Kansas City Council repealed a ban on conversion therapy for minors. Here’s why
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- Kansas City Council repealed the conversion therapy ban by a vote of 7-5.
- The repeal followed litigation and a March Supreme Court ruling on a Colorado ban.
- Judge Ketchmark found the ban could harm minors and that pronoun rules may violate speech.
A divided Kansas City Council last week repealed a ban on conversion therapy, the scientifically discredited practice of attempting to change a gay or transgender person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The decision clears a path for licensed professionals to perform conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, on minors in Kansas City for the first time since 2019.
The reversal follows more than a year of litigation against the city and Jackson County, which adopted its own conversion therapy ban in 2023. The Missouri Attorney General’s Office sued both local governments on behalf of a group of Christian counselors.
A federal judge in Missouri last year denied plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary injunction that would have invalidated the bans. But the City Council chose to voluntarily repeal its ordinance after a March U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found a Colorado state law banning conversion therapy impermissibly limited free speech.
“I get why we’re doing this. But conversion therapy is harmful. That’s the reason why we banned it,” said Fourth District Councilman Eric Bunch before Thursday’s vote. “I get that we’re being told we have to do this to avoid potential litigation. However, I will be voting no in protest.”
Sixth District At-Large Councilwoman Andrea Bough said she was also voting no in protest, even though she said she understood why the reversal was necessary.
Mayor Quinton Lucas, who led the effort to adopt the initial ban, joined the 7-5 majority that repealed it, along with language in the city’s anti-discrimination establishing penalties for business owners and employees who refuse to use someone’s preferred pronouns.
“It isn’t potential litigation. We’re in active litigation,” Lucas said.
“I would always be happy for us to write a new piece of legislation that avoids the types of legal challenges coming our way,” Lucas said, adding that it “would be difficult” to do so.
Colorado lawmakers approved a new state law earlier this month redefining conversion therapy and allowing people to seek legal action against mental health providers who subjected them to the pseudoscientific therapy.
In a social media post on Monday, Sixth District Councilman Jonathan Duncan apologized for voting with the majority to repeal the conversion therapy ban and narrow the anti-discrimination ordinance, saying on X that he “made the wrong decision.”
“Over the past 48 hours I’ve spoken to leaders, comrades, and friends within the LGBTQ community who told me regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling on conversion therapy, my vote left them feeling unseen, unheard, dismissed, and betrayed,” Duncan said.
“As we explore ways to protect our children regardless of who they love or their chosen identities, know that we will do it together,” he added.
Conversion therapy lawsuit
The Kansas City ordinance change was proposed earlier this month, just before a U.S. Court of Appeals panel heard an appeal brought by the Christian counselors challenging the initial ruling that conversion therapy did not constitute protected free speech.
In the initial ruling from July 2025, District Court Judge Roseann A. Ketchmark rejected the plaintiffs’ argument, writing that the counselors did not provide compelling evidence that their free speech had been curtailed by the conversion therapy ban or that the city and county had acted irrationally by taking action to prohibit the practice.
“It is conceivable that the mental or emotional health or wellbeing of a minor struggling with self-identity issues or their sexuality may well be negatively impacted — including their sense of self-image, belonging or other feelings or beliefs of stigmatization, for example — when they receive counseling that is intended to affirmatively change their existing identity or belief as related to their sexual orientation or gender identity,” Ketchmark wrote.
However, she denied the city’s motion to dismiss the counselors’ claim that the language compelling preferred pronoun usage infringed on the counselors’ freedom of speech.
“To the extent Counselor Plaintiffs likely engage in constitutionally protected speech in only using pronouns that are consistent with a client or potential client’s sex — and declining to use pronouns that are inconsistent with a client or potential client’s sex — that the Publication Clause would likely violate their freedom of speech as applied to require preferred pronoun usage,” Ketchmark wrote. “The City makes no argument to the contrary.”
At the time when the panel of appellate judges heard the case, the City Council had not yet voted to repeal its conversion therapy ban and strip the pronoun language from its anti-discrimination ordinance. The judges took the matter under advisement after hearing from attorneys representing both sides, who agreed that there were still underlying issues in the case for the district court to work through.
The Jackson County Legislature has not yet considered a proposal to repeal its own conversion therapy ban. However, the Jackson County Counselor’s office acknowledged in a May 5 filing that the Supreme Court had “definitively decided the dispositive issues in its ruling” on the Colorado ban, which a county attorney characterized as “functionally identical to the ordinances” being challenged in this case.
