Maine Court Rejects Strict Scrutiny in Religious Custody Ruling

Maine Court Rejects Strict Scrutiny in Religious Custody Ruling

Maine's highest court held on September 1, 2026 that judges allocating religious decision-making between two fit parents apply the ordinary best interest of the child standard, not strict scrutiny. Bickford v. Bradeen, 2026 ME 94, affirmed a Portland District Court order and limited a 1980 precedent.

Information last verified on September 5, 2026.

Status: Decided. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court sitting as the Law Court released Bickford v. Bradeen, 2026 ME 94 (Docket Cum-25-29) on September 1, 2026, after oral argument on November 13, 2025. Chief Justice Stanfill wrote for a panel of Stanfill, C.J., and Mead, Connors, Lawrence, Douglas and Lipez, JJ.; the slip opinion carries no separate concurrence or dissent. The entry is "Judgment affirmed." The Law Court is Maine's court of last resort, so the rule announced here binds Maine trial courts now. Because this is a parental rights matter, the mandate issued on publication under M.R. App. P. 14(a)(2). A party may move the Law Court to reconsider within 14 days under M.R. App. P. 14(b)(1)(A); beyond that, further review would be a discretionary petition for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jurisdiction scope: This covers Maine family courts applying Title 19-A of the Maine Revised Statutes. It binds only Maine. It does not change federal free exercise doctrine, and by its own terms it does not govern disputes between a parent and the State, or between a parent and a third party such as a grandparent or a de facto parent, which the Law Court treated as a separate category (¶ 30).

What Happened

Emily A. Bickford and Matthew A. Bradeen are the parents of a daughter born in January 2013. Later that year a family law magistrate entered an agreed order of shared parental rights and responsibilities. Under 19-A M.R.S. § 1501(5), that arrangement means both parents "confer and make joint decisions regarding the child's welfare," and the statute lists religious upbringing and medical care among the matters covered (2026 ME 94, ¶¶ 2-3).

On September 17, 2021, Bradeen filed motions to enforce and to modify that order under 19-A M.R.S. § 1657, alleging that Bickford had engaged the child in religious activities without his knowledge or assent. Bickford cross-moved, alleging that Bradeen had tried to deny the child religious training and to prevent her church attendance and baptism. Each parent asked for sole authority over the child's religious upbringing (¶ 4). Mediation between 2021 and 2024 resolved every disagreement except religion and healthcare (¶ 5).

The District Court in Portland (Nofsinger, J.) held a two-day hearing on August 28 and 30, 2024, reopened the record and took further evidence on November 27, 2024, and entered its order on December 16, 2024 (¶¶ 6-7). Witnesses included the parties, Janja Lalich, whom the parties stipulated was an expert on "cults," and Travis Carey, the pastor of Bickford's church (¶ 6).

The trial court's findings

The Law Court recited the trial court's findings, noting that they are supported by competent evidence in the record (¶ 8). The trial court found that the child had experienced fear, anxiety and panic attacks connected to teachings she encountered at the church, and that she asked her father why he and his other child would not be in Heaven with her (¶ 11). It found that Bickford made unilateral decisions about the child's religious participation and took steps to conceal their scope, including a baptism that Bradeen learned of from a third party and an overnight church retreat he learned of through the church's Facebook page (¶ 13). It found that the child received messaging characterizing her father as the "enemy" whose "tricks" and "snares" must be avoided, and that Bickford was unwilling to recognize or mitigate the risk that such messages would alienate the child from her father (¶ 15).

The court further found that Bickford would not coparent on religion and had "essentially abdicated her independent decision-making to the church" (¶ 16). On healthcare, it found that Bickford had come to oppose vaccination and antibiotics based on personal experience and her own research, while Bradeen relied on the child's physicians and guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (¶ 17).

What the order actually does

The trial court used two frameworks. For healthcare it ran a standard best-interest analysis under 19-A M.R.S. § 1653(3) (¶ 19). For religion it read Osier v. Osier, 410 A.2d 1027 (Me. 1980), to require that any allocation first satisfy strict scrutiny (¶ 20).

Working through that stricter test, the court found a compelling state interest in protecting the child from "immediate and substantial psychological harm," found that the parents could not coparent on religion, and concluded that an allocation was both in the child's best interest and narrowly tailored (¶ 23).

