Maine's Supreme Judicial Court has upheld a ruling stripping a mother of the right to take her daughter to her evangelical church, a decision her legal team calls a direct threat to First Amendment religious liberty.

Emily Bickford, a Christian mother in Maine, lost her fight this week when the state's highest court affirmed a lower court order giving the father, Matthew Bradeen, sole authority over whether their daughter can attend Calvary Chapel Greater Portland in Westbrook. The court found that Bickford's church attendance with the child was "psychologically unsafe" and ruled that Bradeen "is better suited to determine whether certain religious activities are in the child's best interest," EWTN News reported.

Liberty Counsel, the Christian legal nonprofit representing Bickford, announced it will petition the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling. The group's founder and chairman, Mat Staver, said the decision strips one parent of her constitutional right to share her faith with her own child, and hands that authority entirely to the other parent and the state.

A former ACLU president presided over the original order

The lower court ruling that started this fight dates to December 2024, when a district court judge prohibited Bickford from taking her daughter to Calvary Chapel. Bradeen had argued the church was a "dangerous and harmful environment" that caused the child anxiety and panic attacks, particularly over teachings about the rapture. The New York Post reported the court upheld that December 2024 custody order.

That district court judge was a former president of the ACLU, Breitbart reported. A former Marxist professor testified during the proceedings that the church was a "cult." The judge concluded the child experienced "psychological harm" through her attendance.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court dismissed Bickford's constitutional claims on appeal and sided with the lower court's findings. The court's opinion emphasized what it characterized as co-parenting failures rather than hostility toward religious beliefs, Fox News reported.

But the facts in the record suggest the church itself became a target. The court noted that Calvary Chapel's pastor led an open prayer during a service in which he singled out Bradeen by name nearly 30 times, calling him "in need of salvation" and describing the court proceedings as "an attack on God's Word", all while the child was present. That episode figured prominently in the court's reasoning.

Staver says Maine now stands alone against other state courts

Staver framed the ruling as an outlier that puts Maine at odds with courts across the country. In a statement, he said the decision "rejects the First Amendment right" of Bickford and contradicts precedent from other states on parental religious liberty.

As AP News reported, Staver plans to file the appeal within 90 days, arguing the ruling violates the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause:

"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. 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."

In a separate statement, Staver laid out the stakes more bluntly:

"Depriving one parent their right to instill their religious views into their child and granting sole authority to the other parent fails to give proper protection to parental rights and religious freedom under the First Amendment."

He added that the ruling "pose[s] a serious threat to religious freedom" in the United States.

The Supreme Court's upcoming term is already stacked with religious liberty disputes. The justices have loaded their docket with fights over parental rights, religious liberty, and constitutional boundaries, and Liberty Counsel's petition would add one of the most personal religious freedom cases to reach the high court in years.

Courts keep colliding with religious practice

The Bickford case sits at a fault line that runs through family courts nationwide: when does a judge's authority over a child's welfare override a parent's right to practice and transmit her faith? The Maine court answered by deferring entirely to the father's judgment on religious matters, a remedy that goes beyond restricting one church and effectively gives a secular parent veto power over a believing parent's religious life with her child.

Writing in National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty observed that "the courts remind us that, in fact, the law cannot quite corral religion into its neat categories." The case illustrates the difficulty courts face when they try to separate a parent's religious identity from the act of raising a child, and how quickly a "best interest of the child" standard can become a tool to suppress disfavored beliefs.

The broader pattern is hard to miss. Across the country, families are pressing the Supreme Court to draw clearer lines around religious liberty. California parents have petitioned the justices to strike down a ban on religious curriculum in charter schools, and a Liberty University student is challenging a decades-old prohibition on financial aid for religious studies majors. Each case asks the same question: how far can the government go in walling off religious belief from public life?

The federal government has signaled its own position. The Justice Department recently strengthened its religious liberty guidance with new protections for parental rights, guidance that runs directly counter to the kind of order the Maine court just upheld.

What the ruling actually orders, and what it doesn't say

The scope of the Maine court's order deserves attention. Bradeen did not merely win the right to keep his daughter home on his custody days. The ruling grants him authority to determine the child's religious activities even during Bickford's parenting time. That means Bickford cannot bring her daughter to Calvary Chapel, or, by the logic of the ruling, expose her to the church's teachings, regardless of which parent has physical custody at the time.

Staver characterized the order in stark terms. In a statement carried by Breitbart, he said the judge "gave the hostile father sole authority to prevent this young girl from reading the Bible, saying the Lord's Prayer, or associating with any religious philosophy or Christian teaching." Whether the order reaches that far as a legal matter is a question the Supreme Court may have to answer.

The child at the center of the case is between 12 and 13 years old. The court record describes panic attacks and a fixation on the rapture as evidence of psychological harm from church attendance. No details about the specific medical or psychological professionals who evaluated the child, if any, appear in available reporting. Nor has Bickford made any public statement about the ruling beyond what Liberty Counsel has released on her behalf.

Bradeen has not spoken publicly either.

The pastor's prayer, naming the father almost 30 times, calling him unsaved, and casting the legal dispute as spiritual warfare, clearly troubled the court. Whether a pastor's sermon can be used as evidence to restrict a parent's religious liberty is one of the unresolved questions the appeal will raise.

Liberty Counsel has 90 days to bring the fight to Washington

Staver said Liberty Counsel will file its petition with the U.S. Supreme Court within 90 days. If the justices take the case, they would confront a question the court has never squarely decided: can a state family court order one parent to stop sharing her religious faith with her child based on a finding of psychological harm?

The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protects the right to practice religion. The Fourteenth Amendment protects parental rights. Liberty Counsel argues the Maine ruling violates both. Staver contends the decision conflicts with rulings from courts in other states, which would give the Supreme Court a reason to step in and resolve the split.

Whether the justices agree to hear the case remains to be seen. But the facts are hard to look away from: a mother barred from taking her daughter to church, a father granted sole veto over religious upbringing, and a state court that treated evangelical worship as a psychological hazard.

When the government decides which prayers are safe for a child to hear, it has stopped protecting the child and started policing the faith.