Opinion ID: 4566005
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Substantive-Due-Process Claims

Text: To prevail on a substantive-due-process claim, a plaintiff must show that the defendant’s conduct “shock[ed] the conscience.” Mulholland v. Gov’t Cnty. of Berks, 706 F.3d 227, 241 (3d Cir. 2013). As the defendants are a child welfare agency and its employees, that standard is met only if they lacked “reasonable and articulable evidence giving rise to a reasonable suspicion that [L.R.J. had] been abused or [was] in imminent danger of abuse” at the time of the challenged action. Id. That standard is not satisfied here. 2 The Parents later agreed to extend the plan by 60 days. 3 The complaint contains substantive-due-process claims against Mr. Hornberger and Ms. Palmer in their official capacities, but the District Court dismissed these claims as duplicative of the individual-capacity claims. The Parents do not challenge that ruling on appeal. The complaint also contains a claim against paralegal Christine Sebastian Bair, but the District Court dismissed it with the Parents’ consent. 4 The District Court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and exercise plenary review. Morse, 132 F.3d at 906. 3 The Parents base their claims on several actions beginning with the 30-day safety plan. But by then, the defendants had at least some “reasonable and articulable evidence,” since they had received a suspected-abuse report from Ms. Cannon several days earlier. The Parents argue this evidence was outweighed by, among other things, Chester County Hospital’s belief that any “suspicion for abuse was low” and the CHOP SCAN Team’s “official final diagnosis” of an “accidental fracture.” But even if defendants’ decision to ignore these and other contraindications was negligent, we cannot say that defendants “consciously disregarded a great risk that there had been no abuse.” Id. at 241 (emphasis added). Compare id. at 242–44 (officials had reasonable suspicion where plaintiff was listed “as an indicated perpetrator of child abuse” in state registry, even though listing was ten years old and officials had visited plaintiff’s home several times and found no problems), with Croft v. Westmoreland Cnty. Child. & Youth Servs., 103 F.3d 1123, 1126 (3d Cir. 1997) (a “six-fold hearsay report by an anonymous informant” did not provide reasonable suspicion). And the justification for defendants’ actions grew over time. They learned that a CHOP doctor diagnosed L.R.J.’s injury as “inflicted rather than accidental” (App. at 37) and that Dr. Ecker believed L.R.J.’s injury “was not consistent” with the Parents’ explanation (App. at 40). With such reasonable suspicion, defendants’ conduct did not shock the conscience. So the District Court’s dismissal of the substantive-due-process claims will be affirmed.5 5 The District Court believed that the defendants’ actions did not implicate the Parents’ substantive-due-process rights because the Parents never lost custody of their 4