Court Opinion

ID: 9853777
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:54:21.565238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:05.679872
License: Public Domain

STRAUB, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
When the State of New York accepted federal funding under the Food Stamp Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 2011-2036, and the Medicaid Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1396-1396v, it made a promise to provide residents who cannot afford to pay for food or healthcare with the means to secure these basic necessities of life. Although that promise was technically made to the federal government, it can be enforced to some extent by qualified beneficiaries, upon whom the Acts “unambiguously confer[ ] [the] right” to receive food stamps and Medicaid assistance in a timely manner. See Gonzaga, Univ. v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273, 283, 122 S.Ct. 2268, 153 L.Ed.2d 309 (2002) (requiring such a right to support a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983). Plaintiffs were deprived of that right and thus brought this class action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against several governmental agencies that design and implement these programs in New York. In doing so, plaintiffs allege that the policies and practices of the New York City Human Resources Administration (“HRA”), the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (“OTDA”), and the New York State Department of Health (“DOH”) have the effect of preventing needy New York City families and individuals from applying for, and timely receiving, the benefits to which they are entitled. Following a bench trial in April 2001, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (William H. Pauley, III, Judge) granted the plaintiff class declaratory and injunctive relief as against all defendants. See Reynolds v. Giuliani, No. 98 Civ. 8877(WHP), 2005 WL 3428213 (S.D.N.Y. Dec.14, 2005). Only the commissioners of the two state agencies (“State defendants”) have maintained their appeal.
Because New York has delegated the day-to-day administration of the food stamp and Medicaid programs to local agencies such as the HRA, see N.Y. Soc. Serv. Law, art. 3, the OTDA and DOH did not directly participate in the mishandling of plaintiffs’ applications. Furthermore, plaintiffs have not shown that the State defendants promulgated policies or took other affirmative actions that compelled the HRA to wrongfully withhold benefits. Plaintiffs’ § 1983 complaint against the State defendants is best construed as a claim, not of malfeasance, but of nonfeasance — or, more precisely, a failure to adequately train and supervise.
I concur with my colleagues that a governmental entity’s failure to properly train or supervise may serve as the basis for § 1983 liability only where that failure reflects a deliberate indifference to the rights of citizens and is closely related to the ultimate injury suffered. See City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 388, 391, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989). To permit claims based upon a failure to act “to go forward under § 1983 on a lesser standard of fault would result in de facto respondeat superior liability,” id. at 392, 109 S.Ct. 1197 — a result that the Supreme Court has specifically rejected, see Monell v. New York City Dep’t of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 693-94, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). Moreover, such a result would abrogate the language of § 1983, which makes clear that only a person who, under color of law, “subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen ... to *200the deprivation of any rights ... shall be liable to the party injured,” 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (emphasis added); see Duchesne v. Sugarman, 566 F.2d 817, 830 (2d Cir.1977) (“The doctrine of respondeat superior is unavailable as a basis for imposing liability under § 1983; there must be some showing of personal responsibility.”)- The District Court thus erred when it held the State defendants liable under § 1983 without first determining that their failure to adequately train and supervise amounted to deliberate indifference, and that such failure caused plaintiffs’ injury.
While I agree that the District Court’s judgment against the State defendants was premised on legal error, I believe that this error warrants vacatur and remand instead of reversal. As the Supreme Court has instructed, “[w]hen an appellate court discerns that a district court has failed to make a finding because of an erroneous view of the law, the usual rule is that there should be a remand for further proceedings to permit the trial court to make the missing findings.” Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 291, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982). The only exception to this rule is when “the record permits only one resolution of the factual issue.” Id. at 292, 102 S.Ct. 1781. This exception should be construed narrowly, since “factfinding is the basic responsibility of district courts, rather than appellate courts.” DeMarco v. United States, 415 U.S. 449, 450 n. 1, 94 S.Ct. 1185, 39 L.Ed.2d 501 (1974).
