A Multnomah County judge has rejected a lawsuit that sought to ban circumcision in Oregon, ruling that the three men who brought the case lacked the legal standing to pursue it. Judge Melvin Oden-Orr issued summary judgment in favor of the state, finding that the case presented no justiciable controversy and that the court could not recognize what he described as an abstract injury.
The lawsuit, filed in 2025 on behalf of Dane Hadachek, Nathaniel Hellewell and Landon Moody, argued that Oregon's laws banning female genital mutilation unlawfully discriminate against boys by allowing male circumcision to continue unchecked, according to OregonLive.com. All three plaintiffs are circumcised men who contended the procedure robbed them of bodily autonomy and provided no medical benefit. They demanded the state either apply its anti-FGM statutes to children of any gender or overturn the law altogether.
The case had cleared a significant hurdle a year earlier. In October 2025, Judge Oden-Orr rejected the state's motion to dismiss, a ruling that allowed the litigation to proceed into discovery, as oregonlive.com reported at the time. That earlier victory for the plaintiffs made this year's summary-judgment loss a sharper reversal of fortune.
What the State Argued
Oregon's attorneys had countered that the circumcised men held only an abstract, speculative interest in changing the law rather than a genuine claim for redress over past harm, the same report noted. The Oregon Department of Justice also argued that any changes to the statute should come from the Legislature rather than from a judge ruling from the bench. Judge Oden-Orr ultimately agreed that the plaintiffs lacked standing, finding the state was not liable because it had not directly harmed them, and he questioned the remedy they were seeking.
One of the stakes identified during the earlier proceedings was the possibility that a ruling for the plaintiffs could open the door for circumcised Oregonians to sue the people who performed the procedure on them. A hearing on the state's summary-judgment motion was held on September 14, in Multnomah County Court in Portland, according to GALDEF, which also noted that Equality Now, the U.S. End FGM Network and Sahiyo had jointly filed a brief supporting the state's position.
Plaintiffs' Attorney Vows an Appeal
Eric Clopper, the plaintiffs' lawyer, said the court did not decide the merits of the constitutional challenge and that his clients intend to appeal the decision. He emphasized that the ruling should not be read as an endorsement of circumcision, nor as a determination that boys are entitled to less legal protection than girls. The court itself did not decide whether circumcision is constitutionally permissible, leaving the central question the lawsuit raised unresolved.
The underlying case draws on a broader medical debate that has simmered for years. According to the group's original filing described by oregonlive.com, the plaintiffs argued circumcision provides no health benefits and harms healthy sexual function, while the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded in 2012 that circumcision's health benefits outweighed its risks but were not substantial enough to recommend the procedure routinely. The same filing cited a 2013 CDC study finding that about 40 percent of newborn males in Western states had their foreskins surgically removed in 2010.
Not the First Legal Fight Over the Practice
Oregon's case is not the first attempt to legally challenge circumcision in the United States. A proposed ballot measure to ban the procedure in San Francisco was struck down in 2011, with a judge there citing religious-freedom protections, according to BBC News. The Oregon lawsuit took a different legal approach, framing the issue around equal protection under the state's own anti-FGM statute rather than targeting the practice directly through the ballot.
For now, the ruling leaves Oregon's circumcision practices unchanged and the constitutional debate exactly where it started — unresolved. With Clopper signaling plans to appeal, the fight over whether the state's genital-cutting laws discriminate against boys appears far from finished.
