Waiting game continues on reparative therapy

Young people in New Jersey who want counseling for same-gender attractions won't get it. A constitutional law expert believes it's an issue the Supreme Court needs to decide.

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided against hearing an appeal of a case in which New Jersey youth are banned from receiving reparative therapy and licensed counselors are barred from providing it. According to Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, the court's decision might have been different if Justice Antonin Scalia, who died recently, had participated in the vote.

"... It may well have been the first tragedy that we've visibly seen after Justice Scalia's death," laments the attorney, "because he would have been a very strong advocate for First Amendment free speech. I don't think he would have sided at all with a ban on this kind of counsel for clients and counselors."

Rulings on similar cases by federal courts of appeal have differed. For now, Staver explains, people will just have to wait for the next case to come up.

"But in the meantime, parents and their children in New Jersey will not be able to seek the kind of counsel that has been life-changing and frankly life-saving for them, which is a tragedy of incalculable consequences," he tells OneNewsNow.

California and Washington, DC, also ban the therapy.