Palm Beach County and Boca Raton 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.
Judge initially approved a lower award
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.
In part, the appeals court rejected reductions made by the magistrate judge and approved by the district judge.
Local ordinances aimed to protect minors
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 nonprofit Liberty Counsel legal organization, according to Monday’s ruling.
