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Kansas City, Missouri's City Council is considering a new ordinance that would ban therapeutic practices shown to increase the risk of suicide, depression, and self-harm when provided for compensation.
The legislation comes after the council repealed its previous conversion therapy ban last month, drawing significant public backlash from the LGBTQ+ community.
The ordinance targets practices that treat, cure, change, or eliminate a person's behavior or condition not recognized as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
While the ordinance does not explicitly name conversion therapy, it is widely understood to target the practice, which the Trevor Project describes as attempting to change an individual's sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression.
Mayor Quinton Lucas said the new legislation is designed to withstand legal challenges while still protecting residents.
"If you are doing something that is not medically recognized, which is causing harm to people, then you can't do it in Kansas City," Lucas said.
Lucas said the U.S. Supreme Court's recent rulings in Chiles v. Salazar shaped how the ordinance was written, requiring the city to frame the prohibition around harm rather than viewpoint.
In March 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in <i>Chiles v. Salazar</i> that Colorado's conversion therapy ban violated the First Amendment by dictating which viewpoints a licensed counselor could express during talk therapy sessions.
The court found that while states can ban physical conversion therapy techniques, laws broad enough to restrict talk therapy based on its viewpoint require the highest level of constitutional scrutiny — effectively invalidating how many cities, including Kansas City, had written their bans.
"The Supreme Court's direction said you can't establish a viewpoint that x or y thing is bad because the government has said so. What we need to do instead is say it's bad to harm people," Lucas said.
According to the Trevor Project, LGBTQ+ youth are more than twice as likely to commit suicide under conversion therapy practices.
LGBTQ advocate Justice Horn, who organized a petition gathering more than 750 signatures to ban Kansas City lawmakers from Pride events after the repeal, said the new ordinance is a step forward — but one that should not have been necessary.
"That's what was the biggest surprise: one of our most forward-thinking cities was like, let's throw this out. Respectfully, I would expect this from different governments," Horn said.
When asked whether the city should have ever reached this point, Horn was direct.
"I don't believe so," Horn said.
Under the proposed ordinance, violations would carry a $1,000 fine per incident and could result in the suspension or revocation of a business license.
The ordinance also mandates that the City Prosecutor report back to the City Council within 21 days on the administration and enforcement of the law.
"We are writing tough ordinances, valid ordinances, that we ourselves will fight to the Supreme Court but that hopefully we don’t have to," Lucas said.
The City Council is expected to hear the ordinance this month.
Lucas said his commitment to the LGBTQ+ community is unwavering, regardless of political disagreements.
"If you go back two generations, or so, mayors, public officials and others wouldn't show up at a celebration of our LGBTQ community. I'm not taking us back to that time," Lucas added.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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