PORTLAND, Maine — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that courts resolving disputes between parents over a child’s religious upbringing may apply the ordinary “best interest of the child” standard without subjecting the decision to strict constitutional scrutiny.
In Emily A. Bickford v. Matthew A. Bradeen, decided September 1, the state’s highest court unanimously affirmed an order giving Matthew Bradeen final decision-making authority over aspects of his 13-year-old daughter’s religious upbringing and medical care.
The parents previously shared responsibility for those decisions. Their dispute intensified after Bickford began taking their daughter to Calvary Chapel Greater Portland in 2021. Bickford became a Christian several years earlier, and the daughter subsequently embraced Christianity and expressed a desire to be baptized.
According to findings upheld on appeal, the child later experienced anxiety and panic attacks connected to teachings about Hell, the Second Coming, and concerns that her father would not be saved. Bradeen objected to aspects of the church’s teachings and sought greater authority over his daughter’s religious participation.
In December 2024, the Portland District Court granted Bradeen final decision-making authority regarding the child’s participation in religious organizations and prohibited Bickford from taking her to Calvary Chapel services, gatherings, or events or exposing her to materials produced by the church.
The trial court found no harm associated simply with “a belief system that is rooted in the Bible.” Instead, the court focused on the child’s emotional distress, conflict between her parents, and messaging that portrayed Bradeen as an “enemy” and persecutor of the child’s faith.
Bickford challenged the order with the assistance of Liberty Counsel, arguing that it improperly interfered with her First Amendment rights and her right as a fit parent to raise her daughter according to her religious beliefs.
The lower court itself concluded that restrictions on Bickford’s religious decision-making implicated her constitutional rights and therefore applied strict scrutiny. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court disagreed with that part of its reasoning but nevertheless affirmed the result.
The justices held that both parents possess constitutional interests concerning their child’s religious upbringing. When parents with competing rights cannot agree, the court reasoned, allocating decision-making authority between them is different from the government independently intervening to restrict a parent’s religious practices.
Courts therefore may resolve such disputes using Maine’s statutory best-interest-of-the-child standard without first requiring proof that a parent’s religious practices would cause substantial harm.
The court nevertheless emphasized that constitutional protections continue to apply. Judges may not favor one parent because of religion, demonstrate hostility toward religious beliefs, or use the best-interest standard as a means of discriminating against a particular faith.
The justices found no such hostility in Bickford’s case, concluding that the trial court focused on the effects of the parental conflict and specific conduct rather than determining whether Bickford’s Christian beliefs were true or legitimate.
Of particular significance, the court also backed away from language in its 1980 decision Osier v. Osier, a custody dispute involving a Jehovah’s Witness mother who opposed blood transfusions. The court concluded that language in Osier suggesting that strict scrutiny applied to restrictions involving a parent’s religious practices was dictum and was no longer persuasive.
Liberty Counsel has announced that it intends to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision.
“This opinion rejects the First Amendment right of a fit parent to raise her child consistent with her Christian faith,” Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver, who represented Bickford before the Maine court, said following the ruling.
Staver argues that the Maine decision conflicts with other state-court rulings involving parental religious rights and Supreme Court precedent concerning parental authority and free exercise.
The Maine court’s reasoning presents the case differently. Rather than treating the dispute as the state overriding the religious choices of a single parent, the justices viewed it as a conflict between two parents who possess equal constitutional interests but disagree over their child’s upbringing. Once those interests collide, the court held, judges may determine how decision-making authority should be allocated according to the child’s best interests.
The case consequently raises questions extending beyond Christianity. The same standard could apply when divorced or separated parents disagree over a child’s participation in Pagan ritual, Jewish or Muslim observance, initiation into a religious tradition, religious education, or other spiritual practices.
The ruling suggests that parental free-exercise rights remain constitutionally protected but do not automatically override the authority of family courts to consider a child’s emotional welfare and the rights of the other parent when allocating religious decision-making.
For now, the Maine judgment remains in effect. Liberty Counsel has said it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, but the justices have not agreed to hear the case. If a petition is filed, the Court will first decide whether the constitutional questions raised by Bickford v. Bradeen warrant review.
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