Opinion ID: 2633488
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Religious Freedom Claim

Text: ¶ 155 Holm essentially argues that the State may not subject him to a criminal penalty under a generally applicable criminal law for his religiously motivated practice of polygamy because imposing that penalty is inconsistent with our constitution's protection of religious freedom. The State does not dispute the sincerity of Holm's religious motivation, and given Holm's established membership in the FLDS community, there appears to be no reason to doubt Holm's assertion that polygamy is a central tenet of his religion. Resolution of this issue therefore turns on the interpretation of the religious freedom guarantees found in the Utah Constitution. ¶ 156 As an initial matter, I accept the premise that our state constitution's guarantee of religious freedom encompasses religiously motivated conduct as well as belief. See, e.g., Utah Const. art. I, § 1 (recognizing right to worship); id. art. I, § 4 (guaranteeing free exercise of religion); see also Michael W. McConnell, The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion, 103 Harv. L.Rev. 1409, 1459-60 (1990) [hereinafter McConnell, Origins ] (concluding that the terms exercise and worship in late eighteenth century state constitutions both denoted conduct, though the term worship is usually limited to ritual or ceremonial acts). Thus, Holm's conduct  cohabiting with Ruth Stubbs after participating in a religious ceremony with her while legally married to another woman  qualifies as religious exercise within the meaning of article I, section 4. ¶ 157 The question remains whether, and under what circumstances, our constitution requires an exemption from generally applicable criminal laws. This court held in State v. Green, 2004 UT 76, ¶ 37, 99 P.3d 820, that no such exemption was required under the federal constitution's Free Exercise Clause. However, as the majority states, We have never determined whether the free exercise clause of article I, section 4 [and the other related clauses] of the Utah Constitution provide[ ] protection over and above that provided by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Jeffs v. Stubbs, 970 P.2d 1234, 1249 (Utah 1998). I believe that governmental burdens on religiously motivated conduct should be subject to heightened scrutiny, a proposition that a number of my colleagues, past and present, have also previously endorsed. See Green, 2004 UT 76, ¶ 70, 99 P.3d 820 (Durrant, J., concurring); see also Wood v. Univ. of Utah Med. Ctr., 2002 UT 134, ¶ 43 n. 1, 67 P.3d 436 (Durham, C.J., dissenting) (recognizing that this court employed heightened scrutiny when conducting an article I, section 4 analysis in Soc'y of Separationists v. Whitehead, 870 P.2d 916 (Utah 1993)). ¶ 158 In reaching the conclusion that the framers of our state constitution intended such an analysis, I look first to the United States Supreme Court's decision in Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 25 L.Ed. 244 (1879). In light of the fact that Reynolds was issued in 1879, seventeen years before the 1896 ratification of our state constitution, and the fact that the underlying controversy in Reynolds originated in the Utah territory, it would be disingenuous to assert that the Court's interpretation of free exercise in Reynolds did not inform the understanding of the framers when they inserted an identically phrased clause in article I, section 4 of the Utah Constitution. The Court has subsequently interpreted Reynolds as reject[ing] the claim that criminal laws against polygamy could not be constitutionally applied to those whose religion commanded the practice. Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 879, 110 S.Ct. 1595, 108 L.Ed.2d 876 (1990). However, I disagree that Reynolds' reasoning entirely foreclosed religion-based exemptions from criminal laws. ¶ 159 The Reynolds Court framed the issue under consideration as follows: whether religious belief can be accepted as a justification of an overt act made criminal by the law of the land. 98 U.S. at 162. In analyzing this issue, the Court relied on Thomas Jefferson's formulations almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the Free Exercise Clause. Id. at 164. The Court first quoted the 1786 Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, drafted by Jefferson, indicating that religious freedom extends only until principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order. Id. at 163 (internal quotation omitted). It then quoted Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, in which he stated that man has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. Id. at 164 (internal quotation omitted). Summarizing these statements, the Court concluded that Congress was free, consistent with the Free Exercise Clause, to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order. Id. ¶ 160 The Court then analyzed whether the practice of polygamy or polygamous marriage was in violation of social duties or subversive of good order. It determined that polygamy was indeed an offence against society, and that punishing polygamy was therefore within Congress's legislative power. Id. at 165-66. Finally, reaching the question of religion-based exemption, the Court concluded that the practice of polygamy could be