FILE - Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, Dec. 18, 2024, in his office in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna, File)

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is now warning Lawrence and two other Kansas cities to repeal their bans on so-called conversion therapy after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against such bans earlier this year.

Conversion therapy is a practice that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and most healthcare professionals, including the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, say it is detrimental to the mental health of those who undergo it. The Lawrence City Commission voted unanimously in 2021 to prohibit licensed counselors from practicing conversion therapy on minors, after hearing from opponents of the practice who characterized it as abuse and “torture” and said it could result in years of “self-directed shame.”

In March of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in a Colorado case that a similar ban in that state was unconstitutional. The court held that when applied to talk therapy, the ban constituted an “egregious assault” on the First Amendment. At the time of the ruling, about 20 U.S. states, but not Kansas, had legislation prohibiting licensed counselors from engaging in conversion therapy with minors.

On Thursday, the Kansas Attorney General’s Office announced that Kobach had sent letters to the mayors and other local elected officials of Lawrence, Roeland Park and Prairie Village. Kobach’s office is asking that the cities repeal their bans within 60 days and notify his office once they’ve done so.

Thursday’s statement from Kobach’s office said that “each city’s ordinance defines ‘conversion therapy’ to include any counseling that fails to affirm a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. But it expressly permits counseling that supports identity exploration or gender transition — thereby allowing only one viewpoint to be expressed.”

“The First Amendment applies to everyone – therapists, patients and everyone else,” Kobach said in the statement. “A city violates the Constitution when it attempts to forbid a therapist from providing the counseling that the therapist believes is in the best interest of the patient.”

Lawrence Mayor Brad Finkeldei was on the City Commission when it passed the ban in 2021. The Journal-World asked him on Thursday whether he had received the letter and what, if anything, city leaders were planning to do in response.

Finkeldei himself did not respond to the Journal-World’s questions. Instead, city spokeswoman Cori Wallace sent a one-sentence statement: “We are in receipt of the letter from the Attorney General’s office and have noted the 60-day timeline.”