The members of the Texas polygamist sect have been given custody of their children after the Texas Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that all the polygamist-family children taken in the state custody should return to their parents.

Lawmakers argued that the state can not keep the children from their parents because it couldn’t prove the young were in immediate danger of abuse. The court didn’t say yet when the children will be returned to their families.

The court ruling applies to 38 mothers and their 126 children who made the subject of this particular case, but it is highly probable that the ruling will affect hundreds of other children
who are in similar situations.

The court’s decision threatens to set the stage for the largest child custody case in U.S. history.

The Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state acted illegally when it took in custody 468 children from the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) ranch in Eldorado. The lawmakers said Judge Barbara Walther, who ordered the children should be held in temporary state custody, could have found better solutions to ensure the safety of the children.

"On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted," the court wrote in its decision today.

The Texas Child Protective Services is preparing for the “prompt and orderly” reunification of the children, who are now scattered in foster care across the state with their families, said agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins.

Although they were asked to let the children return to their families, authorities refused to do it arguing that, once reunited, the polygamist families would flee Texas and resume their abusing practices elsewhere.

The investigation at the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado began the local family violence shelter received a phone call from a 16-year-old girl, who said that she was forced to marry a 50-year-old man. The two had a child when the girl was 15 and her husband beat and raped her.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) bought approximately 1,900 acres near Eldorado about four years ago. There they build the ranch and called it the YFZ Ranch. About 400 members of the church were relocated from their Arizona and Utah compounds to the YFZ Ranch.