God on trial? Custody decision that bans mother from exposing daughter to Bible headed for SCOTUS
Maine's highest court upholds decision that lets father ban daughter from mother's church, scrutinizing its theology, leadership and how it makes the girl see her father. "Astounding" rejection of First Amendment rights, her lawyer says.
By Greg Piper
Published: September 4, 2026 10:54pm
Sharing the Bible's historic understanding of homosexuality, in a 22-year-old church pamphlet, got Finnish member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen criminally fined for "hate speech" and the pamphlet's publisher ordered to destroy the offending passages, prompting international alarm and attention from President Trump's religious liberty commission this summer.
Though Räsänen's lawyers are appealing the Finnish Supreme Court's ruling to the European Court of Human Rights, the conviction is already limiting her movements, with the U.K. revoking Räsänen's travel authorization so that she couldn't speak in person at a religious liberty conference last month.
Maine's top court found a different way to mitigate the Bible's influence this week: deny it to children.
In a decision likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld a lower court order in a custody dispute that gives father Matthew Bradeen a veto over mother Emily Bickford's exposure of their daughter Ava "to the teachings of any religious philosophy or of the Bible in general."
District Judge Jennifer Nofsinger's Dec. 13, 2024 order also lets Bradeen nix Ava's attendance at "any services, gatherings, or events associated with Calvary Chapel," where Bickford attends; any "material, literature, video, or other messaging associated with" the church; and contact with any Calvary Chapel member other than her mother.
The father's expert witness on "cults," Janja Lalich, deemed the Portland branch of the global fellowship of independent churches, whose founder was portrayed by six-time Emmy winner Kelsey Grammer in the 2023 movie Jesus Revolution, a "cultic organization."
Though phrased as requiring the parents to work together for the girl's good, the order functionally gives Bradeen "sole authority" over Ava's exposure to heavenly matters, Bickford's lawyers at Liberty Counsel said, pledging to petition SCOTUS.
"Since December 2014," when Ava was nearly two years old, "Bradeen has denied every request" by Bickford, it said. The mother was simply "taking her daughter to a church that holds mainstream biblical views," making "the court’s total prohibition on her religious decision-making authority […] a direct infringement on her right to direct the religious upbringing of her child."
"This opinion goes against other state court decisions involving custody in the context of religious free exercise rights and ignores precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court," Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver said.
"We are in the process of moving to the next step" of petitioning SCOTUS, Staver told Just the News on Friday.
He said the ruling is an "outlier" compared to other state court decisions, as the Maine Supreme Judicial Court acknowledges, but it also contradicts the court's own precedent to reach an "unprecedented conclusion," that a fit parent has no First Amendment free exercise rights. "That's astounding," Staver said.
Lower standard for government when allocating rights 'between a child’s parents'
Liberty Counsel emphasized that Judge Nofsinger's order adopted Bradeen's practice of writing "god" in lowercase, which shows "obvious and unconstitutional" hostility toward Christianity – a lure for SCOTUS to accept the case.
https://justthenews.com/nation/religion/god-trial-custody-decision-bans-mother-exposing-daughter-bible-headed-scotus
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