Maine's highest court ruled that a father can bar his daughter from attending an evangelical church where the pastor publicly named and disparaged him during services, a decision her mother's legal team now plans to carry to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Sept. 1 affirmed a 2024 Portland District Court order granting Matthew Bradeen final decision-making authority over whether his daughter can attend Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, an evangelical church in Westbrook, Maine. The ruling also bars the child from interacting with church members other than her mother, Emily Bickford, who had been bringing the girl to multiple services a week.

At the center of the dispute is a question every parent of faith understands instinctively: who decides how a child worships? But the facts the court relied on go well beyond a theological disagreement between two divorced parents. They point to a church environment that, in the court's own words, exposed a child to "negative and frightening messages" about her father, and a mother who refused to do anything about it.

Pastor named the father almost 30 times in a single prayer

The lower court's 2024 order followed testimony that Pastor Travis Carey of Calvary Chapel Greater Portland led a six-and-a-half-minute prayer during a service while the custody hearings were still underway. During that prayer, AP News reported, Carey referred to the parents and child by name "almost 30 times," described Bradeen as "in need of salvation," and called the court proceedings "an attack on God's Word."

Bickford brought her daughter to that service. She made no attempt to remove the child. She later called the service "appropriate."

Portland District Court Judge Jennifer Nofsinger found that some of the church's language was "psychologically damaging the child." But she was careful to draw a line. The harm, Nofsinger wrote, stemmed not from "a belief system that is rooted in the Bible" but from the mother's "inability to co-parent" on the topic of religion.

Bradeen had argued that the church was a "dangerous and harmful environment" causing his daughter anxiety. He said the girl suffered a panic attack after hearing church teachings on the rapture.

Maine's high court found the mother refused to shield her child

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court's written ruling affirmed Nofsinger's reasoning and sharpened it. The justices found that Bickford's decisions exposed the child to messages characterizing Bradeen as an "enemy" who seeks to "persecute" the child and her faith. The court wrote that Bickford showed an 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 ruling went further, as the Bangor Daily News reported: Bickford "is unwilling to recognize, much less mitigate, the risk that these messages alienate the child from Bradeen or otherwise cause her harm."

That finding is worth pausing on. The court did not rule against a set of religious beliefs. It ruled against a parent's conduct, specifically, a pattern of allowing authority figures in her child's life to demonize the other parent and doing nothing to stop it. The justices stated plainly that 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."

Nofsinger's original order required both parents to "continue to share parental rights and responsibilities" regarding their daughter's exposure to other religious organizations. But when the parents disagree, Bradeen holds the final say. The order applies specifically to Calvary Chapel Greater Portland and its members, not to religious practice broadly.

Liberty Counsel frames the case as a First Amendment fight headed to Washington

Bickford's legal team sees it differently. Liberty Counsel, the Christian legal advocacy group representing her, argued in its brief to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court that the 2024 order violated Bickford's First Amendment rights through its "open hostility" toward religious beliefs and by preventing her from directing the "religious upbringing of her child as she sees fit."

Mathew Staver, the Liberty Counsel attorney handling the case, told reporters he plans to petition the U.S. Supreme Court within the 90-day appeal window. In a case that has already drawn national attention from Fox News and other outlets, Staver framed the stakes in sweeping terms:

"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 added that he believes the case "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." He did not specify which state courts he considers in conflict with the Maine ruling.

In a separate statement, Staver argued that depriving one parent of the right to instill religious views in a child "fails to give proper protection to parental rights and religious freedom under the First Amendment," as the New York Post reported.

The Supreme Court's docket in recent terms has been crowded with consequential disputes, from election-law rulings to executive-power fights. Whether the justices choose to take up a custody-rooted religious liberty case remains an open question. Staver's firm has appeared before the Court before: in 2022, the justices ruled in favor of a private religious group that Boston had barred from flying a Christian flag, a case in which Liberty Counsel was involved.

Bradeen's attorney called the ruling 'well thought-out and reasoned'

Michelle King, the attorney representing Bradeen, struck a more measured tone. She called the Tuesday decision "well thought-out and reasoned" and said her client was happy with the result. But she acknowledged the toll the proceedings have taken.

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

King said she had "anticipated all along" that the case could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. If it does, it would land on a docket already shaped by major petitions touching religious liberty, parental authority, and the boundaries of government power, including cases like the administration's petition on military policy.

Liberty Counsel is no stranger to Maine litigation. The firm previously represented Calvary Chapel of Bangor in a 2020 lawsuit against the state over pandemic restrictions and currently represents Calvary Chapel Belfast in an ongoing suit alleging religious discrimination after the University of Maine System rescinded an agreement to sell a building to the church.

A broader fight over where courts draw the line on faith and custody

Breitbart reported earlier this year that the lower court order barred the girl, identified as 13-year-old Ava, from attending church, religious holidays, reading scripture, or having Christian friends. That reporting also noted that Judge Nofsinger relied on testimony from a witness described as a "cult expert" who labeled Calvary Chapel, a denomination with over 800 U.S. churches, as "cultic" in part because it teaches belief in heaven, hell, and salvation through Jesus.

Bickford herself spoke publicly about the case. "That is not theirs to take away," she said of her parental rights. "It's in our Declaration of Independence. Our forefathers knew we had inalienable rights given by God."

The case sits at a fault line that courts rarely handle well. On one side stands a parent's constitutional right to raise a child in her faith. On the other stands a court's obligation to protect a child from psychological harm, harm that, in this case, two levels of Maine courts found was real, documented, and directly tied to the conduct of specific adults in that child's life.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court took pains to say it was not ruling against evangelical Christianity. It was ruling against a mother who let her church turn a custody dispute into a spiritual campaign against her daughter's father, in front of the daughter. The Supreme Court has shown a willingness in recent years to wade into contested territory where constitutional rights collide.

Whether the justices take up Bickford's petition will determine whether this remains a Maine family's private ordeal or becomes the case that defines how far a court can go in telling a parent where her child may pray.

Religious liberty means something only when courts protect it from abuse, including abuse committed in its name. A pastor who names a father 30 times from the pulpit and calls a custody hearing an attack on God is not shepherding a flock. He is conscripting a child into a fight she never chose.