Virginia ditches speech code for counselors as SCOTUS ramps up gender ideology reviews

Before the Supreme Court can review the constitutionality of Colorado's ban on minors receiving talk therapy to treat unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion, which nearly half of states have imposed, the blue state that elected Republican Glenn Youngkin its governor in the parental rights wave of the early 2020s has given up on its own five-year-old ban.

Henrico County Circuit Court approved a consent decree between the Virginia Department of Health Professions and its Virginia Board of Counseling and Christian counseling couple John and Janet Raymond, who practice at the far end of Washington, D.C.'s exurbs, recognizing that the Old Dominion cannot enforce the ban under its founding document. 

The decree cites the Virginia Supreme Court's reinstatement of a lawsuit by Christian teacher Peter Vlaming, fired for refusing to use a student's preferred pronouns, which affirmed the state constitution's religious freedom protections exceed those of the U.S. Constitution. Vlaming got a $575,000 settlement from the West Point School Board nine months later.

Another set of Virginia teachers who sued their district for the same protection against compelled pronoun use reached a settlement in December 2024 influenced by the Vlaming ruling. Years earlier, the state's high court reinstated another anti-preferred pronoun teacher, Loudoun County's Tanner Cross, under state and U.S. constitutions.

The settlement furthers the legal momentum against gender ideology that has accelerated in just the past three weeks due to moves by SCOTUS.

The high court upheld Tennessee's ban on medicalized gender transition for minors, restored parental rights to notice and opt-out for LGBTQ lessons taught to young children and on Thursday accepted petitions by Idaho and West Virginia to review injunctions against their laws prohibiting males from competing in girls' sports regardless of gender identity.

'Every counselor in Virginia will now be able to speak freely'

The consent decree quotes from the state constitution, which protects "the right to be free from any governmental discrimination upon the basis of religious conviction" without qualification, and then the Virginia Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which erects high hurdles to "substantially burden" religious exercise even under "a rule of general applicability."

"Defendants, any of their officers, employees, or agents, and any successors of the foregoing are enjoined from enforcing" criminal penalties against the Raymonds and "similarly-situated counselors" for violation of conversion-therapy minor provisions in standards of practice, says the document, signed by Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares' office.

It means "every counselor in Virginia will now be able to speak freely, truthfully, and candidly with clients who are seeking to have those critical conversations about their identity and to hear faith-based insights from trusted professionals," the Raymonds' lawyers at Founding Freedoms Law Center said Tuesday.

"The growing number of parents who are seeking guidance for their struggling children, in an era where gender dysphoria has become a contagion among young people, will finally be able to find knowledgeable counselors, like the Raymonds, who can offer help," the firm said. 

The Raymonds had "ceased counseling minor clients almost entirely" due to the law, the consent decree says. Any licensed counselor who "simply has a conversation with a minor for the purpose of helping him or her embrace their God-given sexuality instead of pursuing homosexuality or transgenderism can lose their license," the firm said when it filed suit.

While the Raymonds sought $50,000 in compensatory damages, $1,000 in nominal damages and Virginia's payment of their attorneys' fees and costs, the order ending the case says the parties will pay their own fees. Their litigation counsel, Michael Sylvester, confirmed to Just the News that the Raymonds did not get damages from the state.

Eleven state GOP delegates and one GOP senator voted for the ban in 2020 after years of failures to get out of committee, and then-Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam signed it into law on Super Tuesday that year. Founding Freedoms waited nearly a month to announce the June 4 settlement to align with the law's fifth anniversary of taking effect July 1.

The legal arm of The Family Foundation was founded the day the law took effect "as a direct response to the recent onslaught of anti-family, anti-freedom, and anti-faith initiatives" in the General Assembly and Northam's COVID-19 executive orders that shuttered churches and "criminializ[ed] pastors," it says.

'If speaking to clients is not speech, the world is truly upside down'

The quiet end to Virginia's short legal battle stands in contrast to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals striking down minor conversion therapy bans in Florida's Palm Beach County and Boca Raton five months after Virginia's law took effect, preventing similar bans across Florida, Georgia and Alabama.

That divided 2-1 panel, led by President Trump's nominees, marveled at the localities' warning that governments wouldn't be able to regulate therapists' treatment if they had the same First Amendment rights as the general public.

If "sexual orientation change efforts" are conduct and not speech, "the same could be said of teaching or protesting," Judge Britt Grant wrote, citing SCOTUS precedent protecting the phrase "f— the draft" when worn on a jacket "in front of women and children."

"Debating? Also an activity. Book clubs? Same answer. But the law does not require us to flip back and forth between perspectives until our eyes hurt," Grant said. "If speaking to clients is not speech, the world is truly upside down."

Biden nominee's ruling 'threatens all Americans who advise others for a living'

Michigan's year-old minor conversion therapy ban – actually two laws – is now before the 6th Circuit after President Biden-nominated Judge Jane Beckering denied a preliminary injunction to Michigan Catholic Charities in January, citing the "broad power" of states as recognized by SCOTUS "to regulate the practice of licensed professionals within their boundaries."

Religious liberty law firm Becket filed its opening brief on Catholic Charities' behalf in April, quickly followed by supporting briefs by 11 Republican attorneys general, the libertarian Institute for Justice, conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and Michigan affiliate of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which rarely agrees with the others.

Judge Beckering's ruling "threatens all Americans who advise others for a living" such as an end-of-life consulting firm and expert witness on "municipal water systems," both of whom were targeted by state regulators for unlicensed practices, IJ said. 

"In today’s information-based economy, ever-greater numbers of people earn their living purely by speaking," and under the ruling "all these speakers can be silenced if the government is sufficiently creative in recharacterizing their speech as professional conduct," IJ also said.

CAIR Michigan, which "frequently field[s] requests for referrals to faith-aligned mental health providers," said it started "receiving urgent inquiries from Muslim therapists" who feared "offering therapy consistent with their religious beliefs – or those of their clients – could result in disciplinary action or legal sanction."

The Muslim group's brief cited SCOTUS overruling COVID restrictions on New York City Catholic churches that were imposed on the basis of "administrative burden."

"If emergency public health measures during a once-in-a-century pandemic were insufficient to justify curtailing religious exercise and expressive freedom, then routine regulatory interests – like administrative ease or policy conformity – cannot justify compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination" under Michigan's laws, it said.