Wiliams & Connolly LLP Wins Asylum Case in Second Circuit
June 2008

A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit overturned a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals that denied asylum to three women from Guinea who had been persecuted by female genital mutilation. The Board held that, because this particular form of persecution is (in its view) an isolated and one-time event, the women were not entitled to the presumption of future persecution that is otherwise triggered by a finding of past persecution. The Court rejected the BIA's assumption that female genital mutilation is necessarily a one-time act, and that it is not related to other forms of gender persecution. For more details, please click on the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/nyregion/12mutilation.html