Maine Court Lets Dad Decide on Daughter's Church Attendance

Maine's top court has stepped into a parental fight over religion, and the dad now has the last word. The state's Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday upheld a lower court order giving father Matthew Bradeen final authority over whether his daughter, who was 11 when he first filed suit, attends Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, her mother's evangelical church, reports Fox News. Bradeen argued that the church's teachings, including on the Rapture and a service where the pastor repeatedly named him specifically as needing "salvation," were "psychologically damaging" and triggered anxiety and even a panic attack in his daughter.

Judges agreed that the problem wasn't the church's theology but the way messages there portrayed Bradeen as an enemy. The parents must still share broader religious decision-making, but if they clash, his view controls. Mother Emily Bickford—who the Portland Press Herald notes earlier this year said the lower court's decision kept her from even discussing religion with her daughter—plans to ask the highest court in the United States to take the case, calling it a freedom of religion issue. "I think it will be a case that will be very significant and catch the attention of the [US] Supreme Court because of how far-reaching it is with regards to the First Amendment exercise clause," Bickford's lawyer says, per the Maine Monitor.