The three justices who heard the appeal did not order immediate release of the children, but did instruct the district court to take steps consistent with their opinion. That would appear to require immediate release, unless there is a further appeal by the state. State officials were reported to be studying the ruling, according to the New York Times.

The court said that the only danger that the state had claimed for the boys and the pre-pubescent girls was that they lived in a "pervasive belief system" that groomed males to be predators and females to submit to sexual abuse after reaching puberty. The lead investigator for the state had justified removing infants from their families by stating "they're living under an umbrella of belief that having children at a young age is a blessing therefore any child in that environment would not be safe."

The court disagreed. "The existence of the FLDS belief system...by itself does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger," the court wrote. "It is the imposition of certain alleged tenets of that system on specific individuals that may put them in danger. The Department failed to offer any evidence that any of the pubescent female children" involved in the lawsuit "were in such physical danger," it concluded.

The court said there was evidence that 20 females had become pregnant between 13 and 17 years of age. But it noted that only five of the 20 still were minors, and that there was no evidence about whether they were married. It is not a crime in Texas for a married minor to become pregnant.

In addition, none of the five minors who became pregnant was a child of the 38 women who brought suit seeking the return of their children. Texas has claimed that the entire ranch should be considered one household, but the court rejected that claim. Despite communal aspects of ranch living, the community was divided into different households, the court concluded.

Finally, the court found that state authorities did not make "reasonable efforts" to avoid the extreme measure of removing all of the children. Texas law requires the state to take such efforts.

The court pointed out that investigators came to the ranch to investigate a distress call from a 16-year-old girl. They never found the girl. Instead they discovered that the five minors were or had been pregnant and used that to justify removing all 468 children. "This record does not reflect any reasonable effort on the part of the Department to ascertain if some measure short of removal and/or separation from parents" would have eliminated the risk to the children.

The decision is an interpretation of Texas law and therefore does not apply directly to Missouri or Illinois.

The three justices who ruled in the case were Chief Justice W. Kenneth Law, Justice Bob Pemberton and Justice Alan Waldrop .

Is the Texas court of appeals protecting the young female children adequately?

Is the sect's belief in allowing teen girls to be married to older men enough to justify state intervention?

Did Texas go too far in taking boys, infants and pre-teen females?

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