Source: http://openjurist.org/494/us/111/texas-v
Timestamp: 2016-02-12 07:49:16
Document Index: 370532940

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 394', '§ 394', '§ 394', '§ 394', '§ 394', '§ 394', '§ 394', '§ 1983', '§ 768', '§ 394']

494 US 111 Texas v. | OpenJurist
494 U.S. 111 - Texas v. Homethe United States Reports494 U.S.
494 US 111 Texas v. 494 U.S. 111
110 S.Ct. 1293
108 L.Ed.2d 98
State of TEXAS, plaintiff,v.
Bluff Water Power Control District in the four designated Texas counties, if appropriate. The remaining $200,000 may be treated by the Attorney General of the State of Texas as attorney's fees or investigative costs; provided, however, Texas and New Mexico agree that any use of the settlement funds in this manner does not constitute, and shall not be construed as, an admission, express or implicit, that New Mexico has any liability for Texas' attorney's fees and costs incurred in this litigation. Zinermon v. Burch [110SCt975,494US113,108LEd2d100] 110 S.Ct. 975 494 U.S. 113 108 L.Ed.2d 100 Marlus C. ZINERMON, et al., Petitioners v. Darrell E. BURCH.
Respondent Burch, while allegedly medicated and disoriented, signed forms requesting admission to, and treatment at, a Florida state mental hospital, in apparent compliance with state statutory requirements for "voluntary" admission to such facilities. After his release, he brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the District Court against, inter alios, petitioners—physicians, administrators, and staff members at the hospital—on the ground that they had deprived him of his liberty without due process of law. The complaint alleged that they violated state law by admitting him as a voluntary patient when they knew or should have known that he was incompetent to give informed consent to his admission, and that their failure to initiate Florida's involuntary placement procedure denied him constitutionally guaranteed procedural safeguards. The court granted petitioners' motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), relying on Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420, and Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 82 L.Ed.2d 393, which held that a deprivation of a constitutionally protected property interest caused by a state employee's random, unauthorized conduct does not give rise to a § 1983 procedural due process claim unless the State fails to provide a postdeprivation remedy. The court pointed out that Burch did not contend that the State's statutory procedure for placement was inadequate to ensure due process, but only that petitioners had failed to follow the procedure. Since the State could not have anticipated or prevented the unauthorized deprivation of Burch's liberty, the court reasoned, there was no feasible predeprivation remedy, and the State's postdeprivation tort remedies provided Burch with all the process that was due him. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded.
* Respondent Darrell Burch brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1982 ed.)1 against the 11 petitioners, who are physicians, administrators, and staff members at Florida State Hospital (FSH) in Chattahoochee, and others. Respondent alleges that petitioners deprived him of his liberty, without due process of law, by admitting him to FSH as a "voluntary" mental patient when he was incompetent to give informed consent to his admission. Burch contends that in his case petitioners should have afforded him procedural safeguards required by the Constitution before involuntary commitment of a mentally ill person, and that petitioners' failure to do so violated his due process rights.
This Court granted certiorari to resolve the conflict—so evident in the divided views of the judges of the Eleventh Circuit that has arisen in the Courts of Appeals over the proper scope of the Parratt rule.2 489 U.S. 1064, 109 S.Ct. 1337, 103 L.Ed.2d 807 (1989). Because this case concerns the propriety of a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal, the question before us is a narrow one. We decide only whether the Parratt rule necessarily means that Burch's complaint fails to allege any deprivation of due process, because he was constitutionally entitled to nothing more than what he received—an opportunity to sue petitioners in tort for his allegedly unlawful confinement. The broader questions of what procedural safeguards the Due Process Clause requires in the context of an admission to a mental hospital, and whether Florida's statutes meet these constitutional requirements, are not presented in this case. Burch did not frame his action as a challenge to the constitutional adequacy of Florida's mental health statutes. Both before the Eleventh Circuit and in his brief here, he disavowed any challenge to the statutes themselves and restricted his claim to the contention that petitioners' failure to provide constitutionally adequate safeguards in his case violated his due process rights.3 II
On December 7, 1981, Burch was found wandering along a Florida highway, appearing to be hurt and disoriented. He was taken to Apalachee Community Mental Health Services (ACMHS) in Tallahassee.4 ACMHS is a private mental health care facility designated by the State to receive patients suffering from mental illness.5 Its staff in their evaluation forms stated that, upon his arrival at ACMHS, Burch was hallucinating, confused and psychotic and believed he was "in heaven." Exhibit B-1 to Complaint. His face and chest were bruised and bloodied, suggesting that he had fallen or had been attacked. Burch was asked to sign forms giving his consent to admission and treatment. He did so. He remained at ACMHS for three days, during which time the facility's staff diagnosed his condition as paranoid schizophrenia and gave him psychotropic medication. On December 10, the staff found that Burch was "in need of longer-term stabilization," Exhibit B-2 to Complaint, and referred him to FSH, a public hospital owned and operated by the State as a mental health treatment facility.6 Later that day, Burch signed forms requesting admission and authorizing treatment at FSH. Exhibits C-1 and C-2 to Complaint. He was then taken to FSH by a county sheriff.
