(The Center Square) – A Washington state marriage and family therapist will have another opportunity to challenge a 2018 Washington law that his attorneys contend censored his speech.
In 2018, Washington state enacted a counseling censorship law that prohibited Tingley from counseling young people with gender-related distress who may have expressed a desire to become comfortable with their bodies.
Tingley challenged the Washington law in 2021, but the district court dismissed his case. He appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the high court declined to hear his case in 2023.
In March 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in another ADF case, Chiles v. Salazar, that counseling conversations are protected speech. The high court found that the Colorado law, nearly identical to Washington’s law, discriminated based on viewpoint by censoring speech-only counseling that helps kids accept their bodies.
ADF attorneys asked the federal district court in Washington to reopen Tingley’s case in light of the Chiles decision, which the court agreed to do.
“It really boils down to government and forced viewpoint censorship,” said Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Tingley, in an interview this week with The Center Square. “Counselors are allowed to support a client who wants to engage in a gender transition, but they’re not allowed to help a minor client who wants to achieve comfort with their biological sex.”
The law, under SB 5722, prohibited Tingley from counseling minors who seek his help to live consistently with their moral beliefs about sexuality.
According to the bill text: “The legislature finds and declares that Washington has a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of minors, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, and in protecting its minors against exposure to serious harms caused by conversion therapy.”
The bill’s prime sponsor Sen. Marko Liias, D-Edmonds, declined comment on the Tingley case but promised to follow up with The Center Square in early September.
Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse said children shouldn’t be pushed into changing their sexual identity.
“It is clear that most children, and likely most adolescents who go through this gender dysphoria will naturally resolve,” Widmalm-Delphonse said. “If they’re left alone and if they’re not pushed into an identity that is inconsistent with their biological sex.”
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington agreed to reopen Tingley’s case on July 31, but there is no timeline yet for arguments.
“They did just agree to a preliminary injunction that would protect Brian Tingley during the pendency of this case. So, we think that’s huge,” Widmalm-Delphonse said. “I mean, as of right now, he is free to speak consistent with his beliefs and his client’s beliefs on these topics for the first time in five years.
“We hope that Washington will do the right thing and agree to no longer enforce these problematic provisions of its law and allow counselors to help clients with their own self-determined goals. But that remains to be seen.”
