A federal appeals court Monday dismissed a landmark decision that decriminalized polygamy in Utah, marking a legal defeat for the family from the reality TV show Sister Wives.
Kody Brown and his four wives cannot sue the state over its ban on plural marriages because the family never faced charges and prosecutors later said they would not prosecute consenting adults with multiple wives, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled.
The decision reverses a 2013 ruling that removed the threat of arrest for polygamous families. U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups had found that the threat of prosecution alone drove the Browns out of state and that key parts of Utah’s bigamy law violated their right to privacy and religious freedom.
The Browns’s lawyer and did not have comment.
Associated Press