Democratic Senators Patty Murray of Washington and Cory Booker of New Jersey on Thursday introduced a bill that would ban therapies aimed at altering a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

The senators' Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act is a companion bill to HR 2450, introduced last year by California Rep. Ted Lieu.

Under the proposal, conversion therapy would be labeled an “unfair or deceptive act or practice” under the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would be tasked with enforcing the law.

In a press release, Murray called “conversion therapy” a “fraud [that] has no place in our country,” and Booker said it was “harmful, especially to children.”

“Our legislation will remove any question that the FTC and State Attorneys General have the tools they need to classify conversion therapy as what it is – fraud – and ban its use,” Booker added. “Conversion therapy is a discredited, harmful practice that has been rejected by countless medical and mental health organizations for years. It has no place in our society.”

The bill is broader than California's first-in-the-nation law, which Lieu introduced in 2012 while in the California Senate. That law is limited to minors and does not include attempts to alter a person's gender identity.

The Senate version also empowers states to take their own action against such therapies.

“There is no medical condition known as 'being gay or lesbian.' That is not a medical disease, defect, and for people to charge money to treat you for something that's not an illness is fraud,” Lieu told BuzzFeed News last year. “There already is an established baseline that you cannot practice medicine below a reasonable standard of care, and when you purport to treat someone for a condition they don't have, that would be medical malpractice.”

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) applauded Murray and Booker in a statement.

“We are grateful for the courageous leadership of Senators Murray and Booker in the fight to end conversion therapy nationwide,” NCLR Youth Policy Counsel Carolyn Reyes said. “This historic bill will protect the most vulnerable among us from exploitation by those fraudulently claiming to be able to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, save countless lives, and send a clear message to every child across this land that they were born perfect.”