Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Texas Court Rules Against Polygamist Ranch Raid

AUSTIN (CN) - The state of Texas acted on insufficient evidence when it removed more than 450 children from a polygamist sect's compound outside of Eldorado while it investigates allegations of abuse, a state appeals court ruled.

The Third District Court of Appeals said the state failed to present any evidence that the children's physical health or safety were in danger, or that the need for protection was "urgent and required immediate removal of the children."

The ruling could derail one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history. Acting on a distress call from an alleged 16-year-old girl, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services took all 468 children from the Yearning for Zion ranch, a compound operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The FLDS church is a break-off Mormon sect that still practices plural marriage.

The state's decisive action caused a media stir and prompted 38 FLDS mothers to take up legal action to get their children back.

The state justified its action by citing reports of widespread, church-sanctioned underage marriage and possible sexual abuse of minors. The department's lead investigator added that under the "pervasive belief system" of the FLDS, boys are groomed to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and girls are raised to be victims. Twenty females living at the ranch had allegedly become pregnant between ages 13 and 17, and five of the 20 are still minors.

However, the court noted that there was no evidence of physical harm or sexual abuse, other than the five pregnant minors. At a hearing, the department conceded that teen pregnancy alone is not a reason to separate children from their parents, but argued that it was necessary because "there is a mindset that even the young girls report that they will marry at whatever age, and that it's the highest blessing they can have to have children."

Even if the state's assessment of FLDS beliefs is true, the appeals court said the state failed to prove that the danger was immediate or urgent, and not based merely on the speculation of future harm."The simple fact, conceded by the department, that not all FLDS families are polygamous or allow female children to marry as minors demonstrates the danger of removing children from their homes based on the broad-brush ascription of every aspect of a belief system to every person living among followers of the belief system or professing to follow the belief system," the court wrote.

Categories / Uncategorized

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...