A Utah polygamist is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review his bigamy conviction, arguing the state’s law is used to target a religious minority for relationships others enjoy without consequence.
In his petition, Rodney H. Holm also asks the nation’s highest court to reconsider whether the polygamy ban enshrined in its 1879 Reynolds decision is justified today, given modern customs and more recent rulings on liberty and privacy rights.
The petition does not challenge the Reynolds provision that affirmed the right of states to regulate marriage; instead, it questions state efforts to regulate intimate relationships that occur outside marriage.
“Widespread popular departure from traditional marriage practices has made the anti-polygamy laws, like laws against cohabitation, adultery, and fornication, anachronistic,” the petition states. “These laws are not enforced against those practicing contemporary lifestyles, but are asserted as weapons, in this case, against those living a traditional, family-grounded religious-based life.”
Holm’s petition hinges on liberty rights, due process, free exercise and jurisdictional claims. The Utah Attorney General’s Office will have 30 days to respond to the petition; it could be months before the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to hear the case.
The petition joins another lawsuit currently seeking a higher court test of the polygamy ban, though the other case’s challenge stems from denial of a marriage license.
Holm, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was convicted in 2003 on a bigamy charge related to his 1998 religious sealing to Ruth Stubbs. At the time, the former Hildale police officer was 32 and Stubbs was 16, though age was not an issue in the bigamy prosecution.
The FLDS church, based in Hildale and the adjoining town of Colorado City, Ariz., considers plural marriage a religious obligation. The fundamentalist Mormon sect is one of several that carry on the practice.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints publicly abandoned the practice in 1890.
