Today the briefs of the Brown family arrived at the Denver courthouse in the Sister Wives case now before the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. (The actual electronic filing was made the night before under the federal ECF system). I continue to serve as lead counsel to the Brown family in their successful challenge of the criminalization of polygamy in Utah. Last year, United States District Court Judge Clarke Waddoups issued the final decision striking down the cohabitation crime used against polygamist in Utah. The State has appealed to the federal court of appeals in Denver and below is our defense of that decision by Judge Waddoups. I want to thank my friend and local counsel (and GW Alum) Adam Alba and all of the students who have worked so hard on this case over the years. This brief benefited from the assistance of Patrick Fenior and Emily Hoyle as well as assistance from GW grad (and my local counsel in the Al-Timimi case) Thomas Huff and my assistant Seth Tate.
We will let the brief speak for itself, but we are eager to present our case in oral argument before the Tenth Circuit. District Court Judge Waddoups made our task all the easier with a brilliant and powerful opinion (discussed and attached here) in defense of the rights of privacy, religious freedom, and due process. (and here) Defending his opinion before the Tenth Circuit is great privilege as is the representation of the Brown family, which has shown tremendous patience and grace throughout this long litigation. While we remain surprised by Utah’s effort to curtail the religious freedom and due process rights protected under the decision, we remain both confident in our position and committed to this case. It is a great honor to defend these constitutional rights and we are prepared to do so as far and as long as it takes to prevail in the litigation.
We waited to post the brief until after we confirmed receipt today. The final version is linked below.
We do not currently have a date for oral argument but I will post the date when it is available. The government has 14 days to file an optional response with the Court.
Jonathan Turley
Lead Counsel
Will JT be bringing home a new “wife” from Utah? I mean, only if he has a vision in that hot desert sun and God orders it….
http://www.designntrend.com/articles/47772/20150417/sister-wives-season-6-spoilers-robyn-s-ex-husband-delays.htm
“At that time, Robyn expressed her gratitude to Meri and said on the show, “This woman loves my children enough to give up her marriage and that’s the most beautiful love.””
Who knows how if all will turn out? I guess that’s one of the reasons people still watch. They are on their 6th season.
I’m just wondering, did God tell this highly religious man to break his sacred wedding vows in order to bring a 4th woman into his bed? Usually these creeps have a convenient “vision” that coincidentally directs them to take a younger, hotter wife.
Bizarre. Which one is the first wife, who “voluntarily” gave up any legal right to spousal support, property, and Social Security survivor’s benefits? I’m guessing she’s the one who never smiles in the pictures. She must have zero self-esteem. Anyway, I see no problem at this point in inviting Boko Haram to immigrate to Utah. One big happy family, hahaha.
The adoption was desired by the entire family, they all agreed with it.
The first wife is still living in the polygamous relationship happily, last I heard, but she is no longer the legal wife.
He is divorced from the first wife, the legal one. He then legally married the last wife in order to be able to adopt her children. This was done with the blessing of the first wife.
Annie: That’s odd. How could he adopt children of a woman he can’t legally marry? And being responsible for three wives and 13 children, then adopting or taking in two unrelated children in order to “marry” a 4th wife…wow. He must be an incredible egotistical ass to have so little regard for the family he already has.
I don’t think I could ever live in a polygamous relationship, but if the participants are consenting adults, it’s really not the business of the State to criminalize their living arraignments. The children of the Browns seem well adjusted, unless or until one of them messes up like in the Duggar family and it’s made public, they seem quite normal.
Karen S: I can’t help but wonder whether civilization has reached its peak and is now in decline. When Western society wants to accept and normalize the practices of ignorant backward societies, there doesn’t appear to be much hope for the future.
Actually the last wife of Kody Brown is a divorcee with two children, now three, one with him. I believe he actually adopted the two children from the first marriage.
And here’s another risk factor for children in polygamous societies around the globe:
“As bad as polygamy is for women, it is perhaps even worse for the well-being of children. Because the polygamous wives tend to be younger and less well educated, their children suffer in not having more mature mothers, as would be more typical of their counterparts in a monogamous society. The children suffer also from having multiple stepmothers involved in ongoing struggles with each other. Half-siblings must compete for limited resources while having weaker genetic bonds to mitigate the conflict. While these extended-family relationships could in theory be a source of support, more often they endanger children. Henrich’s study explained:
Much empirical work in monogamous societies indicates that higher degrees of relatedness among household members are associated with lower rates of abuse, neglect and homicide. Living in the same household with genetically unrelated adults is the single biggest risk factor for abuse, neglect and homicide of children. Stepmothers are 2.4 times more likely to kill their stepchildren than birth mothers, and children living with an unrelated parent are between 15 and 77 times more likely to die “accidentally.””
Only a fool repeats an experiment and expects a different result.
The Browns come across as a very loving family. But they were very selective about who they would put on TV as the face of polygamy.
Ross: Thanks for the info. I would like to see the documentary. I’ll see if I can locate it online.
Here’s another inevitable problem with polygamy. The men all want young virgins. No one wants to marry a divorcee or widow.
So now there is a public information campaign to take more wives to take all those “spinsters” off the street. Their government require women to have a male guardian, so these older women are left financially unstable with no voice at all.
