It has been said that a society is judged ultimately by how it treats its most vulnerable members; we feel a special need to take care of our more susceptible citizens, especially children. However, Texas authorities were over-stepped their legal boundaries when they seized nearly 500 children from the Yearning for Zion ranch. The Supreme Court ruled against the Child Protective Services Agency on Thursday, citing failure to establish the proper grounds to remove the children and a lack of evidence supporting the claim that the children were in immediate danger of abuse. \nWhile individual stories of alleged abuse have peppered the case, the fact is that most of the kids seized were taken only because they lived in “a culture that led to illegal underage marriage for girls.” Authorities later discovered that only a small number of those seized were actually teenaged girls, and of them, just a few had kids or were pregnant. Of the 31 mothers that CPS cited as minors, less than half turned out to be under 18.\nTexas authorities drew on generalities in order to seize all children of the sect instead of the few who were actually in abusive homes. The government callously trampled the rights of most of the parents in a crusade against the few bad apples who did directly abuse their kids. Our country was founded on a dedication to the freedom of religion and that entails a respect for religions that often times are popularly dissented against. Parents, regardless of religious belief, should not be condescendingly coerced or told how to raise their offspring by authorities when there is no evidence of abuse. The seizure was unlawful without the substantiation of immediate danger; validation for it was based solely on the parents’ religious beliefs. The Supreme Court was both correct and justified in forcing CPS to tackle the issue on an individual case-by-case basis so that innocence is assumed until guilt is proven, details to each specific case may be weighed and the risk of abuse accurately judged instead of presumptively generalizing abusive behavior and assuming all parents at the ranch deserved to lose custody of their children.
Dissent: Nick Wallace\nIn the FLDS child custody case, the central question is whether children will be placed in immediate danger if they are returned to the Yearning for Zion Ranch. \nAlthough sending the children home until more evidence of abuse can be collected may appeal to our desire to protect FLDS’ right to practice their religion, it is a terrible blow to children’s fundamental rights.\nOur courts recognize that biological parenthood does not impart the right to do whatever one pleases with one’s child. On a daily basis, children are removed from hostile environments.\nDenying its members a chance to fully develop their personhood by making women sexual possessions and children underage and undereducated brides constitutes an immediate threat to the minors’ well-being. It is already evidence of abuse.\nBecause they arrogantly maintain that their religion compels them to demean their children’s integrity as human beings, we can under no circumstances entrust parenting to unregulated FLDS members.
