Conversion Therapy Bill Could Be in Some Hot Water and Has Unexpected Potential

Just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a stinging 8-1 rebuke to state bans on certain types of conversion therapy, California Senate Bill 934 landed in the Capitol like a lead balloon. Authored by the ever-busy Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), the measure allows those who have undergone types of conversion therapy to sue the medical professionals who administer that therapy.

In the cases of adults undergoing the therapy, they have expressly asked for it, but then can turn around and sue the therapist for delivering on their request. Furthermore, in the cases where the conversion therapy is simply relegated to speech, the Supreme Court possibly threw a monkey wrench into this bill before it has even passed the California legislature.

On March 31, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in Chiles v. Salazar that Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy”, when applied to pure talk therapy, is a type of viewpoint discrimination and a violation of the First Amendment. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the eight-justice majority, made clear that the state cannot use its licensing power to dictate what a counselor may say to a client about sexuality or gender. Talk therapy is speech, not conduct. When the government picks winners and losers based on the viewpoint of speech, it triggers strict scrutiny. California’s own 2012 ban (SB 1172) is potentially now on life support for the exact same reason.

The new bill, SB 934, doesn’t ban anything outright. Instead, it rewrites the statute of limitations for malpractice claims arising from “sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts.” It dramatically expands the window for former minors to sue their therapists all the way until age 40. For adults, it’s 10 years from the last session or five years from discovering the alleged “injury.” The bill explicitly blesses plaintiffs citing “scientific principles and medical consensus” to prove harm in court.

Except the bill’s definition of prohibited “change efforts” is breathtakingly broad: any effort by a licensed mental health provider “to direct a patient toward a particular sexual orientation or a particular gender identity.” Note the symmetry. It doesn’t say “from gay to straight” or “from trans to cis.” It says toward any predetermined outcome.

Wiener’s office calls conversion therapy “psychological torture” and a “made-up notion” debunked by every major medical association. Yet the bill contains zero carve-outs for neutral talk therapy. Zero exemptions for counselors who simply listen, explore underlying trauma, autism, or social contagion, and help a child align with their natal sex if that’s what the child or adult ultimately wants. And crucially, post-Chiles, it contains no recognition that the Supreme Court just declared this exact kind of speech protected.

In other words, SB 934 is a First Amendment landmine. Therapists who engage in the very exploratory talk therapy the Supreme Court just shielded can still be bankrupted by civil suits years or decades later. The bill’s sponsors apparently believe they can regulate speech by the back door. Good luck explaining that to the federal courts.

But there is the potential for delicious irony the drafters of the bill never saw coming. As written, SB 934 may hand parents of gender-dysphoric kids the very weapon they’ve been begging for — the ability to sue overzealous therapists and doctors who rush minors down the transgender medical pathway.

Consider the exploding population of adolescents identifying as transgender, often after rapid onset via social media and affirmative therapists. Systematic reviews in the UK, Sweden, Finland, and even recent U.S. Department of Health and Human Services analyses have shredded the evidence base for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries on minors. Detransition and regret are no longer fringe anecdotes; they’re a growing clinical reality.

Under SB 934’s plain language, a parent whose child is steered by a gender clinic counselor toward “affirmation”, complete with social transition, blockers, and a predetermined transgender identity, could argue that the provider engaged in “gender identity change efforts.” The therapist had a predetermined outcome: transition. The child was directed toward a particular gender identity at odds with biological sex. Years later, when the adolescent detransitions and sues (or the parents sue on their child’s behalf), the extended statute of limitations gives until age 40 to do it.

The very bill designed to protect “LGBTQ youth” from therapists who might suggest living as gay or straight could instead become a blueprint for parents suing affirmative clinicians who fast-tracked their kids into irreversible medicalization. The “medical consensus” Wiener leans on is crumbling in real time. European countries have already reversed course. American pediatricians are quietly walking back the “gender-affirming care” model.

The Legislature should think long and hard before passing a bill that the Supreme Court just rendered constitutionally radioactive and that could boomerang so spectacularly on the very ideology driving it. Or they could do what they usually do: pass it anyway, dare the courts to strike it down, and watch California families vote with their feet.