SALT LAKE CITY — A divided Utah Supreme Court has issued a ruling on religious freedom in a divorce case involving members of a polygamous church.
In a ruling handed down this week, the justices voted 3-2 in favor of a father who challenged a lower court's decision to limit what he could say about his faith to his four children. He is a member of the Kingston polygamous group, also known as "the Order."
FOX 13 News is not naming the father or mother to avoid identifying their children.
The Court ruled the father can talk about his faith or any other faith with his children. But any major life decisions about whether they would be baptized into the faith? That remains with his ex-wife who has sole legal custody of the children.
Both the mother and father were members of the Kingston polygamous group until their divorce in 2019. The mother married her then-husband at age 16 and, court records show, he later became a polygamist. When they divorced, a lower-court judge had granted primary custody to the children's mother, declaring that the Kingston group's practices "jeopardize the health and safety of the children, and will cause harm to the children's welfare." Specifically, that judge expressed concern with the Order "promotes the grooming of young girls to be child brides and that... The Order's teachings alienate the children from their mother" by urging ostracizing of those who leave the group.
But Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Matthew Durrant wrote that the lower court's decision to block the father from discussing his faith or any other faith interfered with his rights as a parent.
"We agree with [the father] that he has a fundamental right to encourage his children in the practice of religion," Chief Justice Durrant wrote for the majority in the opinion. "And the court's award of sole legal custody to [the mother] does not eliminate this fundamental right. Rather, the award of legal custody to [the mother] limits [the father's] parental right only to the extent necessary to provide [the mother] with the authority to make major decisions for the children."
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Durrant wrote that the decision would prohibit the father from "teaching the children the Lord's Prayer or encouraging them to adopt the teachings of Islam."
"The prohibition cannot be described as 'narrowly tailored' when it reaches far beyond the compelling interest it is meant to address," he wrote.
The Court sidestepped a First Amendment battle by limiting their ruling to parental rights. It was something that Associate Chief Justice John Pearce noted in his dissent that was joined by Justice Paige Petersen.
"We are presented with an unchallenged factual record that demonstrates that if given the opportunity to influence his children's religious upbringing, [the father] will harm his children," Justice Pearce wrote. "The evidence in record — evidence we are duty-bound to accept as true — reveals that [the father] will harm his children by, among other things, promoting a religious culture that will encourage his daughters to be child brides. The evidence shows that [the father] will teach his children to obey authority figures who will instruct them to reject people outside The Order — people including their own mother. Against this factual backdrop, the district court did not err when it concluded that [the mother] alone should exercise all of the parental rights associated with religion."
In an email to FOX 13 News, Steve Christensen, an attorney for the father, said his client is "happy to see a decision supporting religious freedom and parental rights in child custody cases." An attorney representing the mother declined to comment on the decision at this time.
