Removing children from their parents' care is a dramatic act, one that should be reserved for the most egregious and dangerous situations. So says the law in Texas, where the standard for taking children out of their parents' custody, as in many states, is that the physical health or safety of the child is in danger.

That danger was invoked to justify the removal of almost 470 children from a west Texas polygamist sect compound last month by state child protection agency staff. They raided the compound after receiving a telephone call for help from a girl who claimed to be 16 years old and a child bride being abused by her older husband.

Agency staff claimed they found a "pervasive pattern of sexual abuse that puts every child at the ranch at risk," and "under-age girls being 'spiritually united' with older men and having children with the men." That, they said, justified removing all children, even infants and toddlers, from the ranch.

While the charges by the child protective workers provided lurid fodder for talk radio and the nation's tabloids -- child marriage, sexual abuse, polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and all of it on an isolated ranch in Texas, for goodness sake -- it turns out they weren't enough to convince a three-judge appeals court panel that the state had the right to take the children away from their parents.

There may have been a belief system at the ranch that condoned under-age marriage, the judges wrote in their opinion last week, but that did not mean that there was a risk to the health and safety of all the compound's children. The panel said that the evidence of danger provided by the state child protective agency was "legally and factually insufficient" to justify the wholesale removal of the children.

In the end, we live in a country of laws. And no matter how distasteful, how repulsive, how vile the practices alleged to take place at the polygamist sect's ranch in Texas may be, the law protects even the most despicable among us.

For the moment, the largest child custody case in recent history has been thrown into disarray -- but this country's admirable rule of law has been reaffirmed. That is as it should be.