Federal court dismisses odd challenge to state domestic violence laws

Judge Robert Cleland of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan has dismissed a legal challenge filed by a Michigan man to the state’s domestic violence laws.

The plaintiff, Marlon Currie, represented himself in the case and filed a legal complaint that Cleland called “nearly unintelligible.” Claiming to have been convicted of domestic violence, Currie argued that this conviction violated his religious liberty because his Christian religion allowed for “corporal punishment.”

Currie argued that he did not commit such a crime because “corporal punishment and many other forms of disciplinary measures are demanded by the Christian God in the rearing of a child.” He further argued that his religious faith automatically exempted him from such laws and that any attempt to enforce them on him was unconstitutional.

He also claimed to have been sentenced to counseling sessions that were “devised to reshape, alter, reform and prohibit the Plaintiff’s religious beliefs.” The domestic violence counseling “is an attempt, influence and/or status quo, to change the way Christians serve God as a government approved religion” and that the state “tried to force substitutions, doctrines, ideology and alterations on and/or in exchange of the Plaintiffs [sic] beliefs; contrary to the Establishment Clause.”

Judge Cleland dismissed the case for failing to state a case on which relief can be granted, noting that many of the laws cited in the complaint either do not exist, or do not state a crime.