Opinion ID: 718736
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Due Process and the July Fourth Weekend Transfer

Text: 71 The seventh claim for relief alleges that the State's attempted transfer of certain plaintiffs over the 1995 July Fourth weekend constitute a separate and distinct violation of constitutional rights by OMH, and demands 72 mandatory injunctive relief: (a) directing all defendants to restore funding from June 1, 1995, nunc pro tunc, at the levels then in place; [and] (b) continuing such order as to each [plaintiff] until a constitutionally appropriate transfer hearing has been held, and an appeal of any determination adverse to the [plaintiff] has been heard and determined in the state courts. 73 The district court's preliminary injunction affords precisely this relief against the State Defendants. 908 F.Supp. at 1156. The court held that the State Defendants, by their prior actions, had assumed duties under the Due Process Clause to provide professionally adequate in-state placements for plaintiffs, to effect these placements via an orderly transfer, and to conduct the transfer subject to rights of administrative and judicial review. Id. at 1152-53. The State Defendants breached this duty during the July Fourth weekend episode, said the court, by failing to arrange in-state placements and by attempting to move plaintiffs without consent or hearings to unsatisfactory in-state placements. Id. The remedy for this breach, according to the court, was (1) to stop all transfers to in-state facilities unless the transfer met due process requirements of adequate care and hearings, and (2) to resume immediately full funding for the plaintiffs' out-of-state care until the appropriate transfers take place. Id. at 1153. 74 We conclude, first, that the State Defendants had no duty under the Due Process Clause to provide professionally adequate care to the plaintiffs, and therefore have no duty to resume TCF payments for the plaintiffs' out-of-state care. Second, we conclude that the July Fourth weekend episode amounted to a breach of the State Defendants' duty to ensure that involuntary transfers are constitutionally appropriate, but that this injunction is not the appropriate remedy for this breach. 12
75 After finding state action, 13 the district court held that the State Defendants have a due process obligation under Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 321, 102 S.Ct. 2452, 2461, 73 L.Ed.2d 28 (1982), to exercise professional judgment in establishing safe conditions and freedom from undue restraint, and a duty under Society for Good Will, 737 F.2d 1239, 1250 (2d Cir.1984), to exercise professional judgment in devising programs that seek to allow patients to live as humanely and decently as when they entered the school, and to assure that the residents maintain the[ir] fundamental self-care skills. See 908 F.Supp. at 1150-51. 76 We conclude that the district court erred in relying upon Youngberg and Society for Good Will. Society for Good Will dealt with the level of care required by the Due Process Clause, but the state's obligation to provide care and funding in that case was undisputed. When, however, the government disclaims any entitlement to continued funding, and then ends this funding, the reach of Society for Good Will is controlled by the Supreme Court's subsequent holding in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep't of Social Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989): [T]he Due Process Clauses [of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments] 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. Id. at 196, 109 S.Ct. at 1003. In DeShaney, a child who was abused by his father contended that the state social welfare service breached its duty under the Due Process Clause to protect him, because the agencies knew about the danger of abuse and specifically proclaimed, by word and by deed, its intention to protect him against that danger. Id. at 197, 109 S.Ct. at 1004. The issue was whether the State thereby acquired an affirmative 'duty'  that was enforceable through the Due Process Clause. Id. The Supreme Court rejected this theory of liability: It may well be that, by voluntarily undertaking to protect Joshua against a danger it concededly played no part in creating, the State acquired a duty under state tort law to provide him with adequate protection against that danger. Id. at 201-02, 109 S.Ct. at 1006. However, the claim here is based on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which, as we have said many times, does not transform every tort committed by a state actor into a constitutional violation. Id. at 202, 109 S.Ct. at 1006. 77 The Supreme Court did acknowledge that the due process obligation created by cases like Youngberg, which involved the security of involuntarily committed mental patients, or Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 97 S.Ct. 285, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976), which involved the provision of medical care to incarcerated prisoners, was still valid, but only as an exception that applied to certain limited circumstances. DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 198, 109 S.Ct. at 1004. The Court explained that these cases stand only for the proposition that when the State takes a person into its custody and holds him there against his will, the Constitution imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for his safety and general well-being. Id. at 199-200, 109 S.Ct. at 1005 (emphasis added). The Court stressed that the involuntary nature of the commitment was determinative: 78 The affirmative duty to protect arises not from the State's knowledge of the individual's predicament or from its expression of intent to help him, but from the limitation which it has imposed on his freedom to act on his own behalf. 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 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. 79 Id. at 200, 109 S.Ct. at 1005-06 (emphasis added and citation omitted). 80 Plaintiffs here are under no state-imposed restraint. The whole effort of the guardians, here and in state court, has been to prolong the involvement of the City and the State in the funding of institutional placements as to which the City and the State have washed their hands. DeShaney therefore subverts the district court's conclusion that the State Defendants had assumed by word and by deed, id. at 197, 109 S.Ct. at 1004, a duty to provide plaintiffs a smooth and orderly transition to in-state care, including continuous full funding of out-of-state care prior to their transfer. DeShaney flatly rejected as the sole ground for a due process right an expressed intent to provide assistance, or even a failed initiative to do so. See Philadelphia Police & Fire Ass'n for Handicapped Children, Inc. v. City of Philadelphia, 874 F.2d 156, 166-68 (3d Cir.1989) (fact that state had been providing home services to mentally retarded individuals did not create due process right to continued services). Therefore, the injunction cannot be premised on a duty to exercise professional judgment under Youngberg and Society for Good Will, because there is no such duty here.
