Palm Beach County and Boca Raton governments are required to pay about $885,000 in attorney fees and other legal costs after a battle about bans on the controversial practice known as “conversion therapy,” a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg last year approved a magistrate judge’s recommendation to award $736,227 in attorney fees and $659 in costs to lawyers who represented marriage and family therapists Robert Otto and Julie Hamilton in a challenge to the constitutionality of ordinances that banned conversion therapy. But after the therapists appealed the fee award, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday increased the amounts to $884,374 in attorney fees and $659 in costs. The plaintiffs had initially sought $2.1 million in attorneys’ fees.
In part, the appeals court rejected reductions made by the magistrate judge and approved by the district judge. Palm Beach County and Boca Raton passed ordinances that barred therapists from providing treatment or counseling designed to change minors’ sexual orientation or gender identity. Critics of such therapy say it harms minors who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. But a panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court in 2020 ruled that the bans violated First Amendment rights. The therapists were represented by the non-profit Liberty Counsel legal organization, according to Monday’s ruling.
Otto, who previously authored a blog named “Fathers Learning to Lead,” says on his LinkedIn page that he has “a passion for helping men learn to lead their families,” and that he has “seen the change that the Lord can bring to a home through a dad.” He owns the Boca Raton-based SDG Counseling firm, established in 2018. Hamilton, a licensed therapist in palm Beach County, had previously led the so-called Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, a non-profit dedicated to promoting “a more complete truth, informed by Judeo-Christian values and natural law, about the science of sexual orientation and biological sex.” The organization peddles the largely debunked claim that homosexuality is a choice.
The three judge pane in Monday’s decision consisted of Judge Jill Pryor, who was appointed by Barack Obama, and Judges Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher, who were appointed by Donald Trump.
Leave a Reply