June will be remembered as a landmark month in the decades-long struggle for LGBT rights. That’s primarily due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

But Obergefell is not the only recent LGBT victory. A New Jersey court ruled earlier this month that an organization purporting to offer so-called “ex-gay” conversion therapy violated the state’s Consumer Fraud Protection Act. Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) told clients that it could change their sexual orientation, in accordance with a strain of orthodox Judaism.

According to the lawsuit, which was brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on behalf of five plaintiffs, JONAH therapists subjected their clients to a number of humiliating acts.

One plaintiff, Benjamin Unger, says his therapist encouraged him to beat a pillow – meant to symbolize his mother – with a tennis racket.

“I had a huge gash and my hands were actually bleeding from hitting it so much,” he said in a statement provided by the SPLC. “People were standing around me and supporting me and kind of egging me on and … that was probably the worst thing I did in the JONAH program as far as how it affected me and my family and how it affected me emotionally.”

As reported by Slate, clients were also told to shout anti-gay slurs at a pair of oranges, which represented testicles. That’s mild fare compared to other preferred JONAH therapies.

From the lawsuit: “At one particularly atrocious session, a counselor instructed Levin [a plaintiff] to select someone from the group to role-play his past abuser. The selected participant was made to yell abusive statements that Levin’s abuser had made, such as ‘I won’t love you anymore if you don’t give me [oral sex].’”

This would, according to JONAH founder Arthur Goldberg, turn gay Jewish men into straight Jewish men. According to the SPLC’s plaintiffs, it simply traumatized them instead. It certainly didn’t turn them straight. And that, SPLC attorneys argued, violated the state of New Jersey’s consumer fraud protections.

JONAH’s raison d’etre, orientation reversal, has been condemned by the American Psychological Association and other mainstream professional bodies as pseudoscientific, and damaging to patients. According to the SPLC, the fact that there’s no scientific basis to support JONAH’s therapies means the organization engaged in false advertising and defrauded clients to the tune of thousands of dollars.

A jury agreed, and awarded the plaintiffs $72,000 in damages.“This verdict is a monumental moment in the movement to ensure the rights and acceptance of LGBT people in America,” SPLC’s deputy legal director, David Dinielli, said in a statement.

“Conversion therapy and homophobia are based on the same central lie – that gay people are broken and need to be fixed. Conversion therapists, including the defendants in this case, sell fake cures that don’t work but can seriously harm the unsuspecting people who fall into this trap,” he added.

A judge will now decide if JONAH may keep its counselling license. Given the jury’s verdict, the odds are not in JONAH’s favour. Nor should they be: The organization has deliberately abused and traumatized men for years, based on a limited interpretation of the Old Testament and faulty therapeutic treatments.

This verdict can’t repair the damage JONAH inflicted on its clients. But it sets an important precedent for the battle against dogmatic “ex-gay” therapy centers.

New Jersey, California, Oregon and D.C. have each banned conversion therapy for LGBT minors – a cause Americans United supports due to the fact these therapies are religious in nature and demonstrably harmful to children. The SPLC’s successful lawsuit is the first of its kind, and the group’s victory should strengthen future cases against the practice.

The case is also an important reminder that we’ve still got a long way to go before LGBT people are considered fully equal. Cracking down on groups like JONAH is a good place to start.