Posted on 05/23/2008 3:59:55 AM PDT by familyop
SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — A Texas appeals court said Thursday that the state had no right to take more than 400 children from a polygamist sect's ranch, a ruling that could unravel one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history.
The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the state offered "legally and factually insufficient" grounds for the "extreme" measure of removing all children from the ranch, from babies to teenagers.
The state never provided evidence that the children were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court approval, the appeals court said.
It also failed to show evidence that more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and never alleged any sexual or physical abuse against the other children, the court said.
It was not immediately clear whether the children scattered across foster facilities statewide might soon be reunited with parents. The ruling gave Texas District Judge Barbara Walther 10 days to vacate her custody order, and the state could appeal.
FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said sect members feel validated, having argued from the beginning that they were being persecuted for their beliefs.
"They're very thrilled. They're looking forward to seeing the children returned," he said.
The appellate decision technically applies only to 38 of the roughly 200 parents who challenged the seizure. But their lawyer, Julie Balovich of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, said she expected attorneys for all the other parents to seek to join the ruling.
"It's a great day for Texas justice. This was the right decision," said Balovich, who was joined by several smiling mothers who nonetheless declined to comment at a news conference outside the courthouse here.
Every child at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado was taken into state custody more than six weeks ago, after Child Protective Services officials argued that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and groomed boys to become adult perpetrators. Only a few dozen of the roughly 440 children seized are teenage girls; half were under 5.
The appeals court said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as an individual household and that the state couldn't take all the children from a community on the notion that some parents in the community might be abusers.
"The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the department's witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger," the court said in its ruling.
The court said that although five girls had become pregnant at age 15 or 16, the state gave no evidence about the circumstances of the pregnancies. It noted that minors as young as 16 can wed in Texas with parental consent, and even younger children can marry if a court approves it.
Balovich said the appeals court "has stood up for the legal rights of these families and given these mothers hope that their families will be brought back together."
CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said department attorneys had just received the ruling and would make any decision about an appeal later.
"We are trying to assess the impact that this may have on our case," he said.
Even before Thursday's ruling, the state's allegations of teenage girls being pushed into sex appeared to be deflating.
Of the 31 sect members CPS once said were underage mothers, 15 have been reclassified as adults — one was 27 years old — and an attorney for a 14-year-old girl said in court that she had no children and was not pregnant, as officials previously asserted.
Five judges in San Angelo, about 40 miles north of Eldorado, have been hearing CPS's plans for the parents seeking to regain custody. Those hearings, which began Monday, were suspended after the appellate ruling Thursday.
The custody case has been chaotic from the beginning. The hearing in which Walther ruled that the children should all enter state custody ran two days.
Hundreds of lawyers crammed into a courtroom and nearby auditorium, queuing up to voice objections or ask questions on behalf of the mothers who were there in their trademark prairie dresses and braided hair.
CPS has struggled with even the identities of the children for weeks and scattered them across foster facilities all over the sprawling state, with some siblings separated by as much as 600 miles.
The sect children were removed en masse during a raid that began April 3 after someone called a domestic abuse hot line claiming to be a pregnant abused teenage wife. The girl has not been found and authorities are investigating whether the calls were a hoax.
The FLDS, which teaches that polygamy brings glorification in heaven, is a breakaway of the Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago. Members contend they are being persecuted by state officials for their religious beliefs.
Nothing that has happened at YFZ can remotely compare in depravity to what goes on in just about every inner city every day. And what do CPS agencies do about that? Nothing.
There were men in the Bible with multiple wives, just as there were men in the Bible who murdered (David comes to mind). This would not suggest that God approved of murder, would it?
The NT is pretty clear that marriage is one man and one woman.
Matthew 19:8-9
Romans 7:2-3
I Corinthians 7:2
I Timothy 3:12
In addition, God made one wife for Adam. I just don’t see anywhere in the Bible that God condones plural marriages.
susie
They aren’t the same - the inner city is much worse. And I am no supporter of FLDS.
Apparently there will be an appeal by the CPS. Now that doesn’t mean the Supreme Court will hear the appeal. We’ll know soon would be my guess.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2020282/posts?
AUSTIN – Texas Child Protective Services will ask the state’s highest court to keep a polygamist sect’s children in state custody, following a Thursday appeals court ruling that ordered the youngsters be returned to their homes.
Texas Supreme Court spokesman Osler McCarthy said attorneys for the state called Friday morning and said they’d be “filing an action in this court” later in the day.
So, your argument is that because terrible things go on in the inner city that don’t get addressed, thus, we should not do anything about things that seem less terrible?
That seems to be a strange position to take.
susie
Now if "gay marriage" is illegal it just means the State does not recognize the union of two of the same sex. It does not mean those same people can't have a ceremony and even call themselves married, it just means the state doesn't recognize it and they receive no benefits the State would give traditionally married couples. If the State prosecuted a gay couple because they said they were married, where would be the proof?
Now if a man has children with 7 different women it doesn't make them married in the eyes of the State. How could it? Unless the man in question fraudulently married these women in with State licenses under an alias.
I know a man who has a daughter with a woman who didn't want to marry him and a son with his ex wife. That doesn't make him married to both women. If both women agreed to live under one roof with this man and he supported them what business is it of the States?
It’s simple logic, which may well be why our legal system may not see it.
Like the Aztec example. If an essential element, central to ones religion, involves illegal activity, that is an illegal religion. Aztecs made human sacrifice an essential element, central to their religion. Aztec-ism is therefore illegal, or illegitimate—given how our courts apply the 1st Amendment.
Similarly too, when there are long-standing laws against polygamy (not merely bigamy) which includes “celestial marriage” and no attempt to get multiple marriage licenses....and religious groups systematically defy those laws—in that practice, even if they call it an essential, central tenet to their religion, they are then, like the Aztecs, an illegal or illegitimate religion.
The point is, if it is impossible to practice a particular religion without doing illegal activity, than our laws against particular activities effectively ban certain religions (or they should).
In the same way, in as much as some versions of Islam make holy war against the West a requirement...they forfeit their right to be recognized as a religion as such, and, are mere terrorist organizations.
My point is that CPS action here is arbitrary and capricious and that their motivation is suspect.
There are no longstanding laws against extra-legal polygamy. That is where you are making your mistake. The laws are called bigamy laws, and that can include any number of plural wives, but they have to be legal wives. They don’t include so-called ‘celestial marriages’ that are performed without legalities, such as marriage licenses.
These threads have been really useful in identifying the statists and nanny-staters amongst freepers.
Why did the government lie about using incendiary grenades?
brytlea said: "When the perp lives in the home and the mother knows about and does nothing to stop it...."
The age at which a girl can be married with parental consent can be as low as 16, and perhaps in one state, 14. This means that the mother can know about the pregnancy, do nothing to stop it, and not be guilty of any crime whatever.
I am the descendant of a string of three women who all chose to marry at 16. (And coincidentally, all raised in Texas.) Though I would highly discourage this, there were no laws broken.
Hit it I would.
That’s an interesting response.
What’s the difference, we applauded it.
It’s also true. The Taliban have no constitutional rights. We were at war. We didn’t have to make a determination which Talibani had actually oppressed women before we kille him.
Complete records of all births, parentage, marriages, expulsions, reassignments to new parents? I wasn't aware and haven't seen these published.
Clearly I was presuming they were not married, or I wouldn’t have used the word perp, since nothing illegal would have taken place.
susie
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