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 in 2004 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.^[1]

His mother, Lia Boldt, filed suit in the Jackson County Circuit Court for an injunction to prohibit the circumcision ann for change of custody, which was denied (No. 98-2318-D(3)), however the court granted the injunction against the proposed circumcision. Lia Boldt then filed an appeal of the circuit court's decision with the Oregon Court of Appeals.^[1]

The Oregon Court of Appeals rejected Lia Boldt's appeal. She then appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court (ORS) in 2007. It was at that point that Doctors Opposing Circumcision entered the case. Doctors Opposing Circumcision realized that the ORS needed information about circumcision and about the child's rights under Constitutional and international human rights law, so it filed an amicus curaie brief to help the Court understand why it should accept the case. The brief stated in part:

Mikhail (Misha/Jimmy) James Boldt, (hereinafter ‘Misha/Jimmy’) is a minor who is legally incompetent. Nevertheless, Misha/Jimmy is a person with rights of his own. As a minor he deserves special protection under Oregon, and international law. Misha/Jimmy has an unalienable right to protection and security of his person, and the Courts of the State of Oregon have a corresponding obligation to protect his rights independent from and even despite the wishes of a parent who might endanger the child unnecessarily.^[2]

After the ORS granted certiorari, DOC submitted a second amicus curiae brief to address the merits of the case.

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.