Source: https://www.lawpipe.com/U.S.-Supreme-Court/DeShaney_v_Winnebago.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 12:25:56+00:00

Document:
In DeShaney v. Winnebago, 489 U.S. 189, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), social workers removed a child from his father's care, suspecting abuse, but later returned the child to him. After the child was returned, the father repeated his abuse, rendering the child permanently brain damaged. The issue was whether state actors were liable for damages on substantive due process grounds. The Court said: "Nothing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors. The Clause is phrased as a limitation on the State's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security. It forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property without "due process of law," but its language cannot fairly be extended to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means.... Its purpose was to protect the people from the State, not to ensure that the State protected them from each other." 489 U.S. at 195-96, 109 S.Ct. 998. The Court emphasized the need for rational analysis in emotionally laden cases: "Judges and lawyers, like other humans, are moved by natural sympathy in a case like this to find a way for Joshua and his mother to receive adequate compensation for the grievous harm inflicted upon them. But before yielding to that impulse, it is well to remember once again that the harm was inflicted not by the State of Wisconsin, but by Joshua's father. The most that can be said of the state functionaries in this case is that they stood by and did nothing when suspicious circumstances dictated a more active role for them. In defense of them it must also be said that had they moved too soon to take custody of the son away from the father, they would likely have been met with charges of improperly intruding into the parent-child relationship, charges based on the same Due Process Clause that forms the basis for the present charge of failure to provide adequate protection." Id. at 202-03, 109 S.Ct. 998. With unmistakable clarity, the Court said "the State had no constitutional duty to protect Joshua against his father's violence, its failure to do so - though calamitous in hindsight - simply does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause." Id. at 202, 109 S.Ct. 998. In DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep't of Social Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), the Court held that due process did not require the state to protect a child from the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father. Joshua DeShaney had repeatedly been taken to the local emergency room with injuries that physicians suspected were due to physical abuse. At one point Joshua was temporarily placed in the custody of the hospital while a "Child Protection Team" evaluated his situation; however, the Team determined there was insufficient evidence that he was being abused to retain custody. Joshua was returned to his father's custody and, despite subsequent hospital admissions for injuries indicative of abuse, local officials failed to intervene. Ultimately, his father beat Joshua so severely that he was expected to spend the remainder of his life in an institution for the profoundly retarded. Despite the fact that local officials had suspected ongoing abuse, the Court rejected the contention that they had deprived Joshua of his liberty in violation of due process by taking no action: Nothing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors. The Clause is phrased as a limitation on the State's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security. It forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property without "due process of law," but its language cannot fairly be extended to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means. Nor does history support such an expansive reading of the constitutional text.... Its purpose was to protect the people from the State, not to ensure that the State protected them from each other. The Framers were content to leave the extent of governmental obligation in the latter area to the democratic political processes. (489 U.S. at 195-96, 109 S.Ct. at 1003.) The Court acknowledged that "in certain limited circumstances the Constitution imposes upon the State affirmative duties of care and protection with respect to particular individuals." 489 U.S. at 198, 109 S.Ct. at 1004. In DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189 (1989), the Supreme Court of the United States, affirming a decision of this court, held that a state's failure to protect an individual against private violence generally does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause. That clause, reasoned the Supreme Court, imposes no duty on the state to provide members of the general public with adequate protective services. Rather, the Due Process Clause is a limitation on the states' power to act; it is not a minimum guarantee of certain levels of safety and security. The court did acknowledge, however, that a narrow exception to the DeShaney doctrine does exist in those instances in which the state has created a "special relationship" with the victimized individual. That affirmative duty arises, the Supreme Court emphasized, not simply from the state's knowledge of the individual's predicament butfrom the limitations that the state has imposed upon him through a restraint on his personal liberty. In DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep't of Social Servs., 489 U.S. 189 (1989), the Supreme Court held that the state had no affirmative duty to protect a child from abuse when that child was not in state custody. However, the Court specifically declined to determine whether placing a child in foster care would constitute the sort of custodial relationship that would give rise to a duty of protection. Id. at 201 n.9. In DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep't of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 191, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), the Court highlighted that the Due Process Clause "forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property without `due process of law,' but its language cannot fairly be extended to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means." 489 U.S. at 195, 109 S.Ct. 998. Even if a state official refuses to provide protective services that could avert injuries, the government cannot be held liable under 1983. Id. at 196, 109 S.Ct. 998. In DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189 , 197 (1989), the Court observed that the state was not a permanent guarantor of the safety of a child removed from custody of an abusive father, but eventually placed back in that fathers custody. DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 201. In ruling the state had no constitutional duty to protect the child, the Court noted that, although the state might have been aware of dangers the plaintiff faced, it played no part in their creation, nor did it do anything to render him any more vulnerable to them. Id. In DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep't. of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), the United States Supreme Court addressed a claim brought by a mother and her child under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against the county department of social services alleging that the child had been denied due process of law when the department failed to intervene and protect him from the injuries he suffered at the hands of his violent father. In DeShaney, the Court reaffirmed that "our cases have recognized that the Due Process Clauses generally confer no affirmative right to governmental aid, even where such aid may be necessary to secure life, liberty, or property interests of which the government itself may not deprive the individual." 489 U.S. at 196, 109 S.Ct. 998. The Court added: If the Due Process Clause does not require the State to provide its citizens with particular protective services, it follows that the State cannot be held liable under the Clause for injuries that could have been averted had it chosen to provide them. As a general matter, then, we conclude that a State's failure to protect an individual against private violence simply does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause. Id. at 196-97, 109 S.Ct. 998. In DeShaney, the Supreme Court thus held that there was an affirmative duty to protect "when the State by the affirmative exercise of its power so restrains an individual's liberty that it renders him unable to care for himself, and at the same time fails to provide for his basic needs." 489 U.S. at 200, 109 S.Ct. 998. The Court in DeShaney, however, left open the possibility that the state may be liable for constitutionally protected rights, even in the absence of a special relationship with an individual, when the state, through its affirmative conduct, creates or enhances a danger for the individual. Id. at 201, 109 S.Ct. 998. In DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep't of Social Servs., U.S. 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), although the Court found that the state owed no constitutional duty to protect a child from the violent actions of his father, it did acknowledge that "in the substantive due process analysis, it is the State's affirmative act of restraining the individual's freedom to act on his own behalf--through ... a restraint of personal liberty--which is the 'deprivation of liberty' triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause." Id. 109 S.Ct. at 1006. The Court also found in denying liability, that despite the state's awareness of the child's dangerous predicament, the state "played no part in its creation, nor did it do anything to render him any more vulnerable to it." Id. at 1006.

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