Maine's high court gives father final say over daughter’s church attendance
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a lower court ruling that granted a father final decision-making authority over whether his daughter attends her mother's evangelical church amid a parental dispute over the child's religious upbringing.
The court's ruling on Tuesday maintains a Portland District Court judge's decision regarding a 2024 dispute between Matthew Bradeen and Emily Bickford about the church attendance of their daughter, who was 11 years old at the time, according to The Maine Monitor.
Bickford had been taking her daughter to Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, an evangelical church in Westbrook, on multiple occasions each week.
Bradeen argued the church was a "dangerous and harmful environment" that had caused anxiety in his daughter. He said she suffered a panic attack after hearing the church's teachings on the Rapture, a belief that Christians will suddenly be taken to heaven during the end times while nonbelievers will be left behind to face the apocalypse.
The lower court sided with Bradeen, finding that messages the child received at the church were "psychologically damaging" because of how it characterized her father, a ruling the state’s high court affirmed on Tuesday, according to The Maine Monitor.
The lower court ruling granted Bradeen the right to decide whether his daughter attends services at Calvary Chapel, participates in church activities or interacts with church members other than her mother.
The court also said the parents must "continue to share parental rights and responsibilities" when it comes to their daughter’s exposure to other religious groups.
If the two disagreed on their daughter's religious exposure, the court ruled that the father has the final say. The court said the allocation of final decision-making authority stemmed from the parents' inability to jointly make decisions about the child's religious upbringing, not from disagreement with the mother's religious beliefs.
Bickford’s lawyer, Mathew Staver, told The Maine Monitor he intends to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Bickford and her legal team have 90 days to appeal the decision to the nation's highest court.
Staver’s law firm, Liberty Counsel, which describes itself as a Christian ministry focused on religious freedom, has been involved in other religious freedom cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including a 2022 case in which the court sided with a private religious group that Boston officials had prohibited from flying a Christian flag.
In the dispute between Bradeen and Bickford, Liberty Counsel argued to Maine's high court that the 2024 order violated the mother's First Amendment rights through its "open hostility" toward religious beliefs and by barring her from influencing the
"Religious upbringing of her child as she sees fit," the outlet reported.
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"What Maine has done in this decision is put the Supreme Court of Maine at odds with the courts of a number of other states," Staver said. "I think it will be a case that will be very significant and catch the attention of the Supreme Court because of how far-reaching it is with regards to the First Amendment exercise clause."
Bradeen's lawyer, Michelle King, called Tuesday's decision "well thought-out and reasoned," saying Bradeen was happy with the outcome, according to the outlet.
"Anytime you’re in court, it’s stressful," King said. "But this case has definitely garnered a lot of media attention, and I think that’s always difficult for parents."
Part of the case centered on a service in which the pastor singled out Bradeen by name, The Maine Monitor reported.
As legal proceedings for the original dispute were ongoing, Bickford brought her daughter to a service at Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, where pastor Travis Carey led a six-and-a-half-minute prayer focused on the case, referring to the parents and child by name almost 30 times, saying Bradeen is "in need of salvation" and calling the proceedings "an attack on God's Word," according to the report.
The Maine Supreme Court said Bickford did not make any attempt to pull her child from the service, and she later described it as "appropriate."
Bickford "is unwilling to recognize, much less mitigate, the risk that these messages alienate the child from Bradeen or otherwise cause her harm," the court wrote.
In the 2024 lower court order, Maine District Court Judge Jennifer Nofsinger wrote that the harm caused to the daughter did not result from "a belief system that is rooted in the Bible," but rather, from the mother’s "inability to co-parent" regarding religion and the fact that she had given control of decisions about her daughter’s best interests to the church, and its language had denigrated the father.
"The court found that the child was harmed by Bickford’s decisions to expose the child to messages that characterized Bradeen as an ‘enemy’ who seeks to ‘persecute’ the child and her faith, and by Bickford’s unwillingness to prevent the child from receiving those messages or to take any other steps to reduce the risk of alienating her from Bradeen," the Maine Supreme Court wrote in its decision on Tuesday upholding the lower court order.
The final finding "reflected simply that it is harmful for a child to hear negative and frightening messages about one parent from the other parent or the other parent’s authority figures."
The court ruled that the order was based on the parents’ inability to co-parent on religion, not on the substance of Bickford’s religious beliefs, finding it necessary for one parent to be given the power to make final decisions over the other.