After his release, Burch complained that he had been admitted inappropriately to FHS and did not remember signing a voluntary admission form. His complaint reached the Florida Human Rights Advocacy Committee of the State's Department of Health and Rehabilitation Services (Committee).7 The Committee investigated and replied to Burch by letter dated April 4, 1984. The letter stated that Burch in fact had signed a voluntary admission form, but that there was "documentation that you were heavily medicated and disoriented on admission and . . . you were probably not competent to be signing legal documents." Exhibit G to Complaint. The letter also stated that, at a meeting of the Committee with FSH staff on August 4, 1983, "hospital administration was made aware that they were very likely asking medicated clients to make decisions at a time when they were not mentally competent." Ibid.
In February 1985, Burch filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida. He alleged, among other things, that ACMHS and the 11 individual petitioners, acting under color of Florida law, and "by and through the authority of their respective positions as employees at FSH . . . as part of their regular and official employment at FSH, took part in admitting Plaintiff to FSH as a 'voluntary' patient." App. to Pet. for Cert. 200.8 Specifically, he alleged:
"Defendants, and each of them, knew or should have known that Plaintiff was incapable of voluntary, knowing, understanding and informed consent to admission and treatment at FSH. See Exhibit G attached hereto and incorporated herein.9 Nonetheless, Defendants, and each of them, seized Plaintiff and against Plaintiff's will confined and imprisoned him and subjected him to involuntary commitment and treatment for the period from December 10, 1981, to May 7, 1982. For said period of 149 days, Plaintiff was without the benefit of counsel and no hearing of any sort was held at which he could have challenged his involuntary admission and treatment at FSH.
Burch's complaint thus alleges that he was admitted to and detained at FSH for five months under Florida's statutory provisions for "voluntary" admission. These provisions are part of a comprehensive statutory scheme under which a person may be admitted to a mental hospital in several different ways.10
The Due Process Clause also encompasses a third type of protection, a guarantee of fair procedure. A § 1983 action may be brought for a violation of procedural due process, but here the existence of state remedies is relevant in a special sense. In procedural due process claims, the deprivation by state action of a constitutionally protected interest in "life, liberty, or property" is not in itself unconstitutional; what is unconstitutional is the deprivation of such an interest without due process of law. Parratt, 451 U.S., at 537, 101 S.Ct., at 1913; Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 259, 98 S.Ct. 1042, 1050, 55 L.Ed.2d 252 (1978) ("Procedural due process rules are meant to protect persons not from the deprivation, but from the mistaken or unjustified deprivation of life, liberty, or property").11 The constitutional violation actionable under § 1983 is not complete when the deprivation occurs; it is not complete unless and until the State fails to provide due process. Therefore, to determine whether a constitutional violation has occurred, it is necessary to ask what process the State provided, and whether it was constitutionally adequate. This inquiry would examine the procedural safeguards built into the statutory or administrative procedure of effecting the deprivation, and any remedies for erroneous deprivations provided by statute or tort law.
