Court of Appeals strikes down Judge’s anti-Wiccan decree

The Court of Appeals has Appellate Opinions” href=”http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/appeals.html”>issued an opinion (pdf document) striking down Judge Cale Bradford’s anti-Wiccan dissolution of marriage decree.

Some of you may have read about the case in this prior entry or (more likely) in Kevin Corcoran’s article in the Indianapolis Star. The jist of it is that Marion County Superior Court Judge, Cale J. Bradford, put a provision in a couple’s divorce decree that prohibits the couple from exposing their child to “non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.” Both parents practice Wicca, a spiritual belief that concentrates on worship of nature.

The court of appeals decided that it was not necessary to address the constitutionality of Bradford’s decree since they found Judge Bradford abused his discretion by imposing the religious limitation because he did not find that a limitation on Father’s parental authority to determine the religious training of his child was necessary to prevent endangerment to the child’s physical health or significant impairment of the child’s emotional health, which is the standard set forth in the statute.

There is some discussion of the record in the opinion that suggests Judge Bradford was interjecting his own opinion of Wicca into the proceedings rather than making any kind of a rational determination that the religion was dangerous to the child.

[Judge Bradford] All right, while the two of you are free to engage in any kind of behaviors you want to that are lawful, or that you don’t get caught at, I suppose, where you’ve got a child involved, that freedom can be somewhat limited. All right? And in going through this DRCB Report, there are a lot of issues that we have not touched upon yet. First of all I want to get some information and I’ll start with you, sir, from your religion, and how exactly that is practiced and what implication that has on the child. To the extent the child is part of that practice.

. . .

[Father]: The rituals that are part of what my group does . . . consist of – we start out with a grounding and a centering, which is where we stand with our minds. We relax. We gain some focus. Then we create – the best way to put it is – entities, but that’s not really symbols of the elements, the east, south, west and north, representing thought, passion, emotion and intuition, as well as stability. And then we ask for divine intervention. And then we do guided meditations. After that is gone through, then we sometimes chant or drum. Then we share bread and pass with us – juice or water – and then say good bye and thank you to all those entities, characteristics that we’ve asked to come into our lives. That’s how one of our rituals go.

[Trial court]: All right, where do you practice – is there a location in which this is done in a group.

[Father]: It varies. Sometimes it’s outdoors. Sometimes it’s in parks. Sometimes it’s on private property. Sometimes it’s in homes.

. . .

At one point during its questioning of Father, the trial court remarked, “[P]eople might think that you worship to Satan.” Father responded, “I can’t worship something if I don’t believe in it.”