Montana polygamy ban challenged

Montana polygamy ban challenged

Friday 28 August 2015 at 3:49 PM ET by Taylor Brailey

©  WikiMedia (National Archives)

[JURIST] Three individuals in a polygynous domestic relationship on Friday filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] in the US District Court for the Western District of Montana [official website], challenging Montana's law [text] banning polygamy, following Yellowstone County officials' denial of a marriage license to them. The three wish for their polygamous relationship to be legally recognized in light of the Supreme Court's decision that legalized [JURIST report] same-sex marriage. The complainants believe that their marriage should be recognized by that decision. Deputy Yellowstone County Attorney Kevin Gillen explained [press release] the reason why their marriage license was denied in the first place:

There is nothing in that ruling that describes the arrangement you seek to establish. Throughout the ruling, the majority opinion references marriage between two people. That ruling did not expand the number of persons involved in a marriage; the ruling only acknowledged fundamental rights of a person who wishes to marry another person.

Nathan Collier claims that the three are "not trying to redefine what marriage is to anybody else," but are "only defining what marriage is" to them. In 2014 a judge for the US District Court for the District of Utah [official website] struck down [JURIST report] portions of Utah's anti-bigamy statute that were challenged by the family of TLC's reality TV show Sister Wives [media website]. Like the current complainants, the plaintiffs to that lawsuit challenged Utah's law as a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. While polygamy is recognized in most of Africa and the Middle East, it is illegal in most of North and South America, Europe and China. In 2005 the US District Court for the District of Utah rejected a similar lawsuit [JURIST report] brought against Utah's Anti-Bigamy Statute, reaffirming the 1879 US Supreme Court case Reynolds v. United States [text], which upheld a conviction under an anti-polygamy law as constitutional.