A U.S. District Court judge ruled Friday that a key part of the state’s longstanding polygamy laws are unconstitutional, marking a victory for polygamous families who have long sought to have their plural marriages decriminalized. A Utah judge ruled that part of the state’s anti-polygamy statute’s phrasing, which forbids ”cohabit[ing] with another person,” is a violation of the First Amendment. ”The court finds the cohabitation prong of the Statute unconstitutional on numerous grounds and strikes it,” Judge Clark Waddoups wrote in his ruling. It’s still illegal to have more than one marriage license in Utah, but polygamists have long done an end-run around this prohibition by maintaining one legal marriage while cohabiting with numerous wives. In the Darger family, who TIME featured in 2012, Joe is married legally to Alina, but also lives and has children with, identical twins Vicki and Valerie. The Dargers live outside Salt Lake City and are openly polygamous, but have had brushes with the law. They are a new breed of Fundamentalist Mormon, who dress in contemporary clothes and send their kids to public school but are committed to carrying on with the tradition in which they were raised. Friday’s ruling was in response to 2011 lawsuit brought by the Brown family, who became famous after appearing on the TLC reality show Sister Wives. Kody Brown and his four wives, who have 17 children together, claimed that the law violated their right to privacy. Polygamy laws have not been enforced in the state for some time, but the Browns’ popularity and prominence brought things to a head, and attorney general Mark Shurtleff warned he would prosecute the Browns if they continued to publicly flout the law. The family fled to Nevada in 2011, but filed suit in Utah. The Browns’ lawyer, Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, argued the case along the lines of Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down anti-sodomy laws in that state. However, it’s not yet clear whether Waddoups’ ruling means polygamy is now legal in Utah. In a similar case in Canada in![]()