In this case, Burch does not claim that his confinement at FSH violated any of the specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights.12 Burch's complaint could be read to include a substantive due process claim, but that issue was not raised in the petition for certiorari, and we express no view on whether the facts Burch alleges could give rise to such a claim.13 The claim at issue falls within the third, or procedural, category of § 1983 claims based on the Due Process Clause.
This is where the Parratt rule comes into play. Parratt and Hudson represent a special case of the general Mathews v. Eldridge analysis, in which postdeprivation tort remedies are all the process that is due, simply because they are the only remedies the State could be expected to provide. In Parratt, a state prisoner brought a § 1983 action because prison employees negligently had lost materials he had ordered by mail.14 The prisoner did not dispute that he had a postdeprivation remedy. Under state law, a tort-claim procedure was available by which he could have recovered the value of the materials. 451 U.S., at 543-544, 101 S.Ct., at 1916-17. This Court ruled that the tort remedy was all the process the prisoner was due, because any predeprivation procedural safeguards that the State did provide, or could have provided, would not address the risk of this kind of deprivation. The very nature of a negligent loss of property made it impossible for the State to predict such deprivations and provide predeprivation process. The Court explained:
Given these special circumstances, it was clear that the State, by making available a tort remedy that could adequately redress the loss, had given the prisoner the process he was due. Thus, Parratt is not an exception to the Mathews balancing test, but rather an application of that test to the unusual case in which one of the variables in the Mathews equation—the value of predeprivation safeguards—is negligible in preventing the kind of deprivation at issue. Therefore, no matter how significant the private interest at stake and the risk of its erroneous deprivation, see Mathews, 424 U.S., at 335, 96 S.Ct., at 903, the State cannot be required constitutionally to do the impossible by providing predeprivation process.
Petitioners argue that the dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) was proper because, as in Parratt and Hudson, the State could not possibly have provided predeprivation process to prevent the kind of "random, unauthorized" wrongful deprivation of liberty Burch alleges, so the postdeprivation remedies provided by Florida's statutory and common law necessarily are all the process Burch was due.15
Before turning to that issue, however, we must address a threshold question raised by Burch. He argues that Parratt and Hudson cannot apply to his situation, because those cases are limited to deprivations of property, not liberty.16
Burch alleges that he was deprived of his liberty interest in avoiding confinement in a mental hospital without either informed consent17 or the procedural safeguards of the involuntary placement process. Petitioners do not seriously dispute that there is a substantial liberty interest in avoiding confinement in a mental hospital. See Vitek v. Jones, 445 U.S. 480, 491-492, 100 S.Ct. 1254, 1263, 63 L.Ed.2d 552 (1980) (commitment to mental hospital entails " 'a massive curtailment of liberty,' " and requires due process protection); Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S., at 600, 99 S.Ct., at 2503 (there is a "substantial liberty interest in not being confined unnecessarily for medical treatment"); Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418, 425, 99 S.Ct. 1804, 1808, 60 L.Ed.2d 323 (1979) ("[C]ivil commitment for any purpose constitutes a significant deprivation of liberty that requires due process protection"); Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U.S. 715, 738, 92 S.Ct. 1845, 1858, 32 L.Ed.2d 435 (1972) (due process requires at least that the nature and duration of commitment to a mental hospital "bear some reasonable relation to the purpose" of the commitment). Burch's confinement at FSH for five months without a hearing or any other procedure to determine either that he validly had consented to admission, or that he met the statutory standard for involuntary placement, clearly infringes on this liberty interest.
To determine whether, as petitioners contend, the Parratt rule necessarily precludes § 1983 liability in this case, we must ask whether predeprivation procedural safeguards could address the risk of deprivations of the kind Burch alleges. To do this, we examine the risk involved. The risk is that some persons who come into Florida's mental health facilities will apparently be willing to sign forms authorizing admission and treatment, but will be incompetent to give the "express and informed consent" required for voluntary placement under § 394.465(1)(a). Indeed, the very nature of mental illness makes it foreseeable that a person needing mental health care will be unable to understand any proffered "explanation and disclosure of the subject matter" of the forms that person is asked to sign, and will be unable "to make a knowing and willful decision" whether to consent to admission.18 § 394.455(22) (definition of informed consent). A person who is willing to sign forms but is incapable of making an informed decision is, by the same token, unlikely to benefit from the voluntary patient's statutory right to request discharge. See § 394.465(2)(a). Such a person thus is in danger of being confined indefinitely without benefit of the procedural safeguards of the involuntary placement process, a process specifically designed to protect persons incapable of looking after their own interests. See §§ 394.467(2) and (3) (providing for notice, judicial hearing, counsel, examination by independent expert, appointment of guardian advocate, etc.).
