Utah
Utah high court says polygamous father is allowed to share his beliefs with his children
The Utah Supreme Courtroom says a district court docket order stopping a father and member of the polygamous Kingston clan from encouraging his kids to observe his faith needs to be reconsidered. (Kristin Murphy, Deseret Information)
Estimated learn time: 4-5 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah father and member of the Kingston polygamous clan fought a Salt Lake district court docket’s resolution to ban him from encouraging his kids to undertake his faith’s teachings.
The Utah Supreme Courtroom dominated in his favor on Dec. 22, with three of 5 judges saying the restriction towards sharing spiritual beliefs needs to be extra slim to deal with particular issues moderately than a broad prohibition.
When Ryan Kingston and his spouse, Jessica Kingston, have been in the course of divorce proceedings, the teachings of the Kingston Group, a polygamous Utah sect also referred to as “the Order,” have been a key situation. Jessica argued that the group’s spiritual teachings and practices, together with polygamy, are usually not in her kids’s greatest pursuits.
Third District Choose Andrew Stone agreed that the 4 kids confronted potential hurt from publicity to their father’s spiritual neighborhood. The court docket discovered the group’s practices of grooming kids for marriage at an early age and demonizing individuals who had left the faith — together with their mom — can be dangerous to them.
The district court docket resolution mentioned Ryan Kingston “prioritizes plural marriages and adhering to his spiritual practices” over his kids’s pursuits, which was supported by his requests that his kids attend Ensign Academy, which emphasizes obedience to the Order.
Jessica Kingston was granted authorized custody, however bodily custody was given equally to each mother and father. The court docket ordered that the youngsters couldn’t be inspired to undertake teachings of any faith or be baptized with out the consent of their mom.
After the divorce was granted however earlier than the court docket resolved custody points, Ryan Kingston started practising polygamy and married two wives, in keeping with court docket paperwork.
The Supreme Courtroom’s resolution
Ryan Kingston didn’t contest Jessica Kingston’s proper to find out whether or not their kids are baptized, however argued he has a proper to encourage his kids to undertake a faith below the 14th Modification and appealed the choice. He mentioned the district court docket’s order violated his proper to free speech and his parental rights.
The Supreme Courtroom dominated in favor of the daddy.
“Ryan’s lack of authorized custody doesn’t imply he’s utterly bereft of parental rights,” the Supreme Courtroom resolution states.
The justices informed the district court docket to think about the case once more to discover a extra slim technique to deal with the difficulty — however mentioned they don’t consider Kingston’s argument that the district court docket didn’t assist its resolution.
The state Supreme Courtroom decided that though there’s a compelling authorities curiosity that the restriction was primarily based on, the restriction ought to have been extra particular to deal with that straight, citing strict scrutiny — a authorized normal utilized when contemplating constitutional rights.
The choice mentioned a number of states have concluded that after a divorce every father or mother needs to be allowed to provide spiritual publicity and instruction and the opinion mentioned it’s believable that the youngsters would profit from publicity to a number of religions.
Nonetheless, the three judges, Chief Justice Matthew Durrant, Courtroom of Appeals Choose David Mortensen and Courtroom of Appeals Choose Ryan Tenney agreed with Jessica Kingston that the state ought to defend kids from psychological hurt, and shield them from grooming for early marriage or publicity to teachings that ostracize or demonize outsiders. The 2 Utah Courtroom of Appeals judges have been concerned within the resolution to interchange Justice Deno Himonas, who had retired earlier than the case was mentioned, and Justice Thomas Lee, who recused himself.
The district court docket will now think about the case once more and work to create a extra tailor-made treatment to deal with the mom’s issues.
Dissenting opinion
Two of the 5 judges didn’t agree with that call. Affiliate Chief Justice John Pearce issued a dissenting opinion the place he famous that this was an unprecedented step. He mentioned in keeping with statute all parental rights are topic to allocation by the court docket, after contemplating a toddler’s greatest pursuits.
“Till in the present day, now we have adopted the statutory framework that makes the kid’s greatest curiosity the paramount concern and permits a court docket to allocate a elementary parental proper to at least one father or mother when introduced with proof that the opposite father or mother’s train of that proper dangers hurt to the kid,” Pearce mentioned.
The dissenting opinion mentioned it’s usually greatest for kids if each mother and father take part in spiritual upbringing, but when a father or mother reveals there’s a potential hurt, the district court docket can allocate that proper to at least one father or mother.
Pearce and Justice Paige Petersen didn’t agree that if a court docket finds the train of a parental proper may hurt the youngsters that the choice to provide that proper to at least one father or mother needs to be topic to “strict scrutiny.”
The dissenting opinion mentioned Utah legislation suggests as a substitute contemplating whether or not the court docket discovered there was potential hurt to the kid, and that below this normal the restriction towards Kingston encouraging his kids to observe his spiritual beliefs needs to be saved.
“We’re introduced with an unchallenged factual file that demonstrates that if given the chance to affect his kids’s spiritual upbringing, Ryan will hurt his kids,” the dissent states.
