The rebuke threw the largest custody case in American history into turmoil, with some lawyers saying the children could soon be reunited with their families. Many of the mothers have been criss-crossing Texas visiting their children in foster homes.

According to the court, the state did not establish proper grounds to remove the children from their families, who belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S. The F.L.D.S. broke off from the mainstream Mormon church after it had disavowed polygamy in 1890.

The agency raided the Yearning for Zion ranch on April 3 after someone had called an abuse hot line and said that she was a 16-year-old child bride being abused by her older husband in the church’s compound. The caller has still not been found.

Officials of the state Department of Family and Protective Services on Thursday defended their actions as having been taken in the children’s interest and said they were considering their next steps.

The unanimous ruling by three judges of the Third Court of Appeals in Austin revoked the state’s custody over a large group of the children and by extension almost certainly the rest, for what it called a lack of evidence that they were in immediate danger of sexual or physical abuse.

The appeals court said the record “does not reflect any reasonable effort on the part of the department to ascertain if some measure short of removal and/or separation would have eliminated the risk.” It also said the evidence of danger to the children “was legally and factually insufficient” to justify their removal and it said the lower court “abused its discretion” in failing to return seized children to their families.

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