Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan's crazy libertarian Judge Bernard Friedman is presiding over the case. You remember Friedman. He was the judge who overturned Michigan's 2004 Marriage Act in 2014.
From the story here:
[T[he [federal] government estimates that as many as 100 girls may have had their genitals cut at the hands of a local doctor and her cohorts.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Woodward disclosed the information while trying to convince a judge to keep a doctor and his wife locked up in the historic case. It involves allegations that two Minnesota girls had their genitals cut at a Livonia clinic in February as part of a religious rite of passage and were told to keep what happened a secret. ...
Against Woodward's wishes, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman granted bond to two other defendants in the case: Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, 53, of Farmington Hills, who is accused of letting Nagarwala use his clinic to perform genital cutting procedures on minor girls; and his wife, Farida Attar, 50, who is accused of holding the girls' hands during the procedure to keep them from squirming and to calm them. ...
The government believes the three defendants, all members of a local Indian-Muslim sect, subjected numerous girls to genital cutting procedures over a 12-year period. ... [Dr. Attar allegedly admitted] to authorities that he let Nagarwala use his clinic up to six times a year to treat children for genital rashes. ...
The defense has argued that the Attars did not engage in any criminal act and that the procedure at issue is a protected religious rite-of-passage that involves no cutting, but rather a scraping of genital membrane.