The resulting order is specific and partial. It allocated to Bradeen sole parental rights and responsibilities regarding the child's involvement with one named congregation, Calvary Chapel Greater Portland. For any other religious activity, the parties continue to share parental rights and responsibilities and must "jointly research the church, organization, or teachings and discuss whether [the child's] participation and exposure [are] in her best interests," with final authority to Bradeen only if they cannot agree (¶ 23). On healthcare, both parents keep the right to obtain emergency care and to make over-the-counter and first-aid decisions; for decisions significantly affecting medical care, including vaccinations and prescribed medication, Bradeen "must first consult [Bickford] and consider her thoughts and opinions" but holds final decision-making rights (¶ 22).

That distinction matters legally. Under 19-A M.R.S. § 1501(6), "sole parental rights and responsibilities" means exclusive authority over all aspects of a child's welfare. What the Portland court entered is an allocation under § 1501(1), which divides responsibility for specified aspects while the rest of the parenting arrangement stands.

The Law Court's holding

Reviewing the trial court's legal determinations de novo, the Law Court held that the framework was wrong.

"[W]e disagree, and we instead conclude that strict scrutiny does not apply to allocations of parental rights between a child's parents." Bickford v. Bradeen, 2026 ME 94, at slip op. ¶ 27 (Me. Sept. 1, 2026)

Its reasoning starts from the premise that both parents hold the constitutional right at issue. Citing 19-A M.R.S. § 1651, the court noted that parents are joint natural guardians and that "[n]either parent has any rights paramount to the rights of the other with reference to any matter affecting their children" (¶ 29). From there, an allocation between two parents "is not a state intrusion into, and does not infringe upon, [the parents'] shared right to make decisions concerning their children," quoting Mills v. Fleming, 2017 ME 144, ¶ 9, 166 A.3d 1012 (¶ 30). The court contrasted cases where the State or a third party seeks parental rights, including In re Scott S., 2001 ME 114, and the grandparent-visitation case Rideout v. Riendeau, 2000 ME 198, where a genuine state intrusion does occur (¶ 30).

Osier survives, but narrowed. The Law Court explained that Osier was decided in 1980, when Maine law framed these disputes as binary "custody" awards rather than divisible parental rights, and that the mother there was a Jehovah's Witness whose objection to a blood transfusion had driven the custody award (¶¶ 33-34). Because the Osier court remanded for a fact-based best-interest analysis the trial court had never performed, the remainder of that opinion was "not necessary to the decision of the case" and therefore not binding (¶ 34). Today, the court said, "we clarify that its dictum is unpersuasive" (¶ 36).

In place of strict scrutiny, the court substituted a neutrality constraint on the best-interest inquiry itself.

"[E]ven when strict scrutiny does not apply, a court violates the Constitution and abuses its discretion if, in analyzing a child's best interest, it prefers one parent to another on the basis of religion, evinces hostility toward a parent's religious beliefs or practices, or otherwise casts doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the proceedings." Bickford v. Bradeen, 2026 ME 94, at slip op. ¶ 38 (Me. Sept. 1, 2026)

Applying that constraint, the court found no hostility. It rejected the argument that the trial court had branded Christianity harmful, reading the finding instead as the narrower proposition "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," tied to the cooperation factors at 19-A M.R.S. § 1653(3)(H) and (I) (¶ 39). On the word "cult," the court found that the trial judge "used the word 'cult' only in describing the testimony of Lalich, the stipulated expert on 'cults'" and did not otherwise apply the label to the church (¶ 40).

Two further points are easy to miss. First, although the trial court used the wrong standard, the Law Court declined to remand, because the trial court had in fact completed a comprehensive best-interest analysis under a more exacting test than the law required (¶ 37). Second, in footnote 15 the court added that even if strict scrutiny were applied, it would still conclude that the order "passes constitutional muster." It affirmed the medical allocation separately, holding that Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584 (1979), the only authority Bickford cited on that point, addressed state-administered institutional care and was not relevant (¶¶ 42-43).

What the Law Actually Says

Maine abandoned the language of "custody" for "parental rights and responsibilities" decades ago, and the vocabulary carries real consequences here. Section 1501 of Title 19-A defines three arrangements: shared responsibilities, in which both parents confer and decide jointly; allocated responsibilities, in which specific aspects of a child's welfare are divided so that one parent controls that aspect; and sole responsibilities, meaning exclusive authority over everything. Religious upbringing appears by name in the list of aspects that may be divided under § 1501(1).

