Children’s National Hospital Tried to End This Christian Therapist’s Career. Now He’s Suing.

Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. routinely discriminates against Christians who hold orthodox beliefs about sexuality and gender, alleges a class action lawsuit filed by licensed therapist Tyrone Obaseki. When Obaseki referred a patient there in November 2021, he encountered top-to-bottom hostility to his Christian faith, as well as constant efforts to obstruct his participation. Adding injury to insult, the hospital staff crossed state lines to assault his professional reputation, filing bogus complaints with Virginia licensing authorities that hung over Obaseki for nearly a year.

With his name freshly cleared, Obaseki is fighting back. In a class action lawsuit filed by D.C. attorney Amos Jones, he seeks “to reverse and remedy the effects of the outrageous transgressions … on behalf of himself and all others who have been damaged by Defendant’s religious discrimination against adherents to traditional faiths, unfair and deceptive trade practices, and intentional infliction of emotional distress,” according to documents obtained by The Washington Stand.

On November 7, 2021, Obaseki received an early-morning phone call from distressed parents. Their autistic teenage son, his client, had tried to commit suicide. A licensed, Christian counselor with an emphasis on transformation and wellness, Obaseki had a good relationship with both the parents and their child. He moved quickly to refer the family to “a prominent children’s hospital held in high regard,” as the lawsuit states, Children’s National Hospital (CNH) in Washington, D.C.

The boy, named as “John Doe III” in the lawsuit, remained in the hospital for seven weeks. During that time, he requested Obaseki’s presence, “as he was supposed to be undergoing specialized assessments.”

“But rather than receiving [Obaseki] as it would therapists not of his traditional Protestant faith, [CNH] embarked on a cruel, abrupt, hostile, and intentionally abusive denial of access to programs, services, and fair treatment as a treating clinician,” the lawsuit alleged. At a virtual meeting on November 21, which the family had invited him to join, the hospital staff “stereotyped Plaintiff based on his religion,” “ordered Plaintiff to remain silent,” “attempted … to coerce the Plaintiff into its program” of changing the family’s religion, and “treated Plaintiff as though he had harmed the minor patient.”

“Respondents falsely accused that I was providing conversion therapy masquerading as an LGBT Biblical therapist. So, because of their accusations, it lets me know that they were trying to blackball me or to eliminate me from the therapeutic atmosphere for this client,” said Obaseki. “Because of their stereotype that I was a Christian therapist who was practicing conversion therapy, and who did not adhere to the client’s pronouns … they actually did not want me in the meeting.”

“They did mention that ‘if we’re going to be on this meeting, you have to adhere to these pronouns,’” he recalled. “And so, the whole course of this whole Zoom meeting was not spent on treating the client; it was spent on respecting pronouns.” The autistic child did not begin to present as a female until he was removed from the custody of his parents and placed in foster care.

Because “the child said I could stay,” Obaseki was allowed to remain. “But then they attacked me for being in the meeting. When they were trying to convince me to leave, I was explaining why I have to stay: at the request of the parents. And then when I was explaining that, they said, ‘Well we’re not here to talk to you; we’re here to talk to the child and to the parents.’”

The parents also testified that CNH staff “refused to take any history of treatment on his issues from this … evangelical Christian therapist and instead accused the therapist of trying to perform conversion therapy on the child.”

The following day, a “cabal” of CNH staff filed a complaint with the Virginia Department of Health Professions against Obaseki, alleging he had performed conversion therapy on the youth. He “has been misgendering the patient by using her nonpreferred pronouns and using the deadname with the patient while seeing her and her family for several months and has consistently sided with the parents’ wishes that the patient sticks with her assigned gender at birth.” The form was signed by CNH social worker Paige Johnson, who had been present on the Zoom call and had seen the child ask for Obaseki to remain.

“Conversion therapy is a misnomer, at least the way it’s being used. We already have laws against torture, which is what it’s implied in how it’s being used, at least by those engaged in LGBT activism,” Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “The real conversion therapy is on the other side. The hallmark of good therapy is curiosity, which looks like asking questions about what is going on. But when it comes to LGBT issues, those good practices are simply nonexistent.”

Virginia is one of 23 states, plus D.C., that prohibit sexual orientation change efforts, under the auspices of prohibiting conversion therapy. According to recently disclosed email correspondence, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) collaborated with the Trevor Project, an LGBT activist group, to quietly push professional associations and licensing boards to ban these efforts in states like Pennsylvania where the legislature had not done so.

“Laws, regulations, and medical board guidance banning sexual orientation change efforts, which typically rely on talk therapy, impinge on patients’ rights and the conscience rights of counselors,” said Family Research Council Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena Gonzalez.

“They impinge on patients’ rights because these laws are intentionally designed to forbid only one type of counseling, the counseling he or she might seek if they have unwanted same-sex attractions or discomfort with the sex they were born with,” he told The Washington Stand. “They never forbid railroading patients, particularly young patients, toward treatments that promote ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity.’”

“These laws become a one-way ratchet,” Gonzalez added. “It becomes only legal for a therapist to help a patient to shift in one direction — toward an LGBT identity and never away from it. So, minor patients who are interested in honestly exploring, or even leaving, an LGBT lifestyle can only be counseled in one direction. They cannot be legally supported in the other.”

“This has obvious implications for the counselors’ conscience rights,” he continued. “Christian counselors, or people of no faith at all who simply don’t embrace the recent LGBT fad, will be weeded out, silenced, and steered away from the mental health field.”

In Obaseki’s case, the fallout from this professional complaint lingered for nearly a year. Before it was over, he had encountered “no fewer than three state officials,” the lawsuit described, including “the Deputy Executive Director of the Virginia Board of Counseling, an Attorney, and a Senior Investigator” from the state Department of Health Professions.

Obaseki was cleared of any wrongdoing on October 6, 2022, when he received a letter in which the Virginia Board of Counseling concluded it “did not find convincing evidence that you violated the regulations governing your practice as a Licensed Professional Counselor.” Consequently, “a disciplinary proceeding will not be instituted. However, the Board is sending you this advisory letter to recommend that you examine certain aspects of your practice.”

“It is a silver lining that he was cleared,” said Bauwens, a licensed clinical therapist. “However, you shouldn’t have to practice under that threat.”

“When people just doing normal work are put under this type of scrutiny, it really does create a chilling effect,” she explained. “People are never really free to ask the questions you need to ask. Because it’s always going to be in the therapist’s mind, ‘Am I going to get into trouble for asking about this person’s gender identity?’ It’s a really sad byproduct of this bureaucratic overreach into the counseling field.”

Obaseki considered that his treatment at the hands of CNH employees constituted illegal religious discrimination. So, once his name was cleared, he filed a complaint with the D.C. Office of Human Rights (OHR). In a September 19, 2023 letter, the OHR informed Obaseki that it “administratively dismissed this matter without making a determination on the merits,” but that he was free to file a private cause of action.

Obaseki’s three-count lawsuit alleges religious discrimination in a public accommodation due to CNH staff “stereotyp[ing] and targeting a Christian therapist.” It alleges unfair or deceptive trade practices because CNH “pretends to be a welcoming place for all.” And it alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress, based on CNH staff “filing a false report to end Plaintiff’s stellar career and/or other besmirch his spotless record,” an action which “exceeded any shred of common decency and exceeded any civil society’s limit on tolerated behavior.”

The lawsuit requested $1 billion in damages, to be distributed among members of the class (counselors who hold orthodox Christian convictions on sexuality and gender), as well as litigation costs, attorney fees, a declaration that CNH was wrong, and a requirement that CNH correct its anti-religious bias.