Bill allows gender conversion patients to seek compensation

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(The Center Square) – The California Assembly Judiciary Committee on Tuesday advanced a bill that would allow former gender conversion therapy patients to seek compensation from their therapy providers.

Senate Bill 934 passed 7-3 along party lines, with Democrats in favor of it. The measure will now be the subject of a hearing by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

SB 934, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, would also establish an expansive time frame for former patients to make claims of medical malpractice against the therapy providers. A patient would have 22 years to seek monetary damages from their former therapy provider if they were under age 18 at the time of therapy and 10 years if they were 18 or older during the therapy, according to a legislative analysis.

Gender conversion therapy is an effort that attempts to align someone’s gender identity with their sex at birth, according to the American Psychological Association. It is sometimes called reorientation or reparative therapy.

“Conversion therapy is quackery,” Wiener testified during the committee meeting on Tuesday. “It is attempting to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity in a way that is psychological torture.”

Wiener added that all major medical associations say that sexual orientation and gender identity are immutable characteristics, or personal traits that cannot be changed. These groups also argue that conversion therapy is a fraud and harms patients, Wiener testified.

Advocates of the bill testified that some patients have committed suicide because of the mental harm caused by conversion therapy.

“Research shows that conversion therapy does not change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, but instead is associated with serious harm,” Wiener testified.

California was the first state in the country to ban licensed mental health professionals from practicing conversion therapy. Then in October 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Chiles vs. Salazar to reverse a lower court’s decision. The lower court decided a Colorado mental health professional could only discuss fully transitioning to the other gender as an option for a minor patient dealing with gender dysphoria. Other options could not be discussed under this ruling.

“When I was 16 years old, I came out to my parents as gay, and after struggling with my sexuality, I was left depressed, anxious and mentally suffering at the hands of a licensed Christian therapist,” Curtis Lopez-Galloway, founder of the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network, testified. “I was subjected to what I later found out to be conversion therapy, and it was the worst experience of my life.”

The detrimental effects don’t end when the therapy ends, Lopez-Galloway added.

It often takes years or decades for a former gender conversion therapy patient to fully realize the trauma sustained during those sessions, long after the statute of limitations passed on malpractice claims, he testified.

“Many survivors cannot seek any legal remedies for their abuse within the time frame the current law gives them to do so,” Lopez-Galloway testified. “For me, it took me 10 years before I was ready and able to take action. And unfortunately, any claims of medical malpractice was no longer available to me, and I was left with no legal recourse and no meaningful action.”

Opponents of the bill testified on Tuesday that therapists who practice traditional therapy are limited by law and healthcare policies from discussing issues related to gender identity and sexual orientation. Oftentimes, this results in mental health professionals only being able to affirm patients’ gender identity without discussing psychological reasons for wanting to transition, clinical psychologist Joseph Burgo testified.

“In supervising therapists today, I constantly hear their anxiety over their legal exposures or risks to their license if they do just that – practice traditional exploratory psychotherapy,” Burgo testified. “These are not conversion therapists. These are honest clinicians who want to practice traditional psychotherapy with gender-distressed young people, but they’re afraid to do so.”