{"id":105736,"date":"2016-04-12T18:51:16","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T00:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/appeals-court-restores-utah-ban-on-polygamy\/"},"modified":"2016-04-12T18:51:16","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T00:51:16","slug":"appeals-court-restores-utah-ban-on-polygamy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/appeals-court-restores-utah-ban-on-polygamy\/","title":{"rendered":"Appeals court restores Utah ban on polygamy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brady
Brady Williams, who has five wives, testifies during a hearing in Salt Lake City. A U.S. appeals court dismissed a landmark decision that decriminalized polygamy in Utah.<\/span>Associated Press file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Others cheered the decision that they say will help authorities prosecute people for crimes tied to the practice, such as underage marriage and sexual assault.<\/p>\n

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a 2013 ruling that struck down key parts of Utah\u2019s law against bigamy, or holding multiple marriage licenses. U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups had found the state violated polygamists\u2019 right to privacy and religious freedom.<\/p>\n

The appeals court ruled that Waddoups should not have considered a lawsuit from Kody Brown and his four wives because they were never charged with a crime and there was little chance they would be.<\/p>\n

The decision brings back a rule forbidding married people from living with a second purported \u201cspouse,\u201d making Utah\u2019s law stricter than those in every other state and creating a threat of arrest for plural families. Like most polygamous families in Utah, Brown is legally married to one wife and \u201cspiritually married\u201d to the others.<\/p>\n

State authorities have long said they don\u2019t go after polygamists who otherwise follow the law, and they reiterated that stance after the ruling. Officials wanted the clause kept on the books to help in criminal cases related to polygamy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want them to come out of any shadows to report crimes,\u201d Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors pointed to Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned polygamous sect leader convicted of assaulting girls he considered wives. Authorities have recently cracked down on his sect on the Utah-Arizona border, charging leaders in a multimillion-dollar food stamp fraud scheme. A jury in Phoenix also found the towns denied nonbelievers basic services such as police protection.<\/p>\n

The Browns have never belonged to Jeffs\u2019 group, and lumping in good, honest polygamist families with him isn\u2019t fair, said Brady Williams, who has five wives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re only guilty of trying to love a different way than the norm,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are marginalizing a minority class in the United States. That\u2019s unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Browns will appeal the ruling, either asking the 10th Circuit to reconsider or taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, said their lawyer, Jonathan Turley.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe underlying rights of religious freedom and free speech are certainly too great to abandon,\u201d Turley said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The family has said other laws exist to target crimes linked to plural marriages and that banning the practice can sow distrust of authority. They argue their show is evidence that polygamous marriages can be just as healthy and monogamous ones.<\/p>\n

Kristyn Decker, a former polygamous wife, disagrees. She says that people don\u2019t report problems amid pressure to avoid casting the practice in a bad light.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have all been told over and over again, \u2018We need to protect the principle of plural marriage at any cost,\u2019\u201d said Decker, who argued that the ban lets authorities get a foot in the door.<\/p>\n

The state said the appeals court made the right call.<\/p>\n

There are about 30,000 polygamists in Utah, according to court documents. They believe polygamy brings exaltation in heaven \u2013 a legacy of the early Mormon church. The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned the practice in 1890 and strictly prohibits it today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Williams, who has five wives, testifies during a hearing in Salt Lake City. A U.S. appeals court dismissed a landmark decision that decriminalized polygamy in Utah.Associated Press file Others cheered the decision that they say will help authorities prosecute people for crimes tied to the practice, such as underage marriage and sexual assault. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5990,5843],"tags":[463,337,121],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-105736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-living","tag-mormon","tag-television","tag-utah"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105736"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}