The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a case that could challenge Washington state’s “conversion therapy” ban. 

Currently in Washington, conversion therapy — the practice of attempting to change one’s sexual orientation through therapy — is banned for minors. A local licensed marriage and family counselor, Brian Tingley, is arguing the law violates his First Amendment rights. 

He argued he only aims to help people who “want to become comfortable with their biological sex” or seek “help to direct their focus to opposite-sex relationship,” his lawyers said, according to NBC News . Tingley is being represented by the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. 

Washington Attorney General Robert Ferguson argued that Tingley is the only licensed therapist who seemed to object to the law, and that while the law is a part of the licensing process, such counseling can still take place in other settings, like in church — therefore not limiting his speech. 

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh all said they would have taken the case, Thomas arguing for example that it represents “a fierce public debate over how best to help minors with gender dysphoria” and that the state had “silenced one side of this debate.”