‘Censoring counselors’: Oregon scheme to control therapists’ speech under fire

In the shadow of a Supreme Court ruling that Colorado cannot deliberately violate the First Amendment by imposing a state regulation that in a politically biased way tries to control the speech of counselors, the state of Oregon is fining a counselor because he refused to allow the state to use its regulation to control his speech.

And that fine is being contested.

The problem is that leftists in state governments, influenced by their pro-LGBT activist friends, have created state rules that in Colorado instructed counselors to promote those alternative lifestyle choices, but banned them, under threat of penalty, from encouraging clients who didn’t want to choose that life direction, to live their lives in their birth sex.

The Supreme Court banned Colorado from doing that in a huge precedent only weeks ago.

Now, the same fight is pending at the Oregon Court of Appeals.

There, lawyers from the ADF are arguing that the state’s decision to impose a fine of nearly $90,000 on a counselor is improper.

“The government can’t target counselors for their views and can’t force people to say things that go against their core convictions,” said lawyer Jonathan Scruggs. “The Supreme Court recently took Colorado to task for censoring counselors and mandating orthodoxy in the counselor’s office. Now, Oregon needs to learn the same First Amendment lesson. We are urging the Oregon appellate court to overturn the board’s unlawful demand, restore First Amendment sanity, and halt the state’s attempt to weaponize its licensure system.”

The Oregon case involves counselor Frank Canepa, who was fined $89,636 by the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists “for answering a client’s repeated demand to personally affirm same-sex relationships.

Explained the legal team, “Although Canepa had seen this client for over two and a half years and had never mentioned his personal views on same-sex relationships in at least 44 other sessions in which this topic came up, the client insisted for 20 minutes in one session that Canepa personally bless her same-sex relationship. Canepa eventually told her he could not personally affirm these relationships because of his Catholic faith.”

The result was the state’s agenda to censor one view and mandate its required beliefs for counselors at the same time.

Canepa’s lawyers argued the state’s punishment violated the counselor’s First Amendment rights, including the right to speak in counseling conversations.

The Supreme Court’s ruling came in Chiles v. Salazar and held that constitutional protections for speech “extend to licensed professional” counselors “much as they do everyone else.”

The lawyers explained, “Canepa tried gently redirecting the client’s repeated demand to provide his personal views on same-sex relationship but, as she persisted, he finally answered that he could not provide the personal affirmation requested. The Oregon board held that Canepa’s polite answer violated Oregon law and the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics and ordered Canepa to undergo six hours of continuing education and pay the costs of his own hearing, which amounted to nearly $90,000.”

That viewpoint-based punishment now is on appeal.

It was an analysis from Real Clear Wire that pointed out while Colorado falsely claimed its censorship program was in opposition to “conversion therapy,” that was not the case.

“The Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision that included Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, told Colorado something that needed to be said: Your law was never actually about that.”

“That framing is a political bait-and-switch. What the court struck down was a government mandate on what therapists may say to a consenting minor, forbidden words depending entirely on which direction they pointed,” the analysis confirmed. “That is not a ban on conversion therapy. That is ideological discrimination dressed in therapeutic clothing.”

Colorado’s agenda was called out as unconstitutional for clearly being anything but neutral. In fact, it promote the state’s viewpoint, while banning other viewpoints.

“It … prohibited any licensed counselor from engaging in ‘any practice or treatment that attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity,’ including efforts to ‘eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.’ At the same time, it explicitly permitted ‘acceptance, support, and understanding for the facilitation of an individual’s identity exploration and development’ and ‘assistance to a person undergoing gender transition,'” the analysis explained.

“Read that again slowly. Counselors are permitted and encouraged to affirm one direction. Counselors are forbidden from helping a client pursue a different one, even when it is the client’s own freely stated goal within a voluntary therapeutic relationship,” the analysis said.

“That is the state placing its thumb on the ideological scale of the therapeutic relationship and calling it public health.”

The court ruling condemned Colorado for not just regulating the counselors’ speech, “it prescribed what views she may and may not express.”