When parents divorce, they are often awarded joint custody of their children. Custody decisions are typically based on what is considered to be the children’s best interests. These issues sometimes involve First Amendment rights.
In a case involving the free exercise of religion, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in September 2026 upheld a lower court’s decision that a father could restrict his ex-wife from taking his daughter to a particular church in which the pastor disparaged the father during the service and preached on topics that affected their relationship.
The mother had argued that the lower court violated her parental rights under the First Amendment’s freedom of religion clause and said the lower court made unconstitutional judgments about her church and was disrespectful against her religion.
Facts of the case
Emily A. Bickford and Matthew A. Bradeen were awarded joint custody of their child that included equal rights regarding decisions pertaining to her “education, religious upbringing, medical, dental and mental health care.” The custody order also admonished them to “refrain from making, or tolerating from others, negative statements about the other parent, to or in front of their child.”
Bradeen later sought sole responsibility for the child’s religious upbringing after alleging that, without consulting with him, his ex-wife was taking their child to services at Calvary Chapel Greater Portland where the pastor testified to teaching about the terrors of hell and of the Great Tribulation. Bradeen said this led his daughter to question why her father and his other child would not be going to heaven. Without consulting with her ex-husband, the mother also arranged for the child to be baptized, took their daughter to a political rally with other church members, and allowed her to go on a retreat where she was not permitted to have her cell phone.
Bickford also took their daughter to a church service where the pastor offered a six-and-a-half-minute-long prayer, during which he referenced her ex-husband by name, described him as in need of salvation, accused him of attacking the church, and described the child as being persecuted. Bickford did not remove her daughter during the prayer, which Bradeen argues has endangered their relationship.
A lower court concluded that “Bickford has essentially abdicated her independent decision-making to the church,” believing that her daughter’s relationship to God was paramount.
The parents have also disagreed over medical treatments, with Bickford opposing vaccinations and antibiotics.
The lower court used the best interest of the child standard to vest most medical decisions in Bradeen, but it applied the strict scrutiny standard to the religious issues, requiring that its decision be “narrowly tailored” to a “compelling state interest.”
Trial court decision
The trial court, which took testimony both from an expert in cults and from the pastor of Calvary Chapel, concluded that there was “a compelling state interest in protecting the child from ‘immediate and substantial psychological harm.’”
The court said that the harm proceeded from Bickford’s inability to co-parent on religious matters, vesting the chapel with religious decisions, and messages at church dividing the family by characterizing the husband as the enemy. It decided that “Bradeen is better able to weigh the child’s participation in religious activities ‘objectively and with her safety and wellbeing in mind’ than Bickford is” and that granting him decision-making authority was “narrowly tailored to protect her from harm.”
Maine Supreme Judicial Court decision
Bickford appealed on the basis that the order violated her parental rights under the First and 14th Amendments. She alleged that the lower court had failed to show a compelling state interest "because the only evidence of harm to the child was overly speculative, self-serving, or otherwise inadequate,” that its orders were neither narrowly tailored nor the least restrictive means, and that the court’s opinion “was infected with hostility toward Bickford’s religion.”
The Supreme Court argued that the lower court had been mistaken in applying strict scrutiny in setting religious claims and that the “best-interest standard” was adequate in resolving the “allocation of parental rights between a child’s parents.”
Although parents have “a fundamental constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children, including in matters of religion,” the Court observed that this was a shared right. Citing an earlier state decision, the Court said that it was not substituting its judgment for that of the parents but resolving a dispute between them. Further endorsing the best-interest analysis, the Court concluded that the lower court’s “best-interest analysis did not evince religious bias or hostility.”
Citing a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that required “governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion” and stating its opposition to any decision that “prefers one parent to another on the basis of religion, evinces hostility toward a parent’s religious beliefs or practice, or otherwise casts doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the proceedings,” the Court addressed Bickford’s claims. She had argued that “(1) the court’s finding of harm to the child was predicated on unconstitutional judgments about the content of her religious beliefs and practices, and (2) the court used language that was disrespectful toward her religion, including referring to her church as a ‘cult.’”
The Supreme Court concluded that the trial court had used the term “cult” in reference to testimony by an expert on the subject, that the expert’s testimony had concluded that Bickford’s church was among “closed social systems” that characterized such cults, but that the lower court did “not state what testimony it believed or what findings it made on the basis of that testimony.”
The Court also upheld lower court’s findings in medical care.
Points of likely contention
To date, the U.S. Supreme Court, to which this case will almost surely been appealed, has not resolved the specific issue in this case. Given the free exercise questions raised, the Maine Supreme Court decision not to apply the compelling state interest test seems problematic.
It seems likely that the Court will want to know why Maine courts found it necessary to accept testimony regarding the beliefs of the church from either an expert or the pastor; once admitted into testimony, it is difficult to see how the courts could disregard it. Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court would likely question the degree to which courts are in a position to weigh the psychological effect of church teachings. It is also unclear why a mother’s decision to entrust the shaping of her child’s beliefs to a church is any less her decision than if she had shaped them personally.
The Maine Supreme Court is probably on the strongest ground in awarding primary medical care decision making to the father and in suggesting that the child could rightly be shielded from speech disparaging one or the other parent even if this occurs in a church setting.
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.