Skip to Content

In light of the Supreme Court’s gay marriage legalization, Sister Wives’ Kody Brown and his four spouses are gearing up for a fight.

Not because they’re opposed to same-sex marriage. Oh no. They want to use this ruling to legitimize polygamy in the state of Utah!

Kody, Janelle, Merri, Christine, Robyn Brown and their 17 children (Robyn Brown is pregnant with #18) are all about plural marriage.

Utah’s historical Mormon roots and population have made the issue a particularly contentious one in that beautiful western state.

Long illegal, a ban on plural marriage was overturned (apparently) in 2013, but state officials recently filed an appeal to reinstate it.

In turn, the Brown family filed another suit against Utah, where they used to live before moving to Nevada for this very reason.

Under the threat of prosecution for their marriages in Utah, Nevada’s lax policy on the issue (among many others) appealed to them.

The Browns’ attorney claims they aren’t even fighting for full, legal plural marriage, but rather, are against the law’s “cohabitation” ban.

They lament “the very notion of a state today criminalizing the right of consenting adults to maintain certain private relationships.”

This, they maintain in court documents posted by Radar, “is a regression to a prior century of state-enforced morality codes.”

The Browns claim that the law unfairly targets them because of their religious views, which permit Kody to wed four-plus women.

They cite Obergefell v. Hodges, where the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationally this summer, to bolster their case.

That ruling, they say, proves that government cannot “coerce or punish those who choose to live in consensual but unpopular unions.”

“Homosexuality was a crime for centuries in this and other countries,” they say. “Adultery and fornication were long considered crimes.”

They seek to “organize child-rearing and romantic relationships among multiple partners in addition to Mr. Brown’s single legal spouse.”

Utah’s laws, they claim, “further proscribes the mere act of cohabitation … thereby directly interfering with the Browns’ practice of living.”

The court has yet to rule. Stay tuned on that front, and watch Sister Wives online when it returns a week from Sunday, September 13.