Persons who are mentally ill and incapable of giving informed consent to admission would not necessarily meet the statutory standard for involuntary placement, which requires either that they are likely to injure themselves or others, or that their neglect or refusal to care for themselves threatens their well-being. See § 394.467(1)(b). The involuntary placement process serves to guard against the confinement of a person who, though mentally ill, is harmless and can live safely outside an institution. Confinement of such a person not only violates Florida law, but also is unconstitutional. O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563, 575, 95 S.Ct. 2486, 2493, 45 L.Ed.2d 396 (1975) (there is no constitutional basis for confining mentally ill persons involuntarily "if they are dangerous to no one and can live safely in freedom"). Thus, it is at least possible that if Burch had had an involuntary placement hearing, he would not have been found to meet the statutory standard for involuntary placement and would not have been confined at FSH. Moreover, even assuming that Burch would have met the statutory requirements for involuntary placement, he still could have been harmed by being deprived of other protections built into the involuntary placement procedure, such as the appointment of a guardian advocate to make treatment decisions and periodic judicial review of placement. §§ 394.467(3) and (4).19
First, petitioners cannot claim that the deprivation of Burch's liberty was unpredictable. Under Florida's statutory scheme, only a person competent to give informed consent may be admitted as a voluntary patient. There is, however, no specified way of determining, before a patient is asked to sign admission forms, whether he is competent. It is hardly unforeseeable that a person requesting treatment for mental illness might be incapable of informed consent, and that state officials with the power to admit patients might take their apparent willingness to be admitted at face value and not initiate involuntary placement procedures. Any erroneous deprivation will occur, if at all, at a specific, predictable point in the admission process—when a patient is given admission forms to sign.
Third, petitioners cannot characterize their conduct as "unauthorized" in the sense the term is used in Parratt and Hudson. The State delegated to them the power and authority to effect the very deprivation complained of here, Burch's confinement in a mental hospital, and also delegated to them the concomitant duty to initiate the procedural safeguards set up by state law to guard against unlawful confinement. In Parratt and Hudson, the state employees had no similar broad authority to deprive prisoners of their personal property, and no similar duty to initiate (for persons unable to protect their own interests) the procedural safeguards required before deprivations occur. The deprivation here is "unauthorized" only in the sense that it was not an act sanctioned by state law, but, instead, was a "depriv[ation] of constitutional rights . . . by an official's abuse of his position." Monroe, 365 U.S., at 172, 81 S.Ct., at 476.20
Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981), and Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 82 L.Ed.2d 393 (1984), should govern this case. Only by disregarding the gist of Burch's complaint—that state actors' wanton and unauthorized departure from established practice worked the deprivation—and by transforming the allegations into a challenge to the adequacy of Florida's admissions procedures can the Court attempt to distinguish this case from Parratt and Hudson. Burch alleges a deprivation occasioned by petitioners' contravention of Florida's established procedures. Florida allows the voluntary admission process to be employed to admit to its mental hospitals only patients who have made "application by express and informed consent for admission," and requires that the elaborate involuntary admission process be used to admit patients requiring treatment and incapable of giving such consent. See Fla.Stat. §§ 394.465, 394.467 (1981). Burch explicitly disavows any challenge to the adequacy of those established procedural safeguards accompanying Florida's two avenues of admission to mental hospitals. See Brief for Respondent 5 ("[T]he constitutional adequacy of Florida's voluntary admission and treatment procedures has never been an issue in this case since Burch was committed as an involuntary patient for purposes of this appeal"); id., at 6 ("Burch is not attacking the facial validity of Florida's voluntary admission procedures any more than he is attacking the facial validity of Florida's involuntary admission procedures"). Nor does the complaint allege any widespread practice of subverting the State's procedural safeguards. Burch instead claims that in his case petitioners wrongfully employed the voluntary admission process deliberately or recklessly to deny him the hearing that Florida requires state actors to provide, through the involuntary admission process, to one in his position. He claims that petitioners "knew or should have known" that he was incapable of consent but "with willful, wanton and reckless disregard of and indifference to" his constitutional rights "subjected him to involuntary commitment" without any hearing "at which he could have challenged his involuntary admission and treatment." App. to Pet. for Cert. 200-202 (complaint); see Brief for Respondent i, n. 1 ("The complaint alleges an intentional, involuntary commitment of Respondent by Petitioners . . ."). Consistent with his disavowal of any attack upon the adequacy of the State's established procedures, Burch alleges that petitioners flagrantly and at least recklessly contravened those requirements. In short, Burch has alleged that petitioners' unauthorized actions worked the deprivation of his liberty.
