A Maine judge ruled that reading the Bible causes psychological harm to children.
The legal system launched an assault on Christianity.
And this Democrat judge shredded the Constitution using a Marxist professor from California nobody had ever heard of.
Parental Rights and Religious Freedom on Trial in Maine Custody Battle
Ava Bickford is 13 years old and lives in Portland, Maine with her mother Emily Bickford, who has primary custody.
Her father, Matthew Bradeen, never married Emily – and has visitation rights under a custody arrangement established in 2013.
Emily became a Christian in 2021 and started attending Calvary Chapel Greater Portland – a fast-growing evangelical church with more than 800 locations across the U.S.
Ava came with her, fell in love with the church, made friends there, and decided she wanted to get baptized.
She told her father.
He was furious – and hired a California sociology professor to tell a judge that Calvary Chapel was a cult.
Portland District Judge Jennifer Nofsinger – appointed by Democrat Governor Janet Mills in 2022 – accepted every word of it.
Nofsinger handed Bradeen total control over every religious decision in his daughter's life.
No church services, no Christmas, no Easter, no Bible — and no contact with her friends from Calvary Chapel.
Eighteen months later, Ava is still living under that order.
Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver said under the expert's definition, every Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox church in America qualifies as a cult – because they all teach heaven, hell, angels, and demons.
How a Maine Judge Violated the First Amendment Without a Single Finding of Abuse
The U.S. Supreme Court settled this question decades ago.
In Troxel v. Granville, the Court held that the parental right to direct a child's upbringing is "perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests" in American law.
In Prince v. Massachusetts, the Court affirmed that a parent's right to direct their child's religious education holds "a high place in our society."
Nofsinger either didn't know those cases or didn't care.
She stripped Emily Bickford's parental rights without abuse, without neglect, and based entirely on a panic attack the girl herself says she doesn't remember having – and a sermon Nofsinger misread so badly that Staver noted the quoted text never mentioned heaven, hell, or eternal suffering at all.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments in Bickford v. Bradeen last November.
Eight months of silence.
During those arguments, Associate Justice Catherine Connors asked whether a judge scrutinizing sermon language was crossing into judging the religion itself – and pointed out that under Nofsinger's logic, a court could declare nearly any faith tradition harmful to a child.
That question answered itself.
Why Christian Parents Across America Should Be Watching Bickford v. Bradeen
Bradeen went looking for the right expert and the right judge – and he found both.
That blueprint is now on paper: hire a professor to call Bible teaching psychologically harmful, find a judge willing to sign the order, and a fit Christian parent loses their child's spiritual life without a single act of abuse ever being proven.
Staver warned the justices directly: "If this ruling is allowed to stand, it could set a precedent enabling courts to strip Christian parents of the right to raise their own children according to their faith."
Emily Bickford described what Wednesday nights look like now – the night she and Ava used to drive to Calvary together for youth group.
"She'd say, 'I don't understand why I can't just go if this goes against the Constitution,'" Bickford told Breitbart. "It was a mourning process for her."
If the Maine Supreme Court won't fix this, Liberty Counsel has already committed to taking Bickford v. Bradeen to the U.S. Supreme Court.
They built this trap on purpose.
The only thing standing between that blueprint and every Christian parent in America is whether any court is still willing to dismantle it.
Sources:
- Lowell Cauffiel, "Exclusive: Girl Kept from Church, Bible, and Christian Friends by Portland Judge Awaits Appeals Court Ruling," Breitbart, June 6, 2026.
- Mat Staver, "Maine Supreme Court To Hear Religious Freedom Case," Liberty Counsel, November 12, 2025.
- "Maine Custody Fight Puts Faith Rights On Trial," Intercessors for America, November 21, 2025.
- "Maine judge rules Calvary Chapel is a 'cult' and bans a mother from taking her daughter to church," Standing for Freedom Center, December 4, 2025.
- "Judge Orders Maine Mom Not to Take Her Daughter to Church or Read Her the Bible," CBN News, November 18, 2025.
