Opinion ID: 524999
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: DeShaney and Equal Protection

Text: 54 I address an issue at the threshold that is not central to the majority's decision, but is sure to stand important in the future. The majority discusses at length the Supreme Court's recent decision of DeShaney v. Winnebago County, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), stating that DeShaney, which concerns the substantive component of the Due Process Clause, is nonetheless relevant to our analysis of this case, which concerns an equal protection claim. The majority apparently views DeShaney as a general statement that governmental officers, in their actions, enjoy a zone of discretion regardless of the Fourteenth Amendment right involved. 55 DeShaney should play no role in McKee's case. DeShaney seeks to define a bright line limit to the substantive component of the Due Process Clause. See, e.g., Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 106 S.Ct. 2841, 92 L.Ed.2d 140 (1986) (holding that substantive component of Due Process Clause does not protect the right to engage in homosexual sodomy). DeShaney specifically does not address claims based upon illegitimate distribution of public services in contravention of the Equal Protection Clause. The State may not, of course, selectively deny its protective services to certain disfavored minorities without violating the Equal Protection Clause. See Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886). But no such argument has been made here. DeShaney, 109 S.Ct. at 1004 n. 3. 56 The Supreme Court states that the Due Process Clause was intended to prevent [the] government 'from abusing [its] power, and employing it as an instrument of oppression....'  DeShaney, 109 S.Ct. at 1003. In substantive due process analysis, it is the State's affirmative act of restraining the individual's freedom to act on his own behalf--through incarceration, institutionalization, or other similar restraint of personal liberty--which is, the 'deprivation of liberty' triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause, not its failure to act to protect his liberty interests against harms inflicted by other means. DeShaney, 109 S.Ct. at 1006. 57 Equal protection values are not tied to the scope or limits of governmental discretion, but are tied, instead, to the government's obligation not to make illegitimate distinctions among those to whom the government provides services. Although there is no general constitutional right to police protection, the state may not discriminate in providing such protection. Watson v. City of Kansas City, Kansas, 857 F.2d 690, 694 (10th Cir.1988); cf. Sunstein, Sexual Orientation and the Constitution: A Note on the Relationship Between Due Process and Equal Protection, 55 U.Chi.L.Rev. 1161, 1179 (1988) (Equal Protection Clause ...is grounded in a norm of equality that operates largely as a critique of traditional practices). 58 Imagine that in DeShaney, Winnebago County had an intentional policy to intervene only in family abuse cases when the family is white, not to intervene when the family is black, that Joshua DeShaney was black and died because of the County's failure to intervene. The majority would have us believe that no equal protection violation exists because [f]ootnote three [of DeShaney ] does not permit plaintiffs to circumvent the rule of DeShaney by converting every Due Process claim into an Equal Protection claim via an allegation that state officers exercised discretion to act in one incident but not in another. 59 The democratic political processes upon which the majority rests its hope that all people receive equal protection of the law is not adequate for the task of protecting people when distinctions are made upon suspect and quasi-suspect classifications. See United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152 n. 4, 58 S.Ct. 778, 783 n. 4, 82 L.Ed. 1234 (1938); Bixby, The Roosevelt Court, Democratic Ideology, and Minority Rights: Another Look at United States v. Classic, 90 Yale L.J. 741, 746-60 (1981) (tyranny of the majority). We hold dear equal protection values, in large part, because the legislative process may fall short of the Constitution's commands. There can be no discretion to discriminate invidiously. 60