Michigan enacted a new statute in 2024 that hindered counselors from providing compassionate talk therapy — or as liberals dubbed it, conversion therapy — to children that are uncomfortable with their biological sex. Instead, these counselors were directed to push medical transitioning on their underage clients.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled against Michigan’s law and remanded the case back to the district court.
However, instead of continuing to battle Catholic Charities v. Whitmer, Michigan agreed that their ban was unconstitutional, and a permanent order is now in place barring the enforcement if it.
Luke Goodrich is the vice president and senior counsel at the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberties. He spoke on the “Washington Watch” program calling this a huge victory for children, parents and counselors in Michigan and throughout the county.
With many kids struggling and asserting a transgender identity, how can they receive the necessary help?
“Some governments want to push children toward a so-called gender transition, where they take puberty blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones and have surgeries to try to make their body resemble the opposite sex,” Goodrich states. “These procedures are profoundly harmful to children and have irreversible medical effects.”
These procedures are banned in many conservative U.S. states, and a number of European countries have begun strict regulations on access to such treatments for minors.
Goodrich points to counseling as a better solution.
With talk therapy, counselors can talk to these children about the underlying issues causing their discomfort and help them embrace biological reality and their God-given bodies. That way, Goodrich says, they won’t seek harmful medical interventions.
However, the new law in Michigan, he states, muzzled counselors, forcing them to point these children in only one direction.
The way the law is written “if a child comes to you and is confused about his or her gender, you can tell them that they're born in the wrong body. You can push them down the path of irreversible medical transition, but you're not allowed to talk with them and help them embrace their body,” Goodrich explains.
His law firm represented Christian counselors practicing in the state and challenged the law.
“The 6th Circuit said this law is unconstitutional, and just this past week, Michigan and Attorney General Dana Nessel finally backed down and agreed and admitted that this law is unconstitutional and agreed to a court order that stops them permanently from enforcing this law,” Goodrich says.
He calls it is completely backwards that liberals call compassionate therapy harmful. While they label it conversion therapy and try to ban it, he notes that what they are convincing children to do is the real conversion.
“When you put a child — a minor who can't even make these big decisions — you put a child on puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones and have a double mastectomy, that is a conversion,” Goodrich states. “It's not actually conversion because it balks at biological reality, but these procedures are harmful.”
Evidence piling up
In fact, he says that there is no evidence these procedures benefit children, but there is plenty that shows they cause permanent harm. Furthermore, therapists wanting to help kids understand and embrace their body is not conversion — its accepting biological reality.
Colorado recently had a case, Chiles v. Salazar, go to the Supreme Court regarding a similar state law. First heard before the highest court in October 2025, the justices ruled in an 8-1 decision in March that Colorado’s law violated free speech.
When asked if that case had any influence on theirs, Goodrich reveals that the Michigan case was actually playing out first and was cited by the Supreme Court twice when they made their ruling. That decision combined with the 6th Circuit ruling, he believes, is what convinced Michigan and the AG to admit the unconstitutionality of their law.
He notes many similar victories in the Supreme Court regarding gender transition are piling up on what he calls a “transgender conveyor belt.”
“We're very optimistic that a number of these legal victories are going to dismantle this transgender conveyor belt and allow both the legal system and people of America to get back to sanity,” Goodrich concludes.