Parratt and Hudson should readily govern procedural due process claims such as respondent's. Taken together, the decisions indicate that for deprivations worked by such random and unauthorized departures from otherwise unimpugned and established state procedures the State provides the process due by making available adequate postdeprivation remedies. In Parratt, the Court addressed a deprivation which "occurred as a result of the unauthorized failure of agents of the State to follow established state procedure." 451 U.S., at 543, 101 S.Ct., at 1916. The random nature of the state actor's unauthorized departure made it not "practicable for the State to provide a predeprivation hearing," ibid., and adequate postdeprivation remedies available through the State's tort system provided the process due under the Fourteenth Amendment. Hudson applied this reasoning to intentional deprivations by state actors and confirmed the distinction between deprivation pursuant to "an established state procedure" and that pursuant to "random and unauthorized action." 468 U.S., at 532-533, 104 S.Ct., at 3203; cf. Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 435-436, 102 S.Ct. 1148, 1157-58, 71 L.Ed.2d 265 (1982). In Hudson, the Court explained that the Parratt doctrine was applicable because "the state cannot possibly know in advance of a negligent deprivation of property," and that "[t]he controlling inquiry is solely whether the state is in a position to provide for predeprivation process." 468 U.S., at 534, 104 S.Ct., at 3204.
Application of Parratt and Hudson indicates that respondent has failed to state a claim allowing recovery under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1982 ed.). Petitioners' actions were unauthorized: they are alleged to have wrongly and without license departed from established state practices. Cf. Hudson, supra, 468 U.S., at 532-533, 104 S.Ct., at 3203; Parratt, supra, 451 U.S., at 543, 101 S.Ct., at 1916. Florida officials in a position to establish safeguards commanded that the voluntary admission process be employed only for consenting patients and that the involuntary hearing procedures be used to admit unconsenting patients. Yet it is alleged that petitioners "with willful, wanton and reckless disregard of and indifference to" Burch's rights contravened both commands. As in Parratt, the deprivation "occurred as a result of the unauthorized failure of agents of the State to follow established state procedure." 451 U.S., at 543, 101 S.Ct., at 1916. The wanton or reckless nature of the failure indicates it to be random. The State could not foresee the particular contravention and was hardly "in a position to provide for predeprivation process," Hudson, supra, 468 U.S., at 534, 104 S.Ct., at 3204, to ensure that officials bent upon subverting the State's requirements would in fact follow those procedures. For this wrongful deprivation resulting from an unauthorized departure from established state practice, Florida provides adequate postdeprivation remedies, as two courts below concluded, and which the Court and respondent do not dispute. Parratt and Hudson thus should govern this case and indicate that respondent has failed to allege a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The unauthorized and wrongful character of the departure from established state practice makes additional procedures an "impracticable" means of preventing the deprivation. "The underlying rationale of Parratt is that when deprivations of property are effected through random and unauthorized conduct of a state employee, predeprivation procedures are simply 'impracticable' since the state cannot know when such deprivations will occur." Hudson, 468 U.S., at 533, 104 S.Ct., at 3203; see Parratt, supra, 451 U.S., at 541, 101 S.Ct., at 1916. The Court suggests that additional safeguards surrounding the voluntary admission process would have quite possibly reduced the risk of deprivation. Ante, at 135-137. This reasoning conflates the value of procedures for preventing error in the repeated and usual case (evaluated according to the test set forth in Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 96 S.Ct. 893, 47 L.Ed.2d 18 (1976)) with the value of additional predeprivation procedures to forestall deprivations by state actors bent upon departing from, or indifferent to, complying with established practices. Unsurprisingly, the Court is vague regarding how its proffered procedures would prevent the deprivation Burch alleges, and why the safeguards would not form merely one more set of procedural protections that state employees could willfully, recklessly, and