Supreme Court of the United States
In Re: Public Law B113 (Conversion Therapy Prevention Act of 2015)
Case No. 16–08, 100 M.S.Ct. 118
AdmiralJones42, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which the Chief Justice, SancteAmbrosi, bsddc, and CincinnatusoftheWest, JJ., joined.
Standing before this Court is a challenge to Public Law B.113, known commonly as The Conversion Therapy Prevention Act (henceforth referred to as “The Act”), a statute that seeks to prohibit the practice of “conversion therapy” upon minors. The Petitioner in this case, /u/MoralLesson, asks us to find in this law violations of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as find portions of the Act to be unconstitutionally vague. Pursuant to these claims, Petitioner asks us to strike the Act in full due to a lack of a severability clause in the body of the legislation.
I
Section V of the Act reads as follows:
“The practice of electroshock therapy, hormone therapy, and physically violent therapy shall be forbidden for the purpose of changing one’s gender identity or sexual preference through conversion therapy.”
Petitioner asserts that due to the lack of definition within the statute of terms such as “hormone therapy” and “physically violent therapy”, this section is unconstitutionally vague. Petitioner asserts as a key example that the prohibition of “hormone therapy” within the context of the Act could potentially prohibit hormone-based sex changes, which would seem to run counter to the purpose of the Act. However, upon closer investigation, we can find this to be untrue. Refer to Section II(a) of the Act, in which the term “conversion therapy” is defined as such:
“the act of therapeutic treatment to change one’s sexual preference or to match one’s gender identity with their gender assigned at birth”
Through the definition of “conversion therapy” and the language used within Section V itself, we can ascertain that the Act does not in fact prohibit sex changes, but in fact only addresses changes of “sexual preference” or “gender identity”, which, using the common definitions of these terms, would not apply to the changing of one’s physical sex. To this effect, it is clear that the intent and purpose of Congress are clearly conveyed in this section, and as such are not held as unconstitutionally vague.
Petitioner asserts the same in regards to Section IV(c) of the Act, which, while certainly vague, is not found to be in this case unconstitutionally vague. As noted by Respondent, United States Solicitor General /u/notevenalongname, the broad language in use in this section is constructed as such as to allow further Congressional action to elaborate upon the requirements for consent, or allot that power to the respective states. “Where an otherwise acceptable construction of a statute would raise serious constitutional problems, the Court will construe the statute to avoid such problems unless such construction is plainly contrary to the intent of Congress.” DeBartolo Corp. v. Gulf Coast Trades Counc. 485 U.S. 568 (1988). As such, we do not find these provisions to be unconstitutionally vague, and do not consider these assertions by Petitioner in final ruling.
II
Section III of the Act reads as follows:
“The practice of conversion therapy on minors is prohibited.”
In Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), this Court found and established within the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, primarily, a right to privacy for citizens of the United States. Many cases have since decided with this precedent in mind. Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), et al. Through these many various cases and decisions, it can be seen that this Court has never allowed the federal government to limit the medical procedures that parents can prescribe to their children, as is their intimate right under the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment as interpreted under Griswold. As this power has previously been delegated to the States, but never to the federal government at large, we turn to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution for guidance.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
It is clear that the power that this bill attempts to use has never been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the States, and is therefore reserved to the States. Therefore, due to violations of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, we must find Section III of the Act unconstitutional in full and strike it from the body of the Act. Additionally, we find that without Section III, this act is merely reduced to a list of suggestions and in no way could be enforced as was intended by Congress at the time of passage. For this reason, we must also strike the Act in full.
III
Petitioner in this case has requested of this Court that we strike this Act in full should we find a single error or unconstitutional sticking point within its text. We are striking this Act in full, but not for the reason requested by Petitioner. In addition to our decision on the merits of the case, it is imperative for us to address this directive by Petitioner and tackle the matter of severability clauses head-on. Petitioner states within his petition the following:
“Because of the lack of a severability clause in the legislation, if any of these areas are found unconstitutional, then the law itself must be entirely unconstitutional as well.”
This statement is patently false, and must be dismissed with extreme prejudice. “[A] court should refrain from invalidating more of the statute than is necessary… [W]henever an act of Congress contains unobjectionable provisions separable from those found to be unconstitutional, it is the duty of this court to so declare, and to maintain the act in so far as it is valid.” Alaska Airlines, Inc. v. Brock 480 U.S. 678 (1987), quoting El Paso & Northeastern R. Co. v. Gutierrez, 215 U.S. 87, 96 (1909). The severability of legislation lies not in the absence or presence of a superfluous sentence tacked on to the end of said legislation. Severability lies entirely in the function of an act as it stands after the unconstitutional provisions have been pruned from its text. If a law or statute can function as Congress intended it to even after the illegal portions have been removed, then the remaining law or statute should stand as such, regardless of the presence or lack thereof of a “severability clause”. Therefore we stand by and affirm the ruling and reasoning handed down in Alaska Airlines, and decline to consider severability clauses as necessary or binding.
IV
This Act accomplishes its purpose by overstepping the bounds of federal authority as outlined in the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, therefore we find in favor of Petitioner, and strike this Act in full. In addition to this, we also reaffirm the precedent set in Alaska Airlines, Inc. v. Brock 480 U.S. 678 (1987), in that severability clauses in the body of laws are not required in order for provisions of a statute to be severable, as long as the purpose and intent of the law can be preserved without sections held to be unconstitutional.
It is so ordered.