Deliberate indifference and causation are fact-sensitive issues. Furthermore, the facts in this case are extensive and complex, filling thousands of pages of dense reports, declarations, and deposition testimony. My colleagues, perhaps swayed by a sense that this litigation has gone on long enough, have concluded that this case need not drag on longer because the record permits only one conclusion— that whatever their shortcomings, the State defendants were not deliberately indifferent to plaintiffs’ rights and did not cause plaintiffs’ injury. Because I do not view the record as so clear-cut and one-sided, I would follow the usual rule and remand for further proceedings. I therefore dissent in the result.
I.
I shall begin with the fault element of plaintiffs’ § 1983 claim. In Canton, the Supreme Court explained that a governmental entity’s “failure to provide proper training may fairly be said to represent a policy for which [it] is responsible,” where “in light of the duties assigned to specific officers or employees the need for more or different training is so obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in the violation of ... [citizens’] rights, that the policymakers ... can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need.” 489 U.S. at 390, 109 S.Ct. 1197.
We have previously distilled Canton’s, explanation of deliberate indifference into three concrete requirements, which apply to inadequate training and inadequate supervision claims alike. See Walker v. City of New York, 974 F.2d 293, 297 (2d Cir.1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 961, 113 S.Ct. 1387, 122 L.Ed.2d 762 (1993). “First, the plaintiff must show that a policymaker knows ‘to a moral certainty’ that her employees will confront a given situation.’ ” Id. (quoting Canton, 489 U.S. at 390 n. 10, 109 S.Ct. 1197). “Second, the plaintiff must show that the situation either presents the employee with a difficult choice of the sort that training or supervision will make less difficult or that there is a history of employees mishandling the situation.” Id. “Finally, the plaintiff must show that the wrong choice by the ... employee will frequently cause the deprivation of a citizen’s ... rights.” Id. at 298.
*201Citing this Court’s decision in Doe v. New York City Dep’t of Social Servs., 649 F.2d 134 (2d Cir.1981), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 864, 104 S.Ct. 195, 78 L.Ed.2d 171 (1983), the State defendants argue that the Walker requirements should be applied more strictly in this case because their power over the local agencies “is far less than the degree of control typically found in supervisor-subordinate relationships within a single agency or institution.” In particular, the State defendants point out that under the scheme established by the New York Social Services Law, they lack the authority to dictate the size or composition of any local agency’s staff.
In Doe, the plaintiff claimed to have suffered continuous abuse at the hands of her foster father and brought a § 1983 action against the agency charged with supervising her foster care. 649 F.2d at 136-37. The plaintiff asserted that “the agency’s failure to supervise her placement adequately and to report her situation to the New York City Department of Social Services as a suspected case of child abuse led to the continuation of her mistreatment in the home.” 649 F.2d at 137. In analyzing deliberate indifference in that context, we observed that the foster care agency’s relationship to the families it licensed differed in two key respects from the normal supervisor-subordinate relationship within a single institution. Id. at 142. First, unlike institutional administrators, who “can readily call in subordinates for consultation” and “give strict orders with reasonable assurance that their mandates will be followed,” the foster care agency “had to rely upon occasional visits for its information gathering, and its relationship to the foster family was less unequivocally hierarchical.” Id. Second, “given its goal of approximating a normal family environment for foster children,” the foster care agency understandably “felt constrained to respect the foster family’s autonomy and integrity and pressured to minimize intrusiveness.” Id. As the State defendants here emphasize, we noted that these differences tended to “suggest that deliberate indifference ought not to be inferred from a failure to act as readily as might be done in the [normal institutional] context, since in the foster care situation, there are obvious alternative explanations for a family being given the benefit of the doubt and the agency refusing to intervene.” Id.
