‘Sister Wives’: What Happened to Kody Brown’s Lawsuit Against the State of Utah?
In 2010, Kody Brown and his wives Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robin went public with their polygamist lifestyle in what would become the hit reality show Sister Wives. As depicted in the second season of the TLC show, the Brown family fled Utah out of fear of being prosecuted for bigamy.
After establishing new roots in Las Vegas, the Brown family filed a lawsuit against the state of Utah to end criminal prosecution against polygamists. Find out more about how this lawsuit played out below.
Why did the Brown family sue the state of Utah?
In 2011, Kody Brown, the family patriarch of the Brown family, filed a lawsuit against Utah Governor Gary Herbert, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, and Utah County Attorney Jeffrey R. Buhman. According to the CATO Institute, Brown v. Buhman is the official court case filing.
Kody, along with his four wives, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn, stated that they feared prosecution by the state of Utah after they went public with their lifestyle on their TLC reality show Sister Wives in 2010.
The Browns even uprooted their family from their Lehi, Utah, home and fled to Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2011. However, fans speculate that some of this urgency served as a way for the Brown family to drum up viewership for their show.
The Brown family was not in danger in Utah
While Sister Wives did give the state of Utah a reason to investigate Kody Brown and his wives for the crime of bigamy, the Brown family was not in any real danger in Utah. The state of Utah has a long history with polygamy.
The Browns were not the first or last fundamentalist Mormons in Utah to partake in the practice of having more than one wife. Therefore, the crime of bigamy by polygamists in Utah was more or less treated like receiving a traffic violation where further prosecution would only occur if signs of abuse or other criminal activity were present.
After the Brown family filed their suit in the U.S. Federal courts, the criminal case against the Browns in Utah was dropped within a year. However, the lawsuit continued to progress through the courts.
In December 2013, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups ruled in favor of the Brown family, stating that the state of Utah could continue to ban multiple marriage licenses but that the state’s anti-polygamy law that prohibited multiple cohabitations or “spiritual unions” was unconstitutional.
According to Scotus Blog, three years after the initial Federal ruling, the state of Utah decided to appeal it. In April 2016, a panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ordered the district court to dismiss the earlier ruling while citing “standing grounds.”
The panel of judges deemed Brown’s case invalid. The Utah County Attorney’s Office already had a policy that prevented polygamist families from being prosecuted for bigamy unless the family was also accused of child bigamy, child abuse, fraud, or other crimes.
Laws against polygamists have changed in Utah
In January 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court declared it dropped the Brown family’s appeal of the lower court’s ruling. The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the family’s case meant that Utah’s anti-polygamy law would remain effective. However, while the Brown family’s case was not outwardly successful, it did help to change laws against polygamists in the state.
According to U.S. News, Utah decided to decriminalize polygamy in 2020. Essentially, the law was changed in response to the suit to avoid future litigation. The new state law reduced the crime of bigamy by polygamists from a third-degree felony to an infraction similar to a speeding ticket.
Where the state had previously defined bigamy as cohabitation or “spiritual marriages” to multiple partners, it now only addresses cases of bigamy where an individual tries to enter into legal unions with more than one partner.
