the practice was now empty on both ends.

2026: In Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that Colorado’s ban, applied to a licensed counselor’s talk therapy, limits speech by viewpoint, and sent the case back to the lower courts.

Where the Bans Stand in September 2026

Six months after the ruling, one state has stopped enforcing its ban against talk therapy, and Colorado’s case is back in court. The rest of the bans are still law, but any of them can be challenged the same way.

Where Conversion Therapy Bans Stand

As of September 25, 2026

• Chiles v. Salazar Final ruling, 8-1

  On March 31, 2026, the Court held that Colorado's ban, applied to talk therapy, regulates speech by viewpoint and that the lower courts erred by not applying a rigorous enough First Amendment test. Reversed and remanded. (source)

• Colorado's ban In litigation, enforceable except against Chiles

  The Tenth Circuit sent the case back on May 27, 2026. On June 2, the state agreed not to enforce the ban against Chiles's talk therapy while the case continues, and a motion to add more counselors is pending. (source)

• Michigan's ban Blocked by a court, for talk-only therapy

  A July 31, 2026 final judgment, agreed to by the state, permanently bars enforcement against licensed professionals whose therapy "consists exclusively of talking." (source)

• The other 21 states' and D.C.'s bans Law, open to challenge

  Still in force. With Colorado, they make up the Movement Advancement Project's count of 22 states and D.C. as of September 24, 2026. (source)

• Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act (H.R. 3243) Proposal

  Would make selling conversion therapy, or advertising that it works, an unfair or deceptive practice. 197 cosponsors, all Democrats; no action since May 7, 2025. (source)

Source: U.S. Supreme Court; Tenth Circuit and U.S. District Court for Colorado dockets; U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan; Movement Advancement Project; govinfo

The ledger leaves out city and county bans, which also face the same challenge, and changes in states that have not faced a lawsuit yet.

Gender-Exploratory Therapy Renames an Old Practice

Conversion therapy did not disappear as the bans spread. It changed its name and its target, moving from gay people to transgender and nonbinary youth.

Gender-exploratory therapy is the newest version. It is a counseling approach for transgender and nonbinary young people that treats their gender identity as something to question rather than affirm, with the goal of delaying or preventing transition.

It is marketed as neutral. Its supporters say they are not trying to change anyone, only to “explore” where a young person’s gender feelings come from before any social or medical transition. In practice, the exploration starts from the assumption that a trans identity is a symptom to explain away, often blamed on trauma, autism, or social contagion, and the goal is to delay or prevent transition.

Clinical ethicist Florence Ashley, writing in Perspectives on Psychological Science, found the resemblance hard to miss: “When you begin from the premise that trans identities are suspect and often rooted in pathology, your therapeutic approach soon becomes indistinguishable from conversion practices.”

The major medical bodies have already drawn the line on the trans version. The American Psychological Association passed a 2021 resolution opposing gender identity change efforts, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health states plainly in its standards of care that being transgender “is not undesirable and should not be approached as if it were.”

The Honest Disagreement

The fight after Chiles is not over whether conversion therapy works. It is over who decides what a licensed counselor may say.

The Court’s majority saw a free-speech problem. A law that lets a counselor affirm a young person’s identity but forbids helping a client who wants to change “censors speech based on viewpoint,” Justice Gorsuch wrote, and the First Amendment protects licensed professionals “much as” it protects everyone else. Kaley Chiles and her lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom argued that she follows her clients’ own goals rather than imposing one.

Supporters of the bans answer that a licensed counselor treating a minor is practicing medicine, which states have always regulated. Justice Jackson’s dissent argued that the ruling could usher in “an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care.” Every major U.S. medical and mental health association that has taken a position rejects the practice.

Justice Kagan’s concurrence marks the middle ground. A law that restricts the subject without favoring one side might survive, she wrote, though the question would be “more difficult.” How to write such a law is now the open question for states that want to keep a ban.

What Conversion Therapy Is Not

Conversion therapy is not the same as ordinary mental health care, and the difference matters when the two get deliberately confused.