punished even when the practice was motivated by religious belief. Id. at 166-67. The Court observed that allowing individuals to excuse such conduct, which it compared to human sacrifice or self-immolation, because of religious motivation would effectively permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Id. ¶ 161 The essential feature of the Reynolds Court's analysis was its conclusion that the practice of polygamy fell within the category of conduct in violation of social duties or subversive of good order. Id. at 164. In the Reynolds Court's view, polygamy was an odious practice that threatened to infect the surrounding society with notions of patriarchal despotism, undermining the democratic principles on which our governmental structure was founded. Id. at 164, 166. Clearly, the purpose of criminalizing polygamy, according to Reynolds, was to protect society and the state from such harm. Allowing individuals to engage in polygamy for religious reasons would have thus permitted them to inflict the very harm the statute was designed to prevent. The same is true in the two other examples given in Reynolds: (1) exempting someone engaged in religiously motivated human sacrifice from a criminal law against murder would allow that person to kill another; and (2) exempting someone wishing to burn herself on her husband's funeral pyre from a criminal law against suicide would allow that person to kill herself. Id. at 165-66. ¶ 162 Understood in this way, Reynolds is consistent with those early state constitutions that, by their express terms, guaranteed free exercise of religion to the extent such exercise was consistent with public peace and order. [14] Indeed, when discussing its Reynolds decision in Davis v. Beason, 133 U.S. 333, 10 S.Ct. 299, 33 L.Ed. 637 (1890), the Court explicitly referred to such state constitutional provisions. Id. at 348, 10 S.Ct. 299 Note (noting that several state constitutions have declared expressly that [religious] freedom shall not be construed to excuse acts of licentiousness, or to justify practices inconsistent with the peace and safety of the State). Those who have studied these provisions are divided over whether their drafters contemplated a case-by-case examination in the courts of the particular conduct being criminalized, or whether the violation of any law was per se considered a breach of the peace. Compare McConnell, Origins, supra ¶ 156, at 1462 (construing these clauses to exempt religiously motivated conduct from [generally applicable] laws up to the point that such conduct breached public peace or safety), with Philip A. Hamburger, A Constitutional Right of Religious Exemption: An Historical Perspective, 60 Geo. Wash. L.Rev. 915, 918 (1992) (indicating that the phrase contra pacem, or breach of the peace, was understood in the eighteenth century to mean any criminal violation of law). Under either view, it seems clear that there is some conduct that a state may refuse to permit, regardless of its motivation. ¶ 163 I agree that the religious freedom provisions in our state constitution were not intended to exempt religious practitioners from criminal punishment for acts that cause injury or harm to society at large or to other individuals. Moreover, I recognize that by defining conduct as criminal, our legislature has signaled its judgment that this conduct generally does harm society or individuals to a degree that warrants criminal punishment. See 1 Charles E. Torcia, Wharton's Criminal Law § 7 (15th ed.1993) (distinguishing crime, which is a public wrong since it implies injury to the state, from tort, which is a private wrong since it involves injury to an individual); Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 14-13, at 1270 (2d ed.1988) [hereinafter Tribe, American Constitutional Law ] (predicting that, [b]eyond... paternalistic laws, ... [free exercise] exemptions from criminal laws will be rare). In our role as the state's court of last resort, called upon to identify the boundaries of the constitution, [we must] giv[e] appropriate deference to the policy choices of the citizens' elected representatives. Judd ex rel. Montgomery v. Drezga, 2004 UT 91, ¶ 22, 103 P.3d 135. ¶ 164 That this is generally true does not, however, foreclose close scrutiny of the circumstances of a particular case in order to determine whether a prosecution for conduct statutorily defined as criminal is truly directed against the harm the statute was intended to prevent, where the conduct in the particular case is religiously motivated. The right to the free exercise of religion [is] a concept upon which our country was founded and a protection deeply ingrained in the hearts and minds of American citizens. Green, 2004 UT 76, ¶ 70, 99 P.3d 820 (Durrant, J., concurring). This court has recognized that this is particularly true for citizens of our state. Soc'y of Separationists, 870 P.2d at 935. I believe our constitution expresses this fundamental interest in protecting religious freedom. Given the fundamental nature of the constitutional interest involved and the undeniable burden that criminal penalties impose, heightened scrutiny is warranted. Cf. Gallivan v. Walker, 2002 UT 89, ¶ 40, 54 P.3d 1069 (recognizing that a heightened degree of scrutiny is required in a uniform-operation-of-laws analysis where a fundamental right is