The operative standard sits in 19-A M.R.S. § 1653(3), which directs that a court "shall apply the standard of the best interest of the child" and lists the factors it must weigh. Two of those factors did the work in this case: subsection (H), the capacity of each parent to allow and encourage frequent and continuing contact between the child and the other parent, and subsection (I), the capacity of each parent to cooperate or learn to cooperate in child care. A third, subsection (K), asks about the effect on the child if one parent has sole authority over the child's upbringing. Nothing in the statute carves religion out for special treatment, and that absence is the backbone of the Law Court's reasoning.

The constitutional layer is federal. Bickford raised the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and the court analyzed her free exercise and due process claims together because she had not developed separate arguments (¶ 29 n.7). Notably, footnote 5 records that she did not raise the Maine Constitution at all, and the court observed that Maine's own free-exercise protections "may be broader" than the federal floor. That is an open door for a future litigant, not a holding.

The court also drew on Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429 (1984), which it described in footnote 12 as the only U.S. Supreme Court decision to address parental rights in a dispute between parents. Palmore held that a trial court could not rest a custody decision on the social stigma of a racially mixed household, but it did so by forbidding a particular consideration inside the best-interest analysis rather than by replacing that analysis with strict scrutiny. Maine adopted the same shape for religion.

If you are trying to place this against your own state's rules, our overview of how Maine allocates parental rights and responsibilities covers the statutory framework the Law Court applied here, and our state-by-state guide to custody law explains how the same questions are labeled elsewhere. Because these motions arose out of a parenting order rather than a marriage, the mechanics differ somewhat from the process for dissolving a marriage in Maine.

How Other States Handle This

The opinion is explicit about the disagreement among state courts, and it is worth reporting exactly as the court framed it rather than as a clean split.

In paragraph 36 the Law Court placed itself with courts that apply the best-interest standard without strict scrutiny, citing In re Kurowski, 20 A.3d 306, 317 (N.H. 2011); Kelley v. Kelley, 535 P.3d 1147, 1151 (Nev. 2023); Young v. Holmes, 295 S.W.3d 144 (Ky. Ct. App. 2009); and Yordy v. Osterman, 149 P.3d 874 (Kan. Ct. App. 2007), plus an unpublished Alaska decision that suggested the same result without deciding it.

Footnote 11 collects the contrary authority, and the distinction it draws is finer than "Utah and Colorado require strict scrutiny." As the Maine court quoted Utah's decision in Kingston v. Kingston, 532 P.3d 958, 971 (Utah 2022): "[W]hile the best interests of the child standard is of primary importance when allocating decision-making authority as to major decisions, strict scrutiny applies to court orders that go beyond this allocation to restrict a parent's fundamental right to encourage his or her children in the practice of religion." The Colorado decision the footnote quotes, In re Marriage of McSoud, 131 P.3d 1208, 1217 (Colo. App. 2006), similarly attaches the heavier requirement to orders that go beyond allocating decision-making and restrict a parent's own ability to expose the child to that parent's beliefs. On that reading, both of those states also allow allocation of religious decision-making on a best-interest basis; what they treat differently is a further restriction on the parent.

The Maine court said it was "unpersuaded" by those decisions, primarily because in its view they do not explain why religious parental rights should trigger strict scrutiny when restrictions on other fundamental parental rights do not, and it quoted a dissenting opinion from Kingston making the same objection. This description is the Maine court's characterization of Utah and Colorado law; anyone litigating in those states should read those opinions directly. Our pages on Utah custody law and on decision-making authority under Colorado's parenting statutes cover the general frameworks, not this specific religious-restriction question.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The practical center of gravity in this opinion is the difference between allocating a right and restricting a person. Maine's answer is that when two fit parents both hold the same constitutional right and cannot exercise it jointly, a judge assigning that right to one of them has not taken anything from the State's side of the ledger. That framing is doing enormous work, and it is why the court could say at paragraph 30 that no state intrusion occurred at all.

The trade the court makes is visible. It removes the tiered-scrutiny machinery and replaces it with a conduct rule aimed at the judge: no religious preference, no hostility, nothing that casts doubt on impartiality. That is a real constraint, and paragraph 38 makes it reviewable as an abuse of discretion. But it is a constraint on how a judge reasons and writes, not a threshold the moving parent must clear with evidence of harm. Under Osier as the trial court read it, a parent seeking to limit the other's religious decision-making had to establish an immediate and substantial threat first. Under 2026 ME 94, that showing is no longer a gate.