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Saudi-men-push-for-more-wives
And, finally, there is the predictable violence in polygamous societies among unmarried men. Look at Boko Haram’s focus on kidnapping women and marrying them off as sexual slaves. Polygamous societies also tend to have a much lower age of marriage for girls than monogamous, because there is great pressure for these girls to be given as brides. Also marriage of a much younger girl to a much older male has a statistically higher rate of domestic violence, in which either the husband or the wife kills the spouse. Sometimes it’s the only way a girl thinks she can escape.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/05/5338/
So . . . for anyone who thinks polygamy could be healthy for women or children:
“Co-wife conflict is ubiquitous in polygynous households. From anthropology, a review of ethnographic data from 69 non-sororal polygynous societies from around the globe reveals no case where co-wife relations could be described as harmonious, and no hint that women’s access to the means of production had any mitigating impact on conflict.”
A Persian friend once told me how much he enjoys watching the rich Arabs take their wives out shopping in Dubai. The wealthy royals don’t have trouble with meeting the financial support obligations. They meet the requirement for equality by buying all the wives the same thing. If one wife wants a yellow silk scarf, then by golly, all 4 of them are going to get yellow silk scarves, even if they hate the color yellow. They might scratch each other with jealousy in other matters, but at least he can claim he gives them the same money.
I don’t have any problem with the Browns having the right to live as Sister Wives (even though I wish I could talk some sense into those nice ladies.) Legally, it’s the same as a wife being fine with her husband having multiple kept mistresses, even though in this case this is how they live as a family.
My line is the government legalizing polygamy, in which case government benefits are involved.
It has been exhaustively proven that the math simply does not work. We are seeing similar situations in China, where females have been removed from the population by selective abortion. The One Child law heavily weights the desire for a son over a daughter. Single men have to go outside the country to fine a wife.
http://americanbedu.com/2010/11/06/saudi-arabia-the-cover-up-of-polygamy/
Research shows how polygamy is injurious to the mental health of women in Saudi Arabia, as well as children:
http://www.dawn.com/news/1135346
“As the number of wives and consequently the number of children grew, there were fewer resources and lesser attention or affection to go around. In cases where the father had more than 10 children from two or more wives, the children reported that he could often not recognise them, asking them to which mother they belonged when they went to ask for pocket money or school fees.”
“In recent years, polygamy has become more normalised in Pakistan’s marital culture, offered as a solution for a variety of societal ills and romanticised in tear-jerker soap operas regularly and consumed by a disparate section of society. With a largely absent feminist movement, its popularity is likely to rise as it is repackaged as a form of religious authenticity.”
“The wives, in turn, are imagined as having only economic needs, which once met signal a fulfilment of all obligations toward them. The contribution of the two studies, conducted in cultural contexts as disparate as the UAE and Malaysia, reflect, instead, the empirical reality of polygamy — the situation as it actually exists and the neglect, abuse, depression and jealousy that is bred as a result.
For those who may not particularly be interested in the welfare of women, the quarrels, jealousy, manipulation and competition that become a part of the lives of children born of polygamous marriages may serve as a compelling argument against its practice. Perfect justice, the studies on polygamy show, is not possible for fallible humans, and anything predicated on it is, unsurprisingly, both problematic and perilous for all.”
Normalizing polygamy, as far as legalizing it, would have very negative consequences for women and children in this country.
I hope polygamy never goes beyond the Sister Wive concept ignored by the government. I hope that in the interests of making everyone comfortable, the totalitarians in charge don’t legalize polygamy, benefits and all, increasing it’s spread.
I would bake a cake for the Browns (and hope that one day those ladies have a catharsis), but I would not do so for a legalized arranged polygamous marriage of an 18 year old to a 60 year old, with 7 other wives he doesn’t support but the government does.
Just Some Guy:Yes, the brief noticeably avoids mentioning children, but take a look at the Daily Mail link posted (near the top) by Annie. Scroll down to the 2d or 3d photo of the whole clan. It appears at last count there were 16 kids.
TinEar:
Reich was warning about pre-Great Depression wage inequality conditions.
Unlike the 1930’s, what’s scary today is that many Americans aren’t paying off their credit cards each month and the working poor (which include military personnel) are obtaining payday loans at skyhigh interest rates because they can’t make it to the next payday. Congress also destroyed most of the Glass Steagal Act protections governing banks and financial institutions.
Many Americans would also be shocked at the number of parents and senior citizens working in the fast food industry – not just teenagers.
If the minimum wage were adjusted for the inflation in living expenses it would exceed $12 hour. The working poor spend almost every penny, so a payroll taxcut or minimum wage increase immediately boosts the economy. Merely money circulating increases tax revenues as well. If they receive higher wages they need fewer payday loans at skyhigh interest rates. Reagan’s economic advisor, David Stockman, also said that the “trickle down” theory does not work as it is being advertised today.
Ross: I suppose it takes a village to raise a child in these economic times. Or at least a village in China, because that is where all our money is going. It does seem hard to believe Reich’s argument that we are living at Depression Era levels of wage inequality. Have you ever seen some of the photos of how people lived during the Depression? The photos of the Dust Bowl migrants are appalling. Perhaps Reich meant that the relative wage inequality is more extreme, meaning that there are more exceedingly wealthy people compared to the lower income wage earners. But looking around, it appears that people in the U.S., even those who are considered poor, have a much higher standard of living than when I was a child in the 1970s, much less the 1930s.
Or could these marriages actually improve the quality of life for some children?
In economist Robert Reich’s new documentary “Inequality for All”, Reich points out that we are at Great Depression era levels of wage inequality. The minimum wage hasn’t kept up with expenses which was one of the root causes of the Great Depression – consumers lost purchasing power.
Some parents are working 3 jobs and still not making ends meet – wouldn’t it benefit the children to have some extra parents hanging around while their other spouses are working 3 jobs at minimum wage?