It is not affirming therapy. Affirming therapy supports a person in understanding and accepting their identity. Conversion therapy starts from the position that the identity must change, and it is linked to more than double the odds of a suicide attempt.

It is not always overt abuse. Most of it now happens in talk-therapy offices and prayer groups, not residential camps. The licensed-counselor version is the one the 2026 Supreme Court ruling put at issue, because it is carried out in talk.

It is not a thing of the past. 16,000 LGBTQ teens are projected to be put through it by a licensed professional before turning 18, in the states that still allow it.

It is not the same as a ban on discussing sexuality or gender. Bans let a counselor support a young person exploring their identity. The Court’s objection in Chiles was that they allow only that side of the conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does conversion therapy work?

No. Major mental health organizations have rejected conversion therapy because of evidence that it is ineffective and may cause harm. Two published studies that claimed success were later withdrawn, one by its author in 2012 and one by its journal in 2025.

What happens in conversion therapy?

There is no single method. Earlier versions used aversive techniques; since the mid-1990s, most conversion therapy has used counseling and talk therapy, a Minnesota Department of Health review found. It is meant to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

Does conversion therapy target transgender people?

Yes. Conversion therapy is meant to change gender identity or gender expression as well as sexual orientation, a Minnesota Department of Health review states. Some clinicians now promote “gender-exploratory therapy” for transgender youth, which the bioethicist Florence Ashley argues shares strong similarities with conversion practices.

Is conversion therapy legal in the United States?

It depends on the state. As of October 2026, the Movement Advancement Project counts 22 states and D.C. that prohibit licensed providers from using it on minors, 5 states that restrict it, and 17 states with no law.

What did the Supreme Court decide in Chiles v. Salazar?

On March 31, 2026, the Court ruled 8-1 that Colorado’s ban, applied to a licensed counselor who uses only talk therapy, regulates speech by viewpoint, and that the lower courts were wrong to use a lenient test. It did not strike the ban. It sent the case back to the lower courts.

Did Colorado ban conversion therapy?

Yes. In 2019, Colorado barred licensed counselors from practicing conversion therapy with minors. The ban is still law, but in Chiles v. Salazar (2026) the Supreme Court held that, applied to a counselor who uses only talk therapy, it limits speech by viewpoint, and sent the case back to the lower courts.

What does the conversion therapy ruling mean?

Bans on licensed talk therapy with minors can now be challenged as speech restrictions, and courts must apply “sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny” to them, the opinion says. Bans on physical or aversive methods were not at issue. Two justices suggested that a law that does not take a side might be judged differently.

What is “gender-exploratory therapy”?

It is an approach for transgender youth that discourages gender affirmation and uses talk therapy to explore what it treats as possible pathological roots of a trans identity. Clinical ethicist Florence Ashley argues it shares strong conceptual similarities with conversion practices and may be unethical.

Is conversion therapy the same as counseling for someone questioning their identity?

No. Conversion therapy is meant to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, a Minnesota Department of Health review states. Supportive counseling sets no such goal.

What You Can Do

1. Ask Congress to co-sponsor the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act (H.R. 3243). It would make selling conversion therapy, or advertising that it can change a person, an unfair or deceptive practice the Federal Trade Commission can stop. Use the letter below.

2. Defend or pass a ban in your state. If your state has no full ban, ask your state legislators to pass one written with the Chiles ruling in mind. If your state has a ban, ask your attorney general to commit to defending it under the new strict-scrutiny standard. The Movement Advancement Project tracks where every state stands.

3. Support the organizations litigating and tracking this. The National Center for Lesbian Rights runs the Born Perfect campaign to end conversion therapy. The Trevor Project produces the research that bans are built on.

4. Know the crisis resources and share them. For LGBTQ youth in crisis, the Trevor Project is reachable at 1-866-488-7386 or by texting START to 678-678. Trans Lifeline answers at 877-565-8860 on weekdays from 1 to 9 PM Eastern. Call 911 if someone is in immediate danger, and call or text 988 for any mental health crisis.