Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law last weekend AB768, a bill that prevents California municipalities from banning circumcision. The new law comes after the failed effort to put a measure on San Francisco’s fall ballot outlawing circumcision.
“We’re pleased this bill was signed by the governor,” said Abby Porth, associate director of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, which led the fight to get the measure off the ballot. “It reaffirms that it is only within the state’s province to restrict medical procedures, and those who perform circumcisions cannot be made criminals nor can circumcision be banned.”
Earlier this year, anti-circumcision activists gathered enough signatures to put a city-wide ban on circumcision before San Francisco voters. JCRC and others
mounted a campaign to strike the measure from the November ballot. In July, a Superior Court judge ruled that state law holds that cities cannot ban a legal medical procedure, and ordered the measure removed from the ballot.
Porth said anti-circumcision activists may still seek to ban the procedure via a state ballot initiative, though she points out such efforts have failed in other states.
“Their efforts to do so a year and a half ago in Massachusetts failed,” Porth said. “Voters and legislators have now spoken across the country to make it clear that circumcision remains a matter of parental choice and religious freedom.”