Legality of conversion therapy
Legality of sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts
- 2 min read
- 3 chapters
Related on Lably
Eight ban its practice by medical professionals (or, in some cases, those who receive monetary compensation without necessarily being medical experts) only: Albania, Brazil, Chile, Greece, India, Israel, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Another seven, namely Argentina, Fiji, Nauru, Paraguay, Samoa, Switzerland and Uruguay, have bans for diagnoses based solely on sexual orientation or gender identity, without specifically banning conversion therapy. This effectively amounts to a ban on health professionals since they would not generally engage in therapy without a diagnosis. In addition, jurisdictions within Australia and the United States also ban conversion therapy.
At a supranational level, the European Union is considering banning conversion therapy across its member states. Similarly, citizens' initiative started collecting signatures in May 2024 calling on the European Commission to outlaw such practices. On January 29, 2026, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution urging member states to ban conversion therapy.
Legal status by country
Legal status by US state
Although no national ban exists, several US states and individual counties ban therapy attempting to change sexual orientation as shown in the map below.
Sign in to keep reading
2 more chapters are free with a Lably account.
Criminalization chronology
The table below lists, in chronological order, the United Nations member states that have explicitly prohibited and criminalized conversion therapy by law.
Legal cases
In 1993, the Superior Court of San Francisco's Family Court placed 15-year-old lesbian Lyn Duff under the guardianship of a foster couple after her mother committed her to Rivendell Psychiatric Center in West Jordan, Utah, where she allegedly endured physical abuse under the guise of conversion therapy. Lyn Duff's petition to leave her mother was granted without court opinion.
In 1997, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit addressed conversion therapy in the context of an asylum application. A Russian citizen "had been apprehended by the Russian militia, registered at a clinic as a 'suspected lesbian', and forced to undergo treatment for lesbianism, such as 'sedative drugs' and hypnosis. ... The Ninth Circuit held that the conversion treatments to which Pitcherskaia had been subjected constituted mental and physical torture." The court rejected the argument that the treatments to which Pitcherskaia had been subjected did not constitute persecution because they had been intended to help her, not harm her, and stated "human rights laws cannot be sidestepped by simply couching actions that torture mentally or physically in benevolent terms such as 'curing' or 'treating' the victims".
On 25 June 2015, a New Jersey jury found the Jewish conversion therapy organization JONAH guilty of consumer fraud in the case Ferguson v. JONAH for promising to be able to change its clients' sexual urges. The jury determined its commercial practices to be unconscionable.