Texas judge refuses to sign order to return FLDS children

SAN ANGELO, Texas — The devil is in the details.

The judge who ordered hundreds of children removed from the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch abruptly walked off the bench late Friday, throwing the nation's largest-ever custody case into chaos again.

Judge Barbara Walther refused to sign an order to return the children when lawyers for a group of FLDS mothers challenged the changes she had made to a negotiated deal to return some of the children home as early as today.

The move left members of the FLDS Church frustrated.

"There's no relief. There's no way of knowing when relief will be here. There's no way to get cooperation out of the legal system to fix what they did on April 3," FLDS member Willie Jessop said outside the courthouse.

Lawyers for some of the families are expected to go to Austin's 3rd Court of Appeals on Monday. The court had said that if Walther would not sign an order to return the children, it would do it for her.

"It essentially incarcerates our children and the mothers of our children for at least another 48 hours and probably longer than that, given the circumstances," said Laura Shockley, an attorney representing children and a group of young women in a dispute with Texas over their ages.

Both Austin's 3rd Court of Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court ordered the children to be returned, ruling that child welfare authorities did not have proof that there was an immediate danger to justify removing more than 400 children from the FLDS property last month. The courts also ruled that Walther's court overstepped its authority in placing all of the children in foster care facilities scattered across the Lone Star State.

The Texas Supreme Court did allow Walther to place restrictions on the families while Child Protective Services continues an abuse investigation.

Details of the deal

A deal had already been tentatively reached between Texas child welfare authorities and lawyers for the FLDS families when the hearing began Friday afternoon.

The deal would have required that FLDS parents take parenting classes, cooperate in ongoing investigations, allow CPS caseworkers to make unannounced home visits from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and notify welfare workers who lives in the ranch homes. The tentative agreement included an injunction prohibiting the families from leaving Texas before Aug. 31.

But Walther had concerns about the injunction. She also sought to get more specific about requirements for the parents.

"The court believes it's important to specifically set out what the department can and can't do in its investigation," the judge said.