Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/04pdf/04-278.pdf
Page Number: 27

4 

CASTLE ROCK v. GONZALES 

SOUTER, J., concurring 

Water Div. v. Craft, 436 U. S. 1 (1978), public employment, 
Perry  v.  Sindermann,  408  U. S.  593  (1972),  professional 
licenses, Barry v. Barchi, 443 U. S. 55 (1979), and so on, the 
property  interest  recognized  in  our  cases  has  always  ex-
isted  apart  from  state  procedural  protection  before  the 
Court  has  recognized  a  constitutional  claim  to  protection 
by  federal  process.  To  accede  to  Gonzales’s  argument
would therefore work a sea change in the scope of federal
due  process,  for  she  seeks  federal  process  as  a  substitute
simply  for  state  process.    (And  she  seeks  damages  under 
Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983, for denial of process to 
which she claimed a federal right.)  There is no articulable 
distinction between the object of Gonzales’s asserted enti-
tlement and the process she desires in order to protect her 
entitlement;  both  amount  to  certain  steps  to  be  taken  by 
the  police  to  protect  her  family  and  herself.    Gonzales’s 
claim would thus take us beyond Roth or any other recog-
nized  theory  of  Fourteenth  Amendment  due  process,  by
collapsing  the  distinction  between  property  protected  and 
the  process  that  protects  it,  and  would  federalize  every 
mandatory  state-law  direction  to  executive  officers  whose 
performance  on  the  job  can  be  vitally  significant  to  indi-
viduals affected. 

The  procedural  directions  involved  here  are  just  that. 
They  presuppose  no  enforceable  substantive  entitlement, 
and  Roth  does  not  raise  them  to  federally  enforceable
status in the name of due process.