implicated). ¶ 165 Moreover, I am cognizant of the fact that the body of criminal law has expanded over time as the state has generally expanded its reach into many areas that before went unregulated. Criminal statutes today punish conduct not only where the targeted conduct is harmful in itself, such as laws criminalizing murder, but also where the targeted conduct is closely tied to other harmful activity. Given this fact, there may be circumstances where religiously motivated conduct will not implicate the same state interests that are legitimately served by prosecuting those whose conduct was without similar motivation, simply because of the nature of the religious practice at issue. For example, the religiously motivated use of drugs defined as controlled substances may in some cases be so far removed from the context within which illegal drug use typically occurs that applying the controlled substances law to the religiously motivated use simply does not serve the government's legitimate interest in criminalizing drug usewhich involves not only protecting people from the harmful physical effects of such substances, but also eliminating the harms that accompany the drug trafficking industry. [15] Thus, the few instances in which courts have indicated that a generally applicable criminal law may not apply to a religiously motivated actor have done so on the basis that the religiously motivated conduct at issue did not create a genuine risk of harm. [16] Applying this principle, I conclude that in some rare circumstances an individual must be exempted from the operation of a criminal law where the religiously motivated conduct at issue, while technically within the purview of the criminal prohibition, does not threaten the harm that the law was intended to prevent. ¶ 166 Applying heightened scrutiny, I conclude that imposing criminal penalties on Holm's religiously motivated entry into a religious union with Ruth Stubbs is an unconstitutional burden under our constitution's religious freedom protections. This is so whether typical strict scrutiny is applied, [17] or the standard set forth in United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 381-82, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968) (determining whether a general law may be applied to expressive conduct consistent with the Free Speech Clause), which some have suggested provides a more suitable framework for free exercise analysis. [18] Under either test, the burden on the religious conduct at issue must be necessary to serve a strong governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of religious freedom. I do not believe that any of the strong state interests normally served by the Utah bigamy law require that the law apply to the religiously motivated conduct at issue hereentering a religious union with more than one woman. [19] ¶ 167 I note at the outset that the State has not suggested that section 76-7-101 furthers a governmental interest in preserving democratic society. I agree that no such interest is implicated here. As discussed above, the federal government's nineteenth century criminalization of polygamy in the Utah Territory, as construed by the Reynolds Court, was intended to address the harm to democratic society that LDS Church polygamy was thought to embody. See Soc'y of Separationists, 870 P.2d at 924 (recognizing that the Morrill Act of 1862 was aimed specifically at the LDS Church's practice of polygamy in Utah); Gordon, The Mormon Question, supra n. 9, at 30-115 (describing the nineteenth century development of the idea that the LDS Church's practice of polygamy threatened American democracy). However, I do not presume that our modern criminal bigamy statute, enacted in 1973, addresses the same fearswhich have since been discounted by many as grounded more in bias than in fact [20]  that propelled Congress' legislation a century earlier. ¶ 168 Indeed, this court previously set forth, in Green, a list of state interests served by the modern statute that omits any reference to such a concern. There, we first explained that the modern statute serves the state's interest in regulating marriage and in maintaining the network of laws that surrounds the institution of marriage. Green, 2004 UT 76, ¶¶ 37-38, 99 P.3d 820. We cited a Tenth Circuit case that described this network of laws as `clearly establishing [Utah's] compelling state interest in and commitment to a system of domestic relations based exclusively upon the practice of monogamy as opposed to plural marriage.' Id. ¶ 38 (quoting Potter v. Murray City, 760 F.2d 1065, 1070 (10th Cir.1985)). Here, the State has emphasized its interest in protecting monogamous marriage as a social institution. I agree that the state has an important interest in regulating marriage, but only insofar as marriage is understood as a legal status. See Green, 2004 UT 76, ¶ 71, 99 P.3d 820 (Durrant, J., concurring) (asserting that the State has a compelling interest in regulating and preserving the institution of marriage as that institution has been defined by the State (emphasis added)). In my view, the criminal bigamy statute protects marriage, as a legal union, by criminalizing the act of purporting to enter a second legal union. Such an act defrauds the state and perhaps an innocent spouse or purported partner. It also completely