Opinion ID: 718736
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Funding Obligation

Text: 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.