U.S. court revives challenge to New York City circumcision law

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U.S. court revives challenge to New York City circumcision law

By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Friday revived an effort to block a New York City regulation that requires people who perform a Jewish circumcision ritual on infants that involves oral suction to first obtain parental consent. A unanimous panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a trial judge had been too deferential to the city, which had linked the ritual to a deadly form of herpes, in rejecting a request by rabbinical groups for a preliminary injunction. The three-judge panel directed U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan to instead use "strict scrutiny" to see if the regulation infringed the plaintiffs' free exercise of religion, violating the First Amendment. At issue was the ritual metzitzah b'peh (MBP), in which a mohel who performs a circumcision uses oral suction to draw blood away from a wound on an infant's penis.

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