The Raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch, and the Court That Reversed It

In April 2008 Texas child protection authorities entered the group's ranch near Eldorado and removed four hundred and thirty nine children, the largest such action in American history. The warrant rested on telephone calls reporting a sixteen year old girl being abused at the ranch. No such girl was found. The calls were eventually traced to a woman in Colorado with no connection to the group, who was later prosecuted.

What followed is the part usually omitted. In May 2008 the Third Court of Appeals in Austin held that the state had not shown the danger required to remove the children, and in particular that it had treated the community as a single household rather than assessing each family. The Texas Supreme Court substantially upheld that ruling within days. The children were returned. The state's own review afterwards conceded that the removal had been too broad.

Both things are true at once, and holding them together is the difficulty the case presents. The appellate courts were right that a mass removal on those facts was unlawful, and the criminal prosecutions that followed, built on evidence lawfully seized at the ranch and on the group's own records, established that girls well under the age of consent had been married to adult men. Warren Jeffs was convicted in Texas in 2011 and sentenced to life.

The case is cited in two literatures that rarely meet: on religious liberty and state overreach, and on the difficulty of protecting children inside a closed community.