Boldt v. Boldt

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Boldt v. Boldt is formally a child custody case from the state of Oregon, however it actually is about the proposed circumcision of a boy.

The case started when James Boldt, a divorced father, who had custody of his nine-year-old son, decided to convert from Russian Orthodox to Judaism and wanted to have his son circumcised in accordance with the Abrahamic covenant. The son, however, had not converted and did not want to be circumcised. He was supported by his mother in his desire for genital integrity.

His mother, Lia Boldt, filed suit in the Jackson County Circuit Court for a change of custody, which was denied (No. 98-2318-D(3)). She then filed an appeal of the circuit court's decision with the Oregon Court of Appeals.

A long-running legal case in the United States, finally resolved in 2009, when courts in the state of Oregon ruled that a parent could not compel a child over which he had custody to get circumcised against the boy's will. The case is of interest in its potential to limit the power of parents to impose circumcision and similar physical alterations on children and in its implicit recognition that children have their own rights – to physical integrity and freedom of conscience and religion – independently of their parents' belief.

Doctors Opposing Circumcision (D.O.C.) filed two amicus curiae briefs in this case and was successful in protecting the boy's foreskin from circumcision.