Whether that changes outcomes in Maine is genuinely uncertain, and the record here cuts both ways. This trial court cleared the higher bar, and footnote 15 says the order would pass constitutional muster even under strict scrutiny. So the case that announced the easier standard is also a case that did not need it. The practical difference is therefore most likely to surface in a case with thinner findings than this one.

Two limits deserve emphasis because they are the ones most likely to get lost. First, the court did not authorize a judge to keep a child away from religion generally. It authorized allocating decision-making between parents, and the order it affirmed left the mother's shared authority intact everywhere except one named congregation. Second, the findings that carried the day were about coparenting conduct, not doctrine. The court went out of its way at paragraphs 39 and 41 to say the allocation "ultimately rested on no more than" the parents' inability to coparent on religion and the father's comparative ability to evaluate specific activities, and that neither finding "depended on the substance of Bickford's religious views."

The most consequential unlitigated issue may be the one in footnote 5. Bickford briefed only the federal Constitution. The Law Court paused to note that Maine's own free-exercise clause may be broader than its federal counterpart. A future Maine parent who raises the state constitution is not bound by today's federal analysis, and this opinion says almost nothing about how that argument would fare.

How This Affects You

For separated parents in Maine, the operational shift is about what a motion has to establish. A parent asking a Maine court to allocate religious decision-making is now arguing the § 1653(3) factors, particularly the cooperation and contact factors at (H) and (I), rather than trying to prove an immediate and substantial threat as a preliminary matter. A parent resisting such a motion is in the mirror position and has a distinct constitutional argument available: that the court's own reasoning shows religious preference or hostility, which paragraph 38 makes grounds for reversal.

Outside Maine, this opinion is persuasive authority only. In Utah and Colorado in particular, the rules the Maine court described in footnote 11 remain the rules of those states unless and until their own courts say otherwise.

None of this speaks to any individual family's facts, and outcomes in these cases turn almost entirely on the record a trial judge builds. Anyone facing a live parenting dispute should consult a family law attorney licensed in their state.

What Happens Next

The Law Court affirmed, so the December 16, 2024 order stands. Because this appeal is a parental rights matter, the mandate issued the day the decision was published rather than after the ordinary 14-day wait, so the case is already back before the Portland District Court for enforcement (M.R. App. P. 14(a)(2)).

One step remains open inside Maine. Under M.R. App. P. 14(b)(1)(A) a party may ask the Law Court to reconsider its decision, but the motion must be filed within 14 days of the decision, which closes that window on September 15, 2026, and the rule limits it to points the party says the court overlooked or misapprehended. We have not confirmed whether any such motion was filed.

Beyond that motion, the Law Court is Maine's court of last resort, so the remaining avenue is discretionary review by the U.S. Supreme Court on a petition for a writ of certiorari. Under Rule 13.1 of the Rules of the Supreme Court of the United States, such a petition is timely if filed within 90 days after entry of the judgment, which would place the ordinary deadline at approximately November 30, 2026. Rule 13.5 allows a single Justice to extend that period by up to 60 days for good cause, and Rule 13.3 restarts the clock if a timely rehearing petition is filed below. Under Rule 10, review on a writ of certiorari "is not a matter of right, but of judicial discretion," and a petition "will be granted only for compelling reasons."

The event that would convert any of this into national law is a grant of certiorari followed by a merits decision. As of September 5, 2026, we have not confirmed from the U.S. Supreme Court's docket, or from any on-the-record statement we were able to open directly, that a petition has been filed in this matter. We are therefore making no claim either way. If that changes, this page will be updated.

The other path to watch is inside Maine. Footnote 5 flags the Maine Constitution as unaddressed, and paragraph 37's refusal to remand means the Law Court has not yet reviewed a religious allocation that was decided under the best-interest standard from the outset. Both are open questions for the next case.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It describes a September 1, 2026 decision of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and the Maine statutes it applies, verified as of September 5, 2026. Family law outcomes depend on the specific record before a trial judge, and the rules differ in every other state. Consult a licensed family law attorney in your jurisdiction before acting.

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• Maine child custody laws, the statutory framework the Law Court applied
• Custody rules in all 50 states and DC
• What Utah courts weigh when they divide parenting decisions
• Colorado parental responsibility and parenting time
• Filing for divorce in Maine

Last updated: 2026-09-05. Details verified as of 2026-09-05.