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Utah
Amid traffic, Utah walked to Leafs’ arena pregame
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The team posted a video on social media of team members walking to Scotiabank Arena, with player Maveric Lamoureux saying the bus was “not moving at all.”
Several city streets had been closed during the day for an annual Santa Claus parade.
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Utah
Utah Highway Patrol responds to your suggestions on making Utah roads safer
SALT LAKE CITY — FOX 13 News is Driven to Change and that includes bringing you reports on important topics like road rage, construction, and wrong-way drivers. During our coverage, we continually ask for any questions or concerns you may have along Utah’s roadways.
The feedback has gotten an enormous response, so FOX 13 sat down with Lieutenant Cameron Roden on Good Day Utah to help address input we have been getting, from the perspective of Utah Highway Patrol.
Speeding in Utah, there’s so much of it, and then you can sometimes say that that leads to tailgating, which may lead to road rage incidents. What are you seeing out there in terms of speed and what can we do to lessen the effects of that?
Lt. Cameron Roden: Speed is our number one thing that we see. That’s our number one traffic stop that we make, and we know that it leads to the majority of crashes in the state of Utah. So we definitely put an emphasis on speed and it does lead to other things. Not just crashes. It leads to road rage and other things .So, as far as what changes can we make, we need to start with ourselves, and really say, ‘Hey, do I have a problem?’ You know, we just need to start with ourselves and not think that it’s something else’s problem. If we slow our speeds ourselves, and then it’ll start to to catch on and people will do that speed limit. So, but the legislature has definitely taken some steps to help us address, especially the the speeds that are those excessive speeds where we have that one zero five law now that addresses those speeds and increases fines and and hopefully discourages people from those extreme speeds.
Some of our viewers talked about maybe capping some of the speed limits for truck drivers. Is that something that’s even feasible?
You know, that would be something that would have to go through that, that legislative process to see whether we that would be something that would help. But ultimately, if we we start with ourselves, hopefully that will make that change and reduce crashes and fatalities.
There are things being done to try and intervene and stop wrong-way drivers before they happen. But some of our viewers propose things like spikes. What are your thoughts on implementing something like that?
We’ve had over the last several years, a rash of wrong-way drivers, and it’ll come in onesie twos, and then we’ll go for a period of time without that. And so, but this spike over the last couple of years has caused us to to create a task force to look at wrongly driving what things can be done. And so getting all these stakeholders together between UDOT and Highway Safety, looking at what technologies and things that could be implemented, and and things like, wrong way detection cameras. Those are some things that are being actually used in the state of Utah right now to help us spot those and and advance signage, getting people to realize they’re going the wrong way and turn around. The the spike strips have actually been talked about in our task force a little bit. And if something like that would even be, it is that technology available right now. And as what we could actually implement in the state of Utah, there’s nothing that really fits the bill right now because of our environment. We have our snow plows. We have snow and things like that. Something like that really wouldn’t be practical right now.
Probably the most talked about topic that we’ve received was distracted driving, texting while driving. You went out, I saw on the UHP social media page, that you guys just driving and you look to your right and left and you can find someone texting. What kind of enforcement do we have against distracted driving specifically on your phone?
This is something that we like you said, we see it every day. We go out to crashes,and and we may suspect that a driver may be distracted. And so, it’s something that’s definitely under-reported. It’s it’s a bigger problem than than the numbers really show.And so not only do we address it during our normal patrols.Our officers are seeing it, and addressing it while they’re out there.But we’ll also do targeted patrols where the highway safety office actually gives out additional funds for that targeted enforcement, where we’ll get an unmarked vehicle. We go out driving down the roads where we try to spot these vehicles and and get them stopped because those are those are a big danger on our roadways where our attention and our focus needs to be on driving.
If you have ideas or suggestions for how to make Utah’s roadways safer click here to be taken to our Driven to Change form. There you can share your ideas or suggestions.
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Utah
Utah National Guard gets new, top-of-the-line Apache helicopters
WEST JORDAN, Utah — The Utah National Guard has been serving the state since 1894 with roots dating back to the Minutemen of the 17th-century American colonies.
This weekend, they received quite the boost in the form of the Army’s most advanced attack helicopter.
“These aircraft are extremely fast compared to our other aircraft,” said Col. Patrick.
On Saturday, the Utah National Guard took their new Apache helicopters for a spin.
“The flight went better than we could have hoped for. A little weather on the east coast, but after that, it wasn’t bad at all,” Patrick said.
The first four of 24 Apaches arrived early Saturday morning after they went under full inspection.
“They’ve got software on there that it’s like playing a video game. You just fly the video game and the airplane… is fast and smooth, which is the good thing, and so it’ll just hold the altitude and airspeed and just keep on trucking along. It’s pretty good,” Patrick said.
The first Apache helicopters arrived in Utah back in 1992.
“It just continues the legacy of the air pirates and what we bring to not only Utah, but really to the global fight and security, really,” Patrick added.
The colonel calls it a major step forward.
“What a great day for Utah as we advance into the next couple decades of combat operations and what we can provide to, you know, the global security.”
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