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Page Number: 21.0

18 

CASTLE ROCK v. GONZALES 

Opinion of the Court 

erty,  86  Va.  L.  Rev.  885,  964  (2000).12    Perhaps  most 
radically,  the  alleged  property  interest  here  arises  inci-
dentally, not out of some new species of government bene-
fit or service, but out of a function that government actors 
have always performed—to wit, arresting people who they 
have probable cause to believe have committed a criminal 
offense.13 

The  indirect  nature  of  a  benefit  was  fatal  to  the  due 
process  claim  of  the  nursing-home  residents  in  O’Bannon 
v.  Town  Court  Nursing  Center,  447  U. S.  773  (1980).  We 
held that, while the withdrawal of “direct benefits” (finan-
cial payments under Medicaid for certain medical services) 
triggered  due  process  protections,  id.,  at  786–787,  the 
same was not true for the “indirect benefit[s]” conferred on 
Medicaid  patients  when  the  Government  enforced  “mini-
mum standards of care” for nursing-home facilities, id., at 
787.  “[A]n  indirect  and  incidental  result  of  the  Govern-
ment’s enforcement action . . . does not amount to a depri-
—————— 

12 The dissent suggests that the interest in having a restraining order 
enforced does have an ascertainable monetary value, because one may 
“contract with a private security firm . . . to provide protection” for one’s 
family.  Post,  at  2,  20,  and  n. 18.    That  is,  of  course,  not  as  precise  as 
the  analogy  between  public  and  private  schooling  that  the  dissent 
invokes.  Post,  at  20,  n. 18.    Respondent  probably  could  have  hired  a 
private  firm  to  guard  her  house,  to  prevent  her  husband  from  coming 
onto the property, and perhaps even to search for her husband after she 
discovered  that  her  children  were  missing.    Her  alleged  entitlement 
here, however, does not consist in an abstract right to “protection,” but 
(according  to  the  dissent)  in  enforcement  of  her  restraining  order 
through the arrest of her husband, or the seeking of a warrant for his 
arrest, after she gave the police probable cause to believe the restrain-
ing  order  had  been  violated.    A  private  person  would  not  have  the 
power to arrest under those circumstances because the crime would not 
have occurred in his presence.  Colo. Rev. Stat. §16–3–201 (Lexis 1999). 
And,  needless  to  say,  a  private  person  would  not  have  the  power  to 
obtain an arrest warrant. 

13 In other contexts, we have explained that “a private citizen lacks a 
judicially  cognizable  interest  in  the  prosecution  or  nonprosecution  of 
another.”  Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614, 619 (1973).