disregards the network of laws that regulate entry into, and the dissolution of, the legal status of marriage, and that limit to one the number of partners with which an individual may enjoy this status. The same harm is targeted by criminalizing the act of cohabiting with a partner after purportedly entering a second legal marriage with that partner. [21] ¶ 169 However, I do not believe the state's interest extends to those who enter a religious union with a second person but who do not claim to be legally married. For one thing, the cohabitation of unmarried couples, who live together as if they are married in the sense that they share a household and a sexually intimate relationship, is commonplace in contemporary society. See, e.g., Utah Governor's Comm'n on Marriage & Utah State Univ. Extension, Marriage in Utah Study 35-36 (2003), available at http://www.utahmarriage.org (indicating that of the 42% of Utah residents between the ages of 18 and 64 who were unmarried, 30% to 46% were currently cohabiting outside of marriage). Even outside the community of those who practice polygamy for religious reasons, such cohabitation may occur where one person is legally married to someone other than the person with whom he or she is cohabiting. Yet parties to such relationships are not prosecuted under the criminal bigamy statute, the criminal fornication statute, Utah Code Ann. § 76-7-104 (2003), or, as far as I am aware, the criminal adultery statute, [22] id. § 76-7-103 (2003), even where their conduct violates these laws. See, e.g., Berg v. State, 2004 UT App 337, ¶ 15, 100 P.3d 261 (indicating that consenting adults are not prosecuted under Utah's fornication or sodomy laws). ¶ 170 That the state perceives no need to prosecute nonreligiously motivated cohabitation, whether one of the parties to the cohabitation is married to someone else or not, demonstrates that, in the absence of any claim of legal marriage, neither participation in a religious ceremony nor cohabitation can plausibly be said to threaten marriage as a social or legal institution. The state's concern with regulating marriage, as I understand it, has to do with determining who is entitled to enter that legal status, what benefits are accorded, and what obligations and restrictions are imposed thereby. This has lately emerged as an issue of surprising complexity, with various commentators attempting to define the nexus between a couple's private relationship and the network of laws surrounding marriage as a legally recognized status. [23] Our state's network of laws may indeed presume a particular domestic structurewhether it be that a man will live with only one woman, that a couple living together will enter a legal union, or that each household will contain a single nuclear family. However, any interest the state has in maintaining this network of laws does not logically justify its imposition of criminal penalties on those who deviate from that domestic structure, particularly when they do so for religious reasons. In my view, such criminal penalties are simply unnecessary to further the state's interest in protecting marriage. [24] ¶ 171 The state's abandonment of common law marriage, and the proliferation of governmentally regulated marriage, contributes to my conclusion. As mentioned above, the state conditions entry into the legal status of marriage on the performance of certain steps beyond simply entering a marriage-like personal relationship. At the same time, the legal significance of this status has increased as federal and state governments have ventured ever further into regulating various aspects of individuals' lives. [25] The inevitable corollary to these two facets of governmental involvement with the institution of marriage is that some will consciously choose to form relationships outside the state-delineated boundaries of that institution. At common law, the choice of entering a marriage-like personal relationship without entering the legal status of marriage was less available because a man and a woman who appeared to be married were simply considered married in the eyes of the law. As discussed above, this is no longer the case. In an important sense, then, there has been a significant social and legal divergence between the choice to enter a personal relationship and the choice to enter the legal status of marriage. ¶ 172 Those who choose to live together without getting married enter a personal relationship that resembles a marriage in its intimacy but claims no legal sanction. They thereby intentionally place themselves outside the framework of rights and obligations that surrounds the marriage institution. While some in society may feel that the institution of marriage is diminished when individuals consciously choose to avoid it, it is generally understood that the state is not entitled to criminally punish its citizens for making such a choice, even if they do so with multiple partners or with partners of the same sex. The only distinction in this case is that when Holm consciously chose to enter into a personal relationship that he knew would not be legally recognized as marriage, he used religious terminology to describe this relationship. The terminology that he used  marriage and husband and wife  happens to coincide with the terminology used by the state to describe the