Published April 4, 2025
On April 4, Ethics and Public Policy Center fellows Mary Rice Hasson and Eric Kniffin filed an amicus brief in Catholic Charities v. Whitmer. This case was brought by Catholic Charities counselors against Michigan’s “Conversion Law,” which makes it illegal for mental health professionals to help children resolve gender-related distress in favor of their sex. The law requires counselors to affirm children in the belief that they were born in the wrong body. Catholic Charities argues that the law blocks its counselors from helping children in a way that reflects Catholic anthropology and the best available science.
EPPC’s amicus brief surveys recent research to show that Michigan’s “Conversion Law” is based on a harmful and unscientific ideology that prohibits effective psychotherapy for minors. As summarized in the brief:
[T]he premise of gender affirming care (and [Michigan’s Conversion Law]), i.e., the claim that transgender self-identification in adolescents is “permanent, or ‘stable,’” is contradicted by mounting evidence. Even “proponents of gender affirmation recognize that gender identity development is dynamic and can undergo multiple shifts throughout childhood and into adulthood.”
… [D]espite Michigan’s effort to prevent gender identity “change,” self-perceived identities and related personal goals can and do change. Ethical counselors must consider and respond to changes in a client’s self-knowledge and goals, not impose state-mandated narratives or prescriptive responses on the client.
Given the lack of evidence for gender affirmation, Europe’s pivot to psychotherapy (i.e., talk therapy) as the first-line treatment for identity-distressed minors is unsurprising. Michigan’s contrary action, foreclosing sound therapeutic options for identity-distressed minors while mandating compliance with gender affirmation theory, is deeply troubling.
EPPC thanks Christopher Mills of Spero Law LLC and Tyler Brooks of the Thomas More Society for their excellent and generous work on this amicus brief.
Eric Kniffin is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he works on a range of initiatives to protect and strengthen religious liberty as part of EPPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project.