wantonly subvert. Indeed, Burch alleges that, presented with the clearest evidence of his incompetence, petitioners nonetheless wantonly or recklessly denied him the protections of the State's admission procedures and requirements. The state actor so indifferent to guaranteed protections would be no more prevented from working the deprivation by additional procedural requirements than would the mail handler in Parratt or the prison guard in Hudson. In those cases, the State could have, and no doubt did, provide a range of predeprivation requirements and safeguards guiding both prison searches and care of packages. See Parratt, 451 U.S., at 530, 101 S.Ct., at 1910; id., at 543, 101 S.Ct., at 1916. ("[T]he deprivation occurred as a result of the unauthorized failure of agents of the State to follow established state procedure. There is no contention that the procedures themselves are inadequate . . ."). In all three cases, the unpredictable, wrongful departure is beyond the State's reasonable control. Additional safeguards designed to secure correct results in the usual case do not practicably forestall state actors who flout the State's command and established practice.
The suggestion that the State delegated to petitioners insufficiently trammeled discretion conflicts with positions that the Court ostensibly embraces. The issue whether petitioners possessed undue discretion is bound with, and more properly analyzed as, an aspect of the adequacy of the State's procedural safeguards, yet the Court claims Burch did not present this issue and purports not to decide it. See ante, at 117, and n. 3, 135-136; but see infra, at 150-151. By suggesting that petitioners' acts are attributable to the State, cf. ante, at 135-136, the Court either abandons its position that "Burch does not claim that he was deprived of due process by an established state procedure," ante, at 117, n. 3, or abandons Parratt and Hudson' § distinction between established procedures and unauthorized departures from those practices. Petitioners were not charged with formulating policy, and the complaint does not allege widespread and common departure from required procedures. Neither do the Court's passing reflections that a hearing is constitutionally required in the usual case of treatment of an incompetent patient advance the argument. Ante, at 117, 135. That claim either states the conclusion that the State's combined admission procedures are generally inadequate, or repudiates Parratt and Hudson' § focus upon random and unauthorized acts and upon the State's ability to formulate safeguards. To the extent that a liberty interest exists in the application of the involuntary admission procedures whenever appropriate, it is the random and unauthorized action of state actors that effected the deprivation, one for which Florida also provides adequate postdeprivation process. See Fla.Stat. § 768.28(1) (1981) (partial waiver of immunity, allowing tort suits); § 394.459(13) (providing action against "[a]ny person who violates or abuses any rights or privileges of patients" provided by the Florida Mental Health Act).
The Court's delegation of authority argument, like its claim that "we cannot say that predeprivation process was impossible here," ante, at 136, revives an argument explicitly rejected in Hudson. In Hudson, the Court rebuffed the argument that "because an agent of the state who intends to deprive a person of his property can provide predeprivation process, then as a matter of due process he must do so." 468 U.S., at 534, 104 S.Ct., at 3204 (internal quotation omitted). By failing to consider whether "the state cannot possibly know in advance" of the wrongful contravention and by abandoning "[t]he controlling inquiry . . . whether the state is in a position to provide for predeprivation process," the Court embraces the "fundamental misunderstanding of Parratt." Ibid. Each of the Court's distinctions abandons an essential element of the Parratt and Hudson doctrines, and together they disavow those cases' central insights and holdings.
Burch apparently concedes that, if Florida's statutes were strictly complied with, no deprivation of liberty without due process would occur. If only those patients who are competent to consent to admission are allowed to sign themselves in as "voluntary" patients, then they would not be deprived of any liberty interest at all. And if all other patients—those who are incompetent and those who are unwilling to consent to admission are afforded the protections of Florida's involuntary placement procedures, they would be deprived of their liberty only after due process.