legal status of married persons. That fact, however, is not sufficient for me to conclude that criminalizing this conduct is essential in order to protect the institution of marriage. ¶ 173 In this regard, the case before us resembles Spence v. Washington, 418 U.S. 405, 94 S.Ct. 2727, 41 L.Ed.2d 842 (1974). There, the United States Supreme Court held that a state law criminalizing the exhibition of the national flag with any extraneous material attached to it violated the defendant's First Amendment right to symbolically communicate his message through such a practice. Id. at 406, 94 S.Ct. 2727. In analyzing the issue under the O'Brien test, mentioned above, the Court assumed without deciding that the state had valid interests in preserving the national flag as an unalloyed symbol of our country and prevent[ing] the appropriation of a revered national symbol by an individual . . . where there was a risk that association of the symbol with a particular product or viewpoint might be taken erroneously as evidence of governmental endorsement. Id. at 412-13, 94 S.Ct. 2727. The Court nevertheless held that this interest did not justify the defendant's conviction because [t]here was no risk that [the defendant]'s acts would mislead viewers into assuming that the Government endorsed his viewpoint. Id. at 414, 94 S.Ct. 2727. In other words, the defendant was free to appropriate a revered national symbol for his own communicative purposes so long as he did not thereby purport to speak for the state. I similarly conclude here that an individual is free to appropriate the terminology of marriage, a revered social and legal institution, for his own religious purposes if he does not thereby purport to have actually acquired the legal status of marriage. ¶ 174 The second state interest served by the bigamy law, as recognized in Green, is in preventing marriage fraud, whereby an already-married individual fraudulently purports to enter a legal marriage with someone else, or attempts to procure government benefits associated with marital status. 2004 UT 76, ¶¶ 37-39, 99 P.3d 820. This interest focuses on preventing the harm caused to the state, to society, and to defrauded individuals when someone purports to have entered the legal status of marriage, but in fact is not eligible to validly enter that status because of a prior legal union. This interest is simply not implicated here, where no claim to the legal status of marriage has been made. ¶ 175 In Green, the court cited protecting vulnerable individuals from exploitation and abuse as the third state interest served by the bigamy statute. 2004 UT 76, ¶ 40, 99 P.3d 820. The court concluded that this was a legitimate state interest to which the criminal bigamy statute was rationally related for purposes of our First Amendment Free Exercise Clause analysis. Id. ¶ 41. The court rested this conclusion on the idea that perpetrators of other crimes not unusually attendant to the practice of polygamysuch as incest, sexual assault, statutory rape, and failure to pay child supportcould be prosecuted for bigamy in the absence of sufficient evidence to support a conviction on these other charges. Id. ¶ 40. Because the federal First Amendment analysis required only rational basis scrutiny, the court was content to rely on assertions in a student law review piece that polygamy was frequently related to other criminal conduct, together with two local cases, including the case of Green himself. Id. ¶ 40 & n. 14. However, reviewing this assessment in light of the heightened scrutiny I believe is called for here, I cannot conclude that the restriction that the bigamy law places on the religious freedom of all those who, for religious reasons, live with more than one woman is necessary to further the state's interest in this regard. Upon closer review, the student Note is unconvincing. [26] The State has provided no evidence of a causal relationship or even a strong correlation between the practice of polygamy, whether religiously motivated or not, and the offenses of incest, sexual assault, statutory rape, and failure to pay child support, cited in Green, id. ¶ 40. [27] Moreover, even assuming such a correlation did exist, neither the record nor the recent history of prosecutions of alleged polygamists warrants the conclusion that section 76-7-101 is a necessary tool for the state's attacks on such harms. [28] For one thing, I am unaware of a single instance where the state was forced to bring a charge of bigamy in place of other narrower charges, such as incest or unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, because it was unable to gather sufficient evidence to prosecute these other crimes. [29] The State has suggested that its initial ability to file bigamy charges allows it to gather the evidence required to prosecute those engaged in more specific crimes. Even if there were support for this claim in the record, I would consider it inappropriate to let stand a criminal law simply because it enables the state to conduct a fishing expedition for evidence of other crimes. Further, the State itself has indicated that it does not prosecute those engaged in religiously motivated polygamy under the criminal bigamy statute unless the person has entered a religious union with a girl under eighteen years old. Such a policy of selective prosecution