“Sister Wives” TV star Kody Brown is taking his case to Washington, as his attorneys have filed a last-ditch Supreme Court appeal in Brown’s “plural family” case.
On Monday, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley filed a request for the high court to take Brown’s appeal. Since 2010, Brown and his four “Sister Wives” have starred in a reality show on the TLC network that documents their lifestyle in Utah and Nevada.
Brown has been in court trying to determine if there is a constitutional right to his plural family lifestyle. Brown is legally married to one woman and also “spiritually married” to three other women at the same time. Two years ago, Brown and his attorneys won a significant victory in a federal court in Utah.
Before that in 2011, Brown sued the state of Utah after episodes of “Sister Wives” were shown on TLC, and Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman threatened to prosecute Brown under the state’s anti-polygamy laws. Brown and his family moved to Nevada in reaction to the threat from Buhman. Then, Buhman adopted policies that would exempt the Brown family from the Utah law.
A federal judge, Clark Waddoups, handed Brown's cause a big victory when he struck down part of a Utah state law making it a crime to “cohabit with another person” if the partners weren’t legally married to each other. The state of Utah then appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which overturned the decision made by Waddoups. A three-judge federal appeals court panel ruled the case as “moot,” since Brown didn’t face prosecution from Utah County.
After failing to get the full Tenth Circuit bench to hear Brown’s appeal, Turley filed paperwork with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, arguing that the case was about Brown’s constitutional rights.
“The panel ruled entirely on mootness grounds and did not address the merits of the constitutional violations committed in the case,” Turley argued on his blog. “The Tenth Circuit did not reach any of the constitutional violations of religious freedom, equal protection, due process, or free speech. Instead, it ruled that the district court should have dismissed the case after Buhman announced, in the middle of litigation, that he no longer intended to prosecute the Browns and others similarly situated.”
Our Supreme Court correspondent, Lyle Denniston, analyzed the likely appeal in the case for us in August.
Denniston noted that Brown, his family, and their legal counsel contend that “all cohabitating adults live under the continual threat of prosecution and remain labeled as felons under the [Utah] law.” But the barriers to the Court’s acceptance of this particular case remain steep.
“The Justices tend to leave undisturbed lower court rulings that are so closely tied to specific facts. Only if the Justices see the procedural issues the Browns will raise as intriguing is the case likely to be taken on for a decision,” he wrote.
