Kansas City is once again trying to ban conversion therapy, but this time, it’s taking a markedly different legal route. The effort, introduced in June 2026, follows a turbulent few months in which the city repealed its own seven-year-old ban, drew sharp criticism from LGBTQIA+ advocates, and watched the legal ground shift beneath it after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Here’s a plain-language explanation of what’s actually on the table.
The short version
In early June 2026, Mayor Quinton Lucas and 6th District Council member Johnathan Duncan announced a new ordinance targeting conversion therapy, the discredited practice of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. They were set to introduce it on June 11, with a possible committee hearing and public comment period, as early as June 23. Lucas, in the announcement, claimed the measure would give the city “the strongest new municipal protections in the country.”
What makes this attempt notable isn’t just that it exists. It’s how it’s written.
How Kansas City got here
To understand the new proposal, you have to understand what happened in May 2026.
Kansas City’s original ban dated to 2019, when the Council voted to outlaw the practice for licensed professionals treating minors. That ban stood until last spring, when the Council repealed it on a 7–5 vote. Several members who voted yes said they did so reluctantly, viewing repeal as the safer option against mounting legal exposure.
That exposure had two sources. First, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey was suing the city on behalf of a group of Christian counselors who argued the ban violated their free-speech rights. (The same suit also targets Jackson County’s 2023 ban, which remains in effect.) Duncan said the city expected to lose millions of dollars in that litigation, money he argued would otherwise go to city services.
Second, and more consequentially, the legal terrain had changed nationally.
The Supreme Court ruling that changed the math
In March 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Chiles v. Salazar, a challenge to Colorado’s conversion-therapy ban. The plaintiff, licensed counselor Kaley Chiles, argued that the law restricted the speech she engages in during talk therapy and that she did not try to “convert” clients.
The Court sided with Chiles. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch concluded that Colorado’s law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The decision didn’t strike down the Colorado ban outright; it sent the case back to the lower courts for review under a higher level of constitutional scrutiny. In a lone dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned the outcome could usher in “an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care.”
The practical takeaway for cities like Kansas City: bans that single out conversion therapy by name, as a specific disfavored practice, are now on shaky First Amendment footing.
What the new ordinance actually says
This is where Kansas City’s approach gets legally interesting. According to the reporting, the proposed ordinance never names “conversion therapy” at all. It also contains no language referencing the LGBTQIA+ community or minors specifically.
Instead, it prohibits “dangerous and life-threatening therapeutic practices” performed in exchange for compensation. It defines those as any service intended to treat, cure, change, or eliminate a behavior or condition that is not recognized as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The measure specifically targets practices shown to increase the risk of self-harm or depression.
A few key features distinguish it from the 2019 version:
- It covers everyone, not just minors. Duncan noted the old ban applied only to minors, and that no one was ever charged under it. The new proposal extends to any person who receives the practice.
- It targets the harm, not the label. “We focused mostly on the harm and not the practice itself,” Duncan said.
- It penalizes payment. The ordinance restricts paying for these practices, a mechanism Duncan described as a way to hold parents or guardians accountable for exposing children to them.
- Enforcement is through licensing. Violators face a $1,000 fine and revocation of their business license.
Duncan also predicted the framework could become “a template for other cities” trying to protect residents within the constraints the Supreme Court left behind.
Does the new approach solve the legal problem?
Legal experts interviewed by KCUR were cautiously intrigued and pointed to fresh complications.
Allen Rostron, a law professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, said the Chiles ruling will make existing bans hard to sustain because the justices saw Colorado’s law as discriminating based on the content and viewpoint of a counselor’s speech. By avoiding any reference to a single named practice, Rostron said, Kansas City’s draft “seems to improve their position on the First Amendment issue.”
But that same vagueness, he cautioned, opens a different line of attack. “It talks about any dangerous or life-threatening therapeutic practice. What are those?” Rostron asked. “Who’s now going to decide which ones are sufficiently dangerous and life-threatening?” A law that’s too broad or subjective can be challenged on those grounds instead.
Carl Charles, an attorney with the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Lambda Legal, flagged a more specific drafting wrinkle. The ordinance hinges on conditions not recognized as mental disorders in the DSM, but gender dysphoria, which many transgender people experience, is still listed in the manual. “It is not a mental disorder, that’s important to note,” Charles said, but he warned the definitional mismatch “could face unnecessary pushback” in court.
In short, the new structure may dodge the precise problem Chiles created, while inviting scrutiny over whether it’s too vague or whether its DSM hook actually reaches the conduct it intends to.
Why officials say it matters
Beyond the legal chess, supporters frame the ordinance as a public-health measure. Major medical organizations, including the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association, have long condemned conversion therapy as ineffective and harmful. A 2023 federal review by SAMHSA, Moving Beyond Change Efforts, concluded the practice should never be provided to young people.
James Moran of the local LGBTQ+ nonprofit Our Spot KC told KCUR that bans offer vulnerable youth a measure of reassurance, and that reopening the door to the practice “is scary” for the community. Duncan, who has spoken about living with PTSD, framed the city’s obligation in personal terms, calling it “absolutely incumbent upon the city” to act.
What to watch next
The ordinance now moves through the council process, including the committee hearing and public comment. The open questions are whether it can hold up against the inevitable legal challenge, given both the Chiles precedent and the vagueness and DSM concerns experts raised, and whether, as Duncan hopes, it becomes a model that other municipalities adopt. For now, Kansas City has positioned itself as an early test case for how local governments might regulate a practice the medical establishment rejects, in a post-Chiles world that has made doing so considerably harder.