reinforces my conclusion that a blanket criminal prohibition on religious polygamous unions is not necessary to further the state's interests, and suggests that a more narrowly tailored law would be just as effective. [30] ¶ 176 I do not reach this conclusion lightly. I acknowledge the possibility that other criminal conduct may accompany the act of bigamy. Such conduct may even, as was suggested in Green, be correlated with the practice of polygamy in a community that has isolated itself from the outside world, at least partially in fear of criminal prosecution for its religious practice. Indeed, the FLDS community in its current form has been likened to a cult, with allegations focusing on the power wielded by a single leader who exerts a high degree of control over followers, ranging from ownership of their property to the determination of persons with whom they may enter religious unions. [31] In the latter regard, reports of forcible unions between underage girls and older men within the FLDS community have recently appeared in the media. [32] Yet, the state does not criminalize cult membership, and for good reason. To do so would be to impose a criminal penalty based on status rather than conductlong considered antithetical to our notion of criminal justice. See Powell v. Texas, 392 U.S. 514, 533, 88 S.Ct. 2145, 20 L.Ed.2d 1254 (1968); Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 666-67, 82 S.Ct. 1417, 8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1962). Moreover, such a criminal law would require that the state make normative judgments distinguishing between communities that are actually cults and those that are voluntary associations based on common religious or other ideological beliefs. Our system of government has long eschewed this type of state interference. Rather, despite the difficulties that are always associated with gathering evidence in closed societies, the state is held to the burden of proving that individuals have engaged in conduct that is criminal because it is associated with actual harm. The State of Utah has criminal laws punishing incest, rape, unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, and domestic and child abuse. Any restrictions these laws place on the practice of religious polygamy are almost certainly justified. However, the broad criminalization of the religious practice itself as a means of attacking other criminal behavior is not. Cf. Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 538, 113 S.Ct. 2217, 124 L.Ed.2d 472 (1993) (The legitimate governmental interests in protecting the public health and preventing cruelty to animals could be addressed by restrictions stopping far short of a flat prohibition of all Santeria sacrificial practice.). ¶ 177 Although the argument has not been raised, I note that for similar reasons I could not uphold Holm's bigamy conviction on the basis that the religiously motivated conduct at issue is inherently harmful to children who grow up in polygamous homes, and are thereby exposed to the culture of polygamy. [33] Our previous rulings and legislative policy support this conclusion. For example, this court has previously held that those engaged in the practice of polygamy are not automatically disqualified from petitioning for adoption of a child. In re Adoption of W.A.T., 808 P.2d 1083, 1085 (Utah 1991) (plurality) (The fact that our constitution requires the state to prohibit polygamy does not necessarily mean that the state must deny any or all civil rights and privileges to polygamists.). Rather, a trial court must hold an evidentiary hearing to consider on a case-by-case basis whether the best interests of the child would be promoted by an adoption by the prospective parents. Id. at 1086. ¶ 178 We have also held that a parent's custody petition could not be denied solely because she practiced polygamy. Sanderson v. Tryon, 739 P.2d 623, 626 (Utah 1987). Our holding in Sanderson was based on our recognition that the legislature's policy regarding child custody and parental rights termination issues has shifted in the past half-century, and now requires that courts focus on the best interests of the child rather than passing judgment on the morality of its parents. Id. at 627 (recognizing that the 1955 plurality opinion of this court in In re Black, 3 Utah 2d 315, 283 P.2d 887, upholding a ruling terminating the parental rights of polygamist parents, was no longer good law in light of the legislature's deletion in 1965 of moral references from the termination of parental rights statute, Utah Code Ann. § 78-3a-48 (1986) (current version at Utah Code Ann. § 78-3a-407 (Supp.2005))). Given these developments, and the existence of legal mechanisms for protecting the interests of abused or neglected children apart from criminally prosecuting their parents for bigamy, I do not believe the criminalization of religiously motivated polygamous conduct is necessary to further these interests. ¶ 179 Thus, neither the State nor this court's prior decision in Green has identified an important state interest served by the criminal bigamy law that requires its application to those who enter religious unions with no claim of state legitimacy. I would therefore reverse Holm's bigamy conviction on the ground that it violates his religious freedom as guaranteed by the Utah Constitution.