Opinion ID: 3015192
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Distinguishing West

Text: West does not compel a different conclusion. We have alluded several times to West’s teaching and methodology; we now expressly distinguish it on its facts. In West, an inmate claimed under § 1983 that a part-time prison physician violated his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment by deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs. 487 U.S. at 45. The Supreme Court agreed, and held that the prison doctor was a state actor because he performed a traditionally exclusive governmental function. Under the federal Constitution as well as under state common law, the Court explained, the state was required to provide adequate medical care to those it incarcerated. Id. at 54-55. The state delegated that public function to the prison doctor. Id. Importantly for the West Court, the inmate received his care at the prison hospital, and had no option of choosing medical care outside the state system. Id. at 55-56. -16- In several crucial ways, care for children in foster homes in Pennsylvania differs from the medical care for inmates considered in West. First, neither the federal Constitution nor the Pennsylvania Constitution requires that the state provide care for foster children. See P A. C ONST . art. III, § 29 (“appropriations may be made for . . . assistance to mothers having dependent children”). Constitutional obligations on a state obviously are powerful evidence that the required functions are traditionally governmental, but here there are no such obligations. Instead, as we discussed above, state-supervised foster care in Pennsylvania is a creature of statute, begun in 1901 under Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Act.6 Statutory duties of even such early vintage are not traditionally governmental. See Sullivan, 526 U.S. at 56-57 (holding that deciding whether to suspend payment for disputed medical treatment was not a traditionally exclusive governmental function because in 6 We note that as early as 1835 the Pennsylvania legislature established so-called Houses of Refuge for “incorrigible or vicious” children, and authorized aldermen or justices of the peace to commit those children to Houses of Refuge at a parent’s request. See Fisher, 62 A.2d at 55 (referring to Act of April 10, 1835, P.L. 133); Act of April 21, 1850, P.L. 339 (incorporating an association to establish a house of refuge in Western Pennsylvania). We think the passing of the Juvenile Act is the more appropriate date for marking the beginning of Pennsylvania’s management of the foster care system, however, because of the Juvenile Act’s much broader application. But see A SHBY, supra, at 25 (“Although houses of refuge were mainly for delinquent youths, they contained substantial numbers of dependent and neglected children. . . . This blurring of lines between dependency and delinquency continued into the twentieth century.”). -17- Pennsylvania before 1915 private employers made that decision without state authorization). We recognize that the ancient concept of the sovereign as parens patriae, which means “parent of his or her country,” B LACK’S L AW D ICTIONARY 1144 (8th ed. 2004), imposed a duty on the crown to protect the people and thus made it “the supreme guardian and superintendent over all infants [i.e., children].” George B. Curtis, The Checkered Career of Parens Patriae: The State as Parent or Tyrant, 25 D E P AUL L. R EV. 895, 897 (1976) (quoting Eyre v. The Countess of Shaftsbury, 24 Eng. Rep. 659 (Ch. 1722)).7 And, indeed, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court seemed to allude to the common law roots of Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Act when it upheld a revised version of the Act under the state constitution. Fisher, 62 A.2d at 56-57 (“Every statute which is designed to give protection, care and training to children, as a needed substitute for parental authority and performance of parental duty, is but a recognition of the duty of the state, as the legitimate guardian and protector of children where other guardianship fails.”). While under West the existence of a common law duty can contribute to a finding of state action, see 487 U.S. at 54-55, we do not think the existence of a generalized duty, by itself, is enough to make the Servises state actors. That is because liability inheres in exercising traditionally public functions, not traditionally public 7 The Supreme Court has recognized the doctrine of parens patriae as applied to care for children. See Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 304 (1993); Schall v. Martin, 467 U.S. 253, 265 (1984) (“Children, by definition, are not assumed to have the capacity to take care of themselves. They are assumed to be subject to the control of their parents, and if parental control falters, the state must play its part as parens patriae.”). -18- duties. Cf. Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149, 158 (1978) (“While many functions have been performed by governments, very few have been exclusively reserved to the state.”) (emphasis added). Indeed, we have found no case in which the Supreme Court identified a traditionally exclusive public function based on powers possessed, but not traditionally exercised, by a state government. Thus, while Pennsylvania may have had a broad duty to supply care for needy children since the formation of the Commonwealth, that duty did not become a public function until 1901 with the creation of the Juvenile Act. And, of course, as we have explained, the handson provision of foster care even now is not an exclusive public function. Second, unlike in West, Leshko’s care was not delivered in an institutional setting. West reasoned that “although the provision of medical services is a function traditionally performed by private individuals, the context in which respondent performs these services . . . distinguishes the relationship between respondent and West from the ordinary physician-patient relationship.” 487 U.S. at 56 n.15. The Court explained that the “correctional setting, specifically designed to be removed from the community, inevitably affects the exercise of professional judgment.” Id. Here, of course, Leshko’s environs, a private home, were apparently designed so she would not be removed from the community. It is fair to say that a primary goal of foster care is to replicate as closely as possible the traditional family setting in which children are cared for and raised. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 6301(b)(1) (describing purpose of Juvenile Act as being “to preserve the unity of the family whenever possible or to provide an alternative permanent family when the unity of the family cannot be maintained”). In other -19- contexts, we have noted that the home is a “sacrosanct” haven of refuge from the government. United States v. Zimmerman, 277 F.3d 426, 432 (3d Cir. 2002) (citing Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 585 (1980)). Whereas in West the tight securitybased strictures of prison life affected the “nature, timing, and form of medical care provided to inmates,” 487 U.S. at 56 n.15, the Servises’ care was unaffected by such pervasive institutional influences. Cf. Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U.S. 614, 627-28 (1991) (concluding that injury caused by state action was compounded because it occurred in a courthouse). Third, while only the state could choose Leshko’s caregiver – a feature her case has in common with West – that obligation too is comparatively new in Pennsylvania. As we discussed earlier, in Pennsylvania, locating suitable foster homes and placing children in them traditionally was a function of private charitable organizations. West found it significant that “[i]t is only those physicians authorized by the State to whom the inmate may turn.” 487 U.S. at 55. It simply cannot be said that, historically, foster children in Pennsylvania could only turn to caregivers authorized by the Commonwealth. While court approval typically was secured, see A SHBY, supra, at 61, substantive authorization, such as it was, was in the hands of volunteers. See Juvenile Act § 7 (providing for courts to commit neglected or dependent children “to the care of some suitable institution . . . or to the care of some association willing to receive it, embracing in its object the purpose of caring or obtaining homes for dependent or neglected children . . . .”); id. at § 15 (authorizing parents or guardians to enter an agreement with organizations incorporated in Pennsylvania “for the purpose of aiding, caring for or placing in homes such children, and being approved as herein provided, for the surrender of such -20- child to such association or institution, to be taken and cared for . . . or put into a friendly home”); C LEMENT, supra at 139 (noting that in the mid-1800s, “[p]robably any well-dressed person who appeared in the [Home Missionary Society’s] office could get a child within hours,” and the Children’s Aid Society found homes “simply by advertising in newspapers and by ‘keeping an open office’”). By contrast, the West Court seems to have identified the selection of prison doctors traditionally and exclusively with the state. See West, 487 U.S. at 55. Robert S. supports our conclusion that West does not control the outcome here. In Robert S., a private residential school contracted with local governments to rehabilitate juvenile sex offenders. 256 F.3d at 162. Robert sued the school and its employees under § 1983, alleging physical and psychological abuse. Id. at 163. We held that the school and its employees did not serve traditionally exclusive governmental functions because only private schools specialized in treating sex offenders. Id. at 166. Seeming to invoke West, Robert argued that he was held at the school against his will, and thus his situation was “entirely analogous to [that] of either a prisoner or mentally committed individual held against his will.” Id. Here, it is unclear whether Leshko was voluntarily turned over to the County or was removed against her mother’s will. Assuming that she was forcibly removed, as we must on this appeal of a grant of a motion to dismiss, we explained in Robert S. that “the power that [the local government] exercised over Robert is not comparable to the power that a state exercises over a person whose liberty is restricted as a result of a criminal conviction or involuntary civil commitment. The latter power is quintessentially governmental, but a legal guardian’s authority over a minor is not.” 256 F.3d at 167 n.9 (emphasis added). -21- We reiterate that principle today as applied to foster parents.