81 The district court outlined in some detail OMH's precipitate actions in the abortive transfer of nine individuals from the Devereux Institute over the July Fourth weekend. See 908 F.Supp. at 1148-49 & n. 13. Boiled down, the district court's findings demonstrate that some or all of these individuals were incapable of giving their consent to being moved from the institute, and that the OMH attempted to transfer them involuntarily to another institution, without the consent of their guardians. 82 An attempt by the State to force involuntary commitment to an institution or to otherwise involuntarily restrain an individual implicates at least an individual's right to procedural due process. See Jones v. United States, 463 U.S. 354, 361, 103 S.Ct. 3043, 3048, 77 L.Ed.2d 694 (1983) (It is clear that commitment for any purpose constitutes a significant deprivation of liberty that requires due process protection.) (internal quotation omitted). By attempting to seize and transport plaintiffs to in-state institutions without the consent of their guardians and without providing adequate procedural due process guarantees, the State Defendants threatened a violation of plaintiffs' due process rights. The question is, what remedy is appropriate for this wrong? 83 The injunction has two remedial elements: (i) resumption of full funding of plaintiffs' out-of-state care; and, (ii) when or if plaintiffs are transferred to in-state facilities, compliance with an orderly transfer process that includes procedural due process guarantees. 84 (i) Funding. The due process right against deprivation of liberty, implicated by the attempted July Fourth weekend transfer, is distinct from an asserted right to receive voluntary institutional care from the State, implicated by the termination of funding. As we have already discussed, under DeShaney, plaintiffs have no independent due process right to funded care from the State Defendants. The district court addressed this issue by engrafting the involuntary character of the attempted transfer onto the overall institutional status of the plaintiffs. It therefore concluded that the due process obligation restricting involuntary transfers automatically created a due process obligation to fund the plaintiffs' current institutional placements. 908 F.Supp. at 1153. But the loss of funding for voluntary private institutional care does not restrict plaintiffs' liberty (and does not implicate the Due Process Clause) as would an involuntary transfer. See DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 196-97, 109 S.Ct. at 1003-04. A due process violation was threatened during the July Fourth weekend, but that wrong cannot support an injunction that imposes an expansive duty for the State Defendants to provide immediate full funding. The district court lacked the power to deploy the State's resources in this way. Injunctive relief should be narrowly tailored to address specific harms and not impose unnecessary burdens on lawful activity. Waldman Publishing Corp. v. Landoll, Inc., 43 F.3d 775, 785 (2d Cir.1994) (citing Society for Good Will, 737 F.2d at 1251). 85 (ii) Transfer Process. The injunctive requirement that the transfer process must be orderly and constitutionally appropriate could be supported only to the extent that a transfer is involuntary, as was the transfer attempted over the July Fourth weekend. We do not doubt that, if the district court had found an actual and imminent likelihood of future abuses similar to the July Fourth weekend episode, the district court could remedy it by injunction. Tom Doherty Assocs., Inc. v. Saban Entertainment, Inc., 60 F.3d 27, 37 (2d Cir.1995). But the district court made no such finding. At most, the district court found that cessation of TCF will inevitably  force the State to make a hasty transfer of plaintiffs, 908 F.Supp. at 1155 (emphasis added); but this conclusory statement is unsupported. There is no finding whatsoever of any actual and imminent threat that the State will renew its attempt to effect an involuntary transfer. The extraordinary remedy of an injunction is unavailable absent such a finding. Nor does the cessation of transitional care inevitably mean hasty transfer[s] by the State, because the State's disclaimer of any funding obligation until 1999 does not require the relocation of any of its clients. We therefore conclude that this injunction is not needed to prevent irreparable harm that may result from the threatened violation of plaintiffs' rights over the July Fourth weekend, or that might flow from any similar incident in the future.