Maine Supreme Court Upholds Order Blocking Mom From Taking Her 13-Year-Old to Church

Adriana Stone 0 3 min read

Maine Supreme Court Upholds Order Blocking Mom From Taking Her 13-Year-Old to Church

The Maine Supreme Court has upheld a lower-court order preventing a mother from taking her 13-year-old daughter to Calvary Chapel of Greater Portland.

The church’s teachings, as described in the court opinion, sound like standard Bible-based Christianity. They include belief in the Old and New Testaments as the Word of God, the Trinity, original sin, salvation through Jesus Christ, and the Second Coming.

That has raised serious religious-liberty concerns. The religious liberty law firm Liberty Counsel represents the mother and has said it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

Maine television station WMTW-TV reported that the mother challenged a 2024 custody order blocking her from taking her daughter to Calvary Chapel. The challenge argued that the order violated her right to freely exercise religion under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

“A district court judge sided with the child’s father, Matthew Bradeen, ruling that some of the church’s teachings could be psychologically harmful to the girl. The order allows Bradeen to solely decide on his daughter’s involvement with Calvary Chapel Church. When it comes to any other religious organization, the order states that the parents share rights and must discuss decisions,” WMTW reported.

The Maine Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision Tuesday upholding that order. The justices rejected the argument that the lower court showed hostility toward the mother’s faith by using the word “cult” in its discussion.

“We are also unpersuaded by Bickford’s claim that the court evinced hostility toward her religion by describing her church in offensive terms, including referring to it as a ‘cult.’ The court used the word ‘cult’ only in describing the testimony of [Janja] Lalich, the stipulated expert on ‘cults.’”

The justices said the word was being used as shorthand for a sociological concept, not as the court’s own description of the church.

“The court noted that ‘cult’ serves as a shorthand for what sociologists like Lalich call ‘closed social systems’ and that Lalich identified Bickford’s church as one of these systems. The court used ‘cult’ in summarizing Lalich’s testimony, but it did not otherwise refer to Bickford’s church as a cult or a closed social system,” the justices added.

“In these circumstances, we are satisfied that the court neither evinced hostility toward Bickford’s religion nor cast any legitimate doubt on its impartiality,” the court said.

Still, repeated references to “cult” are hard to dismiss. For parents worried about religious bias in custody decisions, the wording alone is troubling.

The court said the order was not a ruling on whether the mother’s beliefs were valid. Instead, it said the parents could not cooperate on religious decisions and that the father was better suited to decide whether particular activities served the child’s best interests.

“In sum, despite Bickford’s efforts to recast the court’s order as a judgment about the substance of her religious beliefs, the court’s allocation of religious decision-making to Bradeen ultimately rested on no more than its findings that the parties are unable to coparent on matters of religion, such that it was therefore necessary to allocate decision-making to one or the other, and that Bradeen is better suited to determine whether certain religious activities are in the child’s best interest.”

In practical terms, the ruling gives the father sole authority over the girl’s involvement with Calvary Chapel. The report also says the mother has been prohibited from taking her daughter to church, attending a Bible study with her, or reading the Bible to her for nearly two years, including at Easter or Christmas services.

Mat Staver, whose firm Liberty Counsel is representing Bickford, sharply criticized the decision.

“This opinion rejects the First Amendment right of a fit parent to raise her child consistent with her Christian faith,” he said. “This opinion goes against other state court decisions involving custody in the context of religious free exercise rights and ignores precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court. We will ask the High Court to take this case and overrule the decision.”

“Depriving one parent [of] their right to instill their religious views into their child and granting sole authority to the other parent fails to give proper protection to parental rights and religious freedom under the First Amendment. The implications of this opinion pose a serious threat to religious freedom,” he added.

Liberty Counsel also posted after Tuesday’s ruling:

“Today, the Maine Supreme Court rejected the First Amendment and unanimously upheld this unlawful custody order preventing our client Emily Bickford from taking her daughter to church or any religious event because the girl’s father objects to biblical teachings.”

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