Supreme Court of Maine

Supreme Court of Maine Affirms that a Father Can Prevent

a Mother from Taking their Daughter to Church

Charles J. Russo

On September 1, 2026, in Bradford v. Bradeen, the Supreme Court of Maine affirmed an earlier order that Matthew A. Bradeen had sole authority to decide where the daughter he shared with his former unmarried partner, Emily A. Bickford, could worship because attending services at the latter’s Calvary Chapel, an evangelical Christian church, might have cause the child psychological harm. The court also agreed that Bradeen alone could determine the child’s medical care. Due to the important questions Bradford raises about freedom of religion and parental rights, this column first reviews its background before offering analysis and commentary on its significance.

Facts and Judicial History

Bickford and Bradeen, who were never married, separated before their daughter was born January 12, 2013. In the interest of her privacy, I am not citing the minor child’s name. On September 16, 2013, the parties agreed to share parental rights, including custody, and responsibilities including to consult with one another on what was in their daughter’s best interest.

On September 17, 2021, Bradeen filed a motion to enforce and modify the original 2013 order, seeking sole responsibility for the child’s religious upbringing. Following mediation sessions, the couple settled all of their disagreements except those about religion and healthcare because Bickford stopped having her daughter vaccinated including for COVID-19 and the flu while refusing to respond to Bradeen about the HPV shot.

On December 13, 2024, the trial court judge partially modified the allocation of parental rights and responsibilities as to the child’s religious upbringing and medical care. The judge granted the father’s request to direct his daughter’s religious upbringing in thinking the child “experienced fear and anxiety associated with the [Church’s] teachings” about the terrors of hell and the second coming of Christ in worrying he would be left behind at the final judgment.

The trial court partly relied on testimony from Janja Lalich, a retired faculty member in Sociology from California State University, Chico, with a Marxist background, the father’s witness, an “expert in cults” that there was “a compelling state interest in protecting the child from ‘immediate and substantial psychological harm.’” The court also found that because Bradeen’s approach to medical decision making was more aligned with his daughter’s best interest than Bickford’s, it granted him this authority.

On appeal to Maine’s highest court, Bickford’s attorneys, Liberty Counsel, a Christian public interest law firm, unsuccessfully maintained that the court’s granting her ex-partner the authority over where their daughter could worship violated her parental rights primarily under the Free Exercise Clause. At the same time, the panel rejected the trial court’s having found that Maine officials had a compelling state interest to intervene in the litigation.

Turning to the mother’s remaining claim of religious hostility, emphasizing that it was not substituting its judgment for that of the parents, the panel rejected her charge that the trial court demonstrated “religious bias or hostility” to her beliefs. The panel acknowledged that in light of the Supreme Court’s requiring “governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion,” judicial preference of “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 panel added that the trial court’s quoting the father’s expert witness in calling the Church a “cult” was in referring to it as among “closed social systems” rather than a criticism of its beliefs. As to other religious organizations, the trial judge dictated that in view of the parents shared custody rights, they had to discuss such matter as their daughter’s involvement in this regard.

Analyzing the trial court’s judgment, the panel commented that “far from “declar[ing] that the Christian religion is psychologically harmful,” its 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 such as when the church’s pastor described Bradeen “as an ‘enemy‘ who seeks to persecute” the child and her mother.” In a footnote, the court further rejected Bickford’s allegation that the trial judge demonstrated hostility toward her religion in referring to negative testimony from the father’s expert witness that the pastor at Calvary Chapel adheres to the “Moses model,” including allegedly making “homophobic rhetoric,” teaching that there are absolutes, right and wrong, good and evil.

In the final two paragraphs of its thirty-two page order the panel summarily affirmed that Bradeen had the right to make medical decisions for his daughter in agreeing he was better suited to do so.

Analysis and Commentary

In light of the Supreme Court of Maine’s having stood the mother’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion on its ear in its sweeping custody order in favor of her daughter’s father, Bickford’s attorneys at Liberty Counsel already announced their intention to seek further review of this novel, challenging judgment to the United States Supreme Court.

Bickford raises three significant primary concerns about religious freedom and parental rights in the all too common, and unfortunate, situation when parents, regardless of whether they were married, end their relationships to the detriment of any children they may have had.

The first, and arguably most important issue, Bickford raises concerns both parental rights and religious freedom. On the one hand, the Supreme Court of Maine recognized that while parents have “a fundamental constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children, including in matters of religion,” this is a shared right. Yet, on the other hand, in attempting to emphasize that it was not substituting its judgment for that of the parents, in what could be viewed as a case of judicial moral relativism equating the two perspectives, the court affirmed that the father had the sole right to choose where and when their daughter could worship even if he and his ex-partner had to consult as to any other religious organizations, whatever they may have been.

Because the Supreme Court has yet to directly address the question of which parent’s religious values should, or will prevail, when couples end their legal relationships, this is an important issue that is ripe for review in the United States’ rapidly diversifying religious landscape. Although the Maine courts “protested too much” in stating they were not substituting their judgments for those of the parents, it is difficult to believe that his is not so insofar as the father has sole authority to dictate where or when his child may worship with her mother based on the arguably slim reed of psychological harm as feared by individuals with expertise in law and sociology but arguably not mental health. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court is willing to accept the judgments of jurists who apparently based their orders at least in part on the psychological effect of church teachings, a novel issue in the realm of religious freedom to be sure.

Moreover, in denying his daughter the opportunity to attend worship services with her mother he is also possibly restricting her social growth and development by restricting her ability to meet friends she likely made, and probably missed in their absence, at Calvary Chapel.

The second issue concerns religious bias on the part of the trial judge, Jennifer W. Nofsinger, who was apparently satisfied that Ms. Bickford was fit as a mother but for the fact of her sincerely held Christian beliefs with which her former partner, and apparently she, disagreed. Further, as Matt Staver, Chairman of Liberty Counsel, noted, the trial judge demonstrated her hostility to religion by “purposefully refusing to capitalize the word ‘God’ — something I have never seen.” In light of Staver’s prescient, on the mark, observation, this alone could provide ample justification for the Supreme Court to hear the case and perhaps reverse in favor of the mother.

A third concern arises as to the qualifications of the father’s expert witness, a faculty member with a background in sociology who is regarded as an expert on cults and was initially stipulated as such by the parties. Even in granting the witness the benefit of her doubt with regard to her purported expertise on cults, it is unclear how this background qualified her to pontificate on whether the child might have suffered psychological harm based on her exposure to preaching with which her father, she, and the judge disagreed. Moreover, the judge may have both demonstrated her bias against religion and overstepped the boundaries of her expertise in asserting that “Ms. Bickford’s unquestioning loyalty of independent decision making has placed [her daughter] in situations where she receives messages that pose an immediate risk of psychological harm” to the child such that “there is little to no room for the parents to co-patent on religious making.”

Finally, on the related question of the child’s medical care, a topic that was not a primary focus in this column, the Maine courts are on a much stronger footing and likely to be upheld because the mother apparently largely ignored public health issues associated with having her daughter vaccinated against childhood diseases.

In light of Liberty Counsel’s announced plans to file a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court seeking further review, Bradford may be far from over. Stay tuned as I will be watching for further developments and provide updates as they may occur.

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