In Wyatt Bury, L.L.C. v. City of Kansas City, Missouri, (8th Cir., July 2, 2026), the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals sent back to the district court a case in which the district court had upheld most of ordinances passed by Kansas City and Jackson County that prohibited mental health professionals from providing conversion therapy to minors. The court said that the remand was appropriate in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's intervening decision in Chiles v. Salizar. The court said in part:
Chiles addressed a free speech challenge to a Colorado statute similar to the Counseling Ordinances at issue here. The Court rejected Colorado’s theory that its statute regulated professional conduct and not speech.... And it concluded that the Colorado statute triggered strict scrutiny because it regulated content and discriminated based on viewpoint.... Notably, Kansas City and Jackson County pressed the same speech-conduct distinction the Supreme Court rejected in Chiles before the district court and before us, and this distinction featured prominently in the district court’s order.
The Pathway reports on the decision.
