Watching Netflix’s Death of the Pastor’s Wife, I kept coming back to one frustrating question. How could Mica Miller ask for help over alleged stalking and harassment, yet her marriage seem to leave her with so few options? A South Carolina court ruling from May 2026 adds a piece the documentary does not fully explain.
What the new South Carolina ruling says
The ruling comes from Emily Major v. James Major, a separate case that had nothing to do with Mica Miller.
Emily Major went to a magistrate court in May 2023 seeking a restraining order against her husband for alleged stalking and harassment. A divorce case between them was already pending in family court.
The magistrate court dismissed her request, finding that the issue belonged in family court because the two were married. A circuit court later agreed.
On May 13, 2026, the South Carolina Court of Appeals reversed that decision.
South Carolina’s harassment and stalking law allows any person to file for a restraining order in magistrate court. The appeals court found that the law does not exclude spouses simply because they are married.
That ruling did not grant Emily Major a restraining order. It sent the case back so the magistrate court could consider whether her allegations actually met the legal requirements for stalking or harassment.
That limit is important when connecting the case to Mica Miller.
The decision came more than two years after Mica’s death on April 27, 2024. It cannot tell us whether she would have received an order or whether a court handling her case at the time would have reached the same conclusion.
What it does show is that South Carolina’s existing stalking law was not written to automatically exclude complaints between spouses.
What Netflix leaves unclear about Mica’s options
Death of the Pastor’s Wife focuses heavily on Mica’s attempts to seek help before her death and allegations of controlling and harassing behavior during her marriage to John-Paul “JP” Miller.
Netflix’s August 2026 case update says her reports repeatedly ran into problems because she was married. That description can make it sound as though marriage itself removed access to South Carolina’s stalking protections.
The 2026 ruling shows the legal situation was more complicated.
There are different questions involved when someone reports stalking or harassment. Police must decide whether there is enough evidence for criminal action. A court deciding a restraining-order request must determine whether the reported conduct meets the requirements of the civil law.
Then there was the question at the center of Major v. Major: which court could hear a stalking or harassment request when the people involved were spouses?
Family court already has authority over domestic-abuse protection involving household members. But the Court of Appeals found that this does not remove the separate power given to magistrate courts under South Carolina’s harassment and stalking statute.
The case also exposed why that distinction could become a real problem.
Organizations that filed arguments with the court warned that married people could be left without a clear path when courts disagreed over jurisdiction. The Court of Appeals did not rule that this was happening across the state, but its decision settled the legal question presented in Major.
That gives Mica’s situation a different context.
It would go too far to say the 2026 ruling proves she should have received a restraining order. Her allegations still would have needed to satisfy the law, and the ruling does not examine her individual reports.
But it also appears too broad to say a married person simply could not seek a stalking or harassment order in magistrate court. The law already provided that process, and Major v. Major clarified that spouses were included.
The problem highlighted by the ruling was not necessarily the absence of a legal path. It was confusion over whether that path remained available once the people involved were married.
Mica’s Law would change much more
The proposed legislation known as Mica’s Law deals with a broader issue than the one decided in Major v. Major.
South Carolina Senate Bill 702 would add coercive control to the state’s domestic violence laws.
The proposed definition covers patterns of behavior that can include monitoring someone’s communications or movements, restricting access to money or services, isolating someone from support, making threats, and using technology or other people as part of that control.
The bill would also add stalking, harassment and coercive control to the definition of abuse used for domestic protection orders. It proposes related changes involving divorce and child custody.
That is different from the May court decision.
Major v. Major interpreted a protection already found in South Carolina law. SB 702 would change the law itself by recognizing additional forms of abusive conduct.
As of August 28, 2026, SB 702 has not become law. It was introduced in the South Carolina Senate on January 13, 2026 and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The legislature’s bill page still lists it as residing in the Senate.
Netflix also says the proposed law would mandate law-enforcement training on coercive control. However, the current January 14, 2026 version of SB 702 published by the South Carolina Legislature does not contain a police-training provision.
The documentary arrives while a separate federal criminal case against JP Miller is also pending.
A federal grand jury indicted Miller in December 2025 on one count of cyberstalking and one count of making false statements to federal investigators. Prosecutors allege conduct including unwanted communications, use of tracking devices, interference with Mica’s finances and damage to her vehicle.
Miller has pleaded not guilty, and the allegations have not been proven in court.
Those federal charges also need to stay separate from questions surrounding Mica’s death. He has not been charged with causing her death, which remains officially ruled a suicide.
The May 2026 ruling does not change that finding, and it does not show what would have happened if Mica had reached a magistrate court with a stalking or harassment complaint.
What it changes is our understanding of the legal question raised by the documentary. South Carolina’s courts have now clarified that marriage alone does not remove a person’s ability to ask a magistrate court for protection from alleged stalking or harassment.