A federal appeals court upheld on Thursday a district judge’s ruling that struck down a Tampa, Florida, city ordinance prohibiting so-called “talk” gay conversion therapy.
In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision that struck down a Tampa ordinance that banned counselors in the city from offering “talk therapy” to minors aimed at eliminating a same-sex attraction.
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The short per curiam decision said the ordinance violated the First Amendment’s protections for religious freedom. The case was decided by George H.W. Bush appointee Judge Ed Carnes, Trump appointee Judge Barbara Lagoa, and Obama appointee Judge Robin Rosenbaum.
In a short concurrence, Rosenbaum wrote that the circuit’s binding precedent in Otto v. City of Boca Raton required the ordinance be struck down but that she believed that case, wherein the court struck down a similar city ordinance in Boca Raton, was wrongly decided.
“I agree that we are bound by our prior-panel-precedent rule to apply Otto here and affirm,” Rosenbaum wrote. “Nevertheless, I continue to believe that Otto was wrongly decided.”
The case was brought by Robert Vazzo, a family therapist who was represented by Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based nonprofit law firm that also brought the Otto case.
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“This is a great victory for counselors and their clients,” Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver said in a statement. “Counselors and clients have the freedom to choose the counsel of their choice and be free of political censorship from government-mandated speech.”
