"I can't imagine any court that would say that the parents' right to practice their religion gives them the right to inflict this harm on their daughters," First Amendment expert and constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky told the Detroit Free Press.
"It's going to come down to medicine, and if (the procedure) really inflicts great, lifelong harms on those who are subjected to it - that's what is going to decide this case," he said.
Despite the risks, the practice remains deeply ingrained in some cultures and religions where it is seen as a sort of "rite of passage" for young women, who often opt for the procedure themselves, rather than being forced into it by males in the community.
Anthropologists have found that even educating mothers about the health risks of FGM is not enough to deter the practice in some areas, where it is a matter of cultural pride and a way of ensuring a girl's future and acceptance in a society where this has been a long-accepted practice.
"What we're coming to realize is that programs that target individual mothers (about the harms of FGM) are completely ineffective. Mothers are not solely in charge of the decisions for their daughters," Bettina Shell-Duncan, an anthropology professor at the University of Washington, told The Atlantic in 2015.
"We need to be targeting people who are in the extended family, and we know that we need to figure out who are the figures of authority in these families, and who are the influences on them in the community. We need to do male elders, but also female elders."
"It's about a conversation about, What is the best way to secure the future for your children? The future for their girls might not be best secured by being circumcised any longer," she added.
Mary Farrow worked as a staff writer for Catholic News Agency until 2020. She has a degree in journalism and English education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.