Opinion ID: 2974628
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Underlying due process claim

Text: Judge Squire seeks to avoid the Younger abstention doctrine by arguing that this case is controlled not by Younger, but by the Supreme Court’s decision in Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527 (1981). Taylor, a Nebraska prison inmate, had sued the Warden and Hobby Manager of the prison No. 05-4513 Squire v. Coughlan Page 6 in which he was incarcerated because hobby materials purchased by Taylor and addressed to his attention at the prison were never actually handed over to him. Id. at 529. He initiated an action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that the defendants’ failure to locate his package deprived him of property without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. The Court held that the inmate had made a threshold showing of a due process violation by alleging that (1) the defendants acted under color of state law, (2) the hobby materials were the property of the inmate, and (3) the alleged loss amounted to a deprivation. Id. at 536. While noting that the “fundamental requirement of due process is the opportunity to be heard” at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner, the Court held that due process does not always require the state to provide a hearing prior to the initial deprivation of property. Id. at 540. “[T]he normal predeprivation notice and opportunity to be heard is pretermitted if the State provides a postdeprivation remedy.” Id. at 538. A failure to provide predeprivation notice, the Court held, is justified in situations where the taking is a “result of a random and unauthorized act by a state employee.” Id. at 541. The Court held that although the plaintiff was deprived of property under color of state law, he failed to seek redress under the existing Nebraska state tort-claims procedure, which the Court deemed an adequate state postdeprivation remedy that satisfied the requirements of due process. Id. at 543-44. Judge Squire claims that the Ohio Disciplinary Counsel, through Coughlan, failed to provide an adequate postdeprivation remedy for the alleged underlying due process violation. She argues that Coughlan did not provide her with the name of every person contacted in the course of the investigation into her alleged misconduct. This “admission,” in Judge Squire’s view, proves that Coughlan acted in an unauthorized and arbitrary manner “not authorized by established State procedure.” She also argues that, under Parratt, the postdeprivation remedy is inadequate because it requires her to appear in a public hearing following, in her words, the “public smearing of baseless and malicious allegations in the news media” in a year when she is up for reelection. Even assuming that Judge Squire states a viable due process claim, Parratt is simply inapplicable in this case. Unlike Judge Squire, the plaintiff in Parratt was not involved in an ongoing state judicial proceeding when he filed his due process claim in federal court. Judge Squire is not only already involved in such a proceeding, but, as explained in Part II.B.3. above, has an adequate opportunity to present her constitutional claim in that proceeding. Because the district court must abstain under Younger and therefore lacks jurisdiction to hear Judge Squire’s claim, her argument under Parratt is foreclosed.