San Francisco residents will not be voting in November on whether to prohibit circumcision after all, according to a tentative ruling by a Superior Court judge made public Wednesday.
Judge Loretta M. Giorgi ordered the city’s director of elections to strike the measure from the ballot because she said it was “expressly preempted” by the California Business and Professions Code.
Under that statute, only the state is allowed to regulate medical procedures, and “the evidence presented is overwhelmingly persuasive that circumcision is a widely practiced medical procedure,” the ruling said.
Proponents of the ban argue that circumcision is akin to male genital mutilation and should not be allowed. A group of doctors, families and community groups sued last month to get the measure off the ballot, arguing that it was anti-Semitic and violated state law.
Giorgi ruled that “it serves no legitimate purpose to allow a measure whose invalidity can be determined as a matter of law to remain on the ballot after such a ruling has been made.”
She is expected to finalize the decision at a hearing Thursday morning.
(Source: LA Times)
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8 Responses
B”h this court order will Stop copy cats in many local cities from even attempting to get a Bris Milah Ban on a Ballot
What a diplomatic way to dispose of it. No need to bring down the First amendment. If the proponents say it is a religious thing, then they admit to being anti-semites and lose on first amendment grounds. If they deny it is a religious/anti-semitic campaign, they have to say its a medical procedure and they lose on state law grounds.
Good lawyering by our side.
#2- agreed, but I don’t think it’s that simple. The first amendment says that the government can’t stop a belief system, but that doesn’t mean that you can do whatever you want for the sake of religion, especially when it comes to children. There are many cases where parents don’t want their child treated my modern medicine because it’s against their religion, but the courts rule that since the child can’t make that decision on its own it it must be treated.
A wise decision.
We are forgetting that it was the work of Hashem who put the Daas in the minds of those who thought out the issue and did not act hastily but rather logically
Baruch Hashem
#3- The first amendment probably applies since the matter was discussed in the late 18th century, and while using original intent to restrict application of the bill of rights to new situations is controversial, no one argues that what was protected in 1791 is still protected.
“no one argues that what was protected in 1791 is still protected”
The First Amendment did not prohibit states from restricting religious freedom when it was first enacted. Indeed several New England states continued to operate essentially as theocracies into the 19th century. The application of the 1st Amendment to the states was as a result of court decisions on “incorporation”.