Maine Supreme Court Gives Father Final Say in Daughter’s Church Attendance Dispute

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has upheld a lower court decision giving a father the final say over whether his daughter may attend her mother’s evangelical church, following a dispute between the parents over the child’s religious upbringing.

In its Tuesday ruling, the state’s highest court left in place a Portland District Court judge’s order stemming from a 2024 conflict between Matthew Bradeen and Emily Bickford over their daughter’s church attendance, The Maine Monitor reported. The child was 11 years old at the time.

Bickford had brought the girl several times a week to Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, an evangelical congregation located in Westbrook.

Bradeen objected, describing the church as a “dangerous and harmful environment” that he said contributed to his daughter’s anxiety. He claimed she experienced a panic attack after hearing teachings about the Rapture, the Christian belief that believers will be taken suddenly to heaven during the end times while nonbelievers remain on Earth to face the apocalypse.

The lower court ruled in Bradeen’s favor, concluding that some of the messages the child encountered at the church were “psychologically damaging” because of the way they portrayed her father, according to The Maine Monitor. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed that decision Tuesday.

Under the ruling, Bradeen has the authority to determine whether his daughter attends services at Calvary Chapel, takes part in church activities or has contact with church members other than her mother.

The court also said the parents must “continue to share parental rights and responsibilities” when it comes to their daughter’s exposure to other religious groups.

If the two disagreed on their daughter’s religious exposure, the court ruled that the father has the final say. The court said the allocation of final decision-making authority stemmed from the parents’ inability to jointly make decisions about the child’s religious upbringing, not from disagreement with the mother’s religious beliefs.

Bickford’s lawyer, Mathew Staver, told The Maine Monitor he intends to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Bickford and her legal team have 90 days to appeal the decision to the nation’s highest court.

Staver’s law firm, Liberty Counsel, which describes itself as a Christian ministry focused on religious freedom, has been involved in other religious freedom cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including a 2022 case in which the court sided with a private religious group that Boston officials had prohibited from flying a Christian flag.

In the dispute between Bradeen and Bickford, Liberty Counsel argued to Maine’s high court that the 2024 order violated the mother’s First Amendment rights through its “open hostility” toward religious beliefs and by barring her from influencing the 
“Religious upbringing of her child as she sees fit,” the outlet reported.

“What Maine has done in this decision is put the Supreme Court of Maine at odds with the courts of a number of other states,” Staver said. “I think it will be a case that will be very significant and catch the attention of the Supreme Court because of how far-reaching it is with regards to the First Amendment exercise clause.”

Bradeen’s lawyer, Michelle King, called Tuesday’s decision “well thought-out and reasoned,” saying Bradeen was happy with the outcome, according to the outlet.

“Anytime you’re in court, it’s stressful,” King said. “But this case has definitely garnered a lot of media attention, and I think that’s always difficult for parents.”

Part of the case centered on a service in which the pastor singled out Bradeen by name, The Maine Monitor reported.

As legal proceedings for the original dispute were ongoing, Bickford brought her daughter to a service at Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, where pastor Travis Carey led a six-and-a-half-minute prayer focused on the case, referring to the parents and child by name almost 30 times, saying Bradeen is “in need of salvation” and calling the proceedings “an attack on God’s Word,” according to the report.

The Maine Supreme Court said Bickford did not make any attempt to pull her child from the service, and she later described it as “appropriate.”

Bickford “is unwilling to recognize, much less mitigate, the risk that these messages alienate the child from Bradeen or otherwise cause her harm,” the court wrote.

In the 2024 lower court order, Maine District Court Judge Jennifer Nofsinger wrote that the harm caused to the daughter did not result from “a belief system that is rooted in the Bible,” but rather, from the mother’s “inability to co-parent” regarding religion and the fact that she had given control of decisions about her daughter’s best interests to the church, and its language had denigrated the father.

“The court found that the child was harmed by Bickford’s decisions to expose the child to messages that characterized Bradeen as an ‘enemy’ who seeks to ‘persecute’ the child and her faith, and by Bickford’s unwillingness to prevent the child from receiving those messages or to take any other steps to reduce the risk of alienating her from Bradeen,” the Maine Supreme Court wrote in its decision on Tuesday upholding the lower court order.

The final 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.”

The court ruled that the order was based on the parents’ inability to co-parent on religion, not on the substance of Bickford’s religious beliefs, finding it necessary for one parent to be given the power to make final decisions over the other.