A federal judge is facing a public outcry after he threw out federal charges against several Muslims who are suspected of cutting girls’ genitals to minimize future sexual desires.
“Outrageous,” said a tweet from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a U.S.-based advocate, who was born in Somalia and underwent Somalia’s severe form of the Islamic practice, dubbed FGM for Female Genital Mutilation. “Cutting girls genitals is a crime and must be prosecuted,” she added.
“Wait! What? Judge dismisses key charges in genital mutilation case,” said a tweet from Trump supporter Katrina Pierson: “I had no idea that we needed laws against #FGM in the United States.”
“Congress can regulate every aspect of your life but it can’t regulate FGM,” commented Dan Horowitz, the editor of Conservative Review and a determined critic of over-powerful courts. “Folks, we are done.”
The judge’s decision may end the Detroit trial unless it is reversed on appeal. The Muslim defendants cannot be charged in the state because the state’s anti-FGM law was passed after their arrest. State officials may charge the defendants with other crimes, such as sexual assault.
The Detroit Free Press reported:
“Oh my God, we won!,” declared Shannon Smith, [defendent Jumana] Nagarwala’s lawyer, who expects the government to appeal. “But we are confident we will win even if appealed.”
Smith has maintained all along that her client did not engage in FGM.
“Dr. Nagarwala is just a wonderful human being. She was always known as a doctor with an excellent reputation,” Smith said. “The whole community was shocked when this happened. She’s always been known to be a stellar doctor, mother, person.”
In the Detroit case, Dr. Jumana Nagarwala’s parents come from a Muslim community in Northern India. She earned her medical degree with American doctors at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1998, and she displays her allegiance by wearing an Islamic head-covering. In Detroit, she worked at the Henry Ford Medical Group.
The judge is a libertarian nominated by President Ronald Reagan. He has tried to strike down laws protecting marriage as a dual-sex institution and also the University of Michigan’s race-based student-selection process. In this FGM case, he argues that it is too small an industry to be recognized as an interstate practice that can be governed by the federal constitution. But, he added, FGM can be outlawed and punished in state law.
He wrote:
Congress had no authority to pass this [anti-FGM] statute under either the Necessary and Proper Clause or the Commerce Clause.
That clause permits Congress to regulate activity that is commercial or economic in nature and that substantially affects interstate commerce either directly or as part of an interstate market that has such an effect. The government has not shown that either prong is met. There is nothing commercial or economic about FGM. As despicable as this practice may be, it is essentially a criminal assault, just like the rape at issue in Morrison. Nor has the government shown that FGM itself has any effect on interstate commerce or that a market exists for FGM beyond the mothers of the nine victims alleged in the third superseding indictment. There is, in short, no rational basis to conclude that FGM has any effect, to say nothing of a substantial effect, on interstate commerce.
….
As the Supreme Court has stated, “[a] criminal act committed wholly within a State ‘cannot be made an offence against the United States, unless it have some relation to the execution of a power of Congress, or to some matter within the jurisdiction of the United States.’” … For the reasons stated above, the Court concludes that Congress had no authority to enact 18 U.S.C. § 116(a) under either grant of power on which the government relies. Therefore, that statute is unconstitutional.
On April 27, the FBI promised to suppress the practice of FGM which has been brought into the United States by the federal government’s policy of stoking the economy with cheap imported labor and consumers. “The allegations detailed in today’s criminal complaint are disturbing,” Special Agent in Charge David Gelios said. “The FBI, along with its law enforcement partners, are committed to doing whatever necessary to bring an end to this barbaric practice and to ensure no additional children fall victim to this procedure.”
Breitbart News has covered the FGM case extensively.
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