Our analysis did not end there, however. We went on to recognize that “[i]n other cases, defendants have been ‘charged with knowledge’ of unconstitutional conditions when they persistently violated a statutory duty to inquire about such conditions and to be responsible for them.” Id. at 145 (citing United States ex rel. Larkins v. Oswald, 510 F.2d 583 (2d Cir.1975); Wright v. McMann, 460 F.2d 126 (2d Cir.1972), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 885, 93 S.Ct. 115, 34 L.Ed.2d 141 (1972)). We explained that “[t]hese cases are best understood not as imposing strict liability under section 1983 for failure to perform statutory duties, but as inferring deliberate unconcern for plaintiffs’ welfare from a pattern of omissions revealing deliberate inattention to specific duties imposed for the purpose of safeguarding plaintiffs from abuse.” Id.) see also Duchesne, 566 F.2d at 832 n. 31. The foster care agency had “a strict duty,” imposed on it by state law, “to report all suspected cases of child abuse to the Department of Social Services.” Doe, 649 F.2d at 145. We determined that if the agency persistently failed to carry out that statutory duty, it could be held hable under § 1983, notwithstanding its imperfect knowledge of the situation and limited control over the foster family. See id. at 146.
A state is free not to participate in the “scheme of cooperative federalism” established under the Food Stamp and Medicaid *202Acts, but if it decides to join, “it must comply with federal requirements if it is to assure the continued availability to it of federal funds to defray a part of the total expense of assisting its needy citizens.” Rothstein v. Wyman, 467 F.2d 226, 232 (2d Cir.1972), cert. denied, 411 U.S. 921, 93 S.Ct. 1552, 36 L.Ed.2d 315 (1973) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Acts impose a number of specific, binding obligations on participating states for the benefit of applicants. For instance, the Food Stamp Act provides that each state, inter alia:
(1) “shall provide timely, accurate, and fair service to applicants for, and participants in, the food stamp program,” 7 U.S.C. § 2020(e)(2)(B)(i);
(2) “shall permit an applicant household to apply to participate in the program on the same day that the household first contacts a food stamp office in person during office hours,” id. § 2020(e)(2)(B)(iii);
(3) “shall consider an application that contains the name, address, and signature of the applicant to be filed on the date the applicant submits the application,” id. § 2020(e)(2)(B)(iv);
(4) “shall thereafter promptly determine the eligibility of each applicant household by way of verification of income ... so as to complete certification of and provide an allotment retroactive to the period of application to any eligible household not later than thirty days following its filing of an application,” id. § 2020(e)(3); and
(5)“shall ... provide coupons no later than 7 days after the date of application to any household which [qualifies for expedited food stamp service],” id. § 2020(e)(9)(A).
The Medicaid Act similarly mandates that a state’s plan for medical assistance “provide that all individuals wishing to make application for medical assistance under the plan shall have opportunity to do so, and that such assistance shall be furnished with reasonable promptness to all eligible individuals.” 42 U.S.C. § 1396a(a)(8).
Both Acts permit a participating state to delegate the administration of the assistance programs to local agencies. See 7 U.S.C. § 2012(n)(1) (Food Stamp Act); 42 U.S.C. § 1396a(a)(1) (Medicaid Act). However, “[a] state that chooses to operate its program[s] through local, semi-autonomous social service agencies cannot thereby diminish the obligation to which the state, as a state, has committed itself, namely, compliance with federal requirements governing the provision of the ... benefits that are funded by the federal government.” Robertson v. Jackson, 972 F.2d 529, 534 (4th Cir.1992), cited in Henrietta D. v. Bloomberg, 331 F.3d 261, 286-87 (2d Cir.2003), cert. denied, 541 U.S. 936, 124 S.Ct. 1658, 158 L.Ed.2d 356 (2004).1 *203In other words, although administrative duties may be passed down, “ultimate responsibility for compliance with federal requirements nevertheless remains at the state level.” Robertson, 972 F.2d at 533 (internal quotation marks omitted).
To discharge this ultimate responsibility, a state that chooses to delegate administrative duties to local agencies must, at the very least, provide those agencies with adequate guidance on the proper procedures for determining eligibility so that qualified applicants receive the assistance they need in a timely manner. See 7 U.S.C. § 2020(e)(2)(A) (“[T]he State agency shall establish procedures governing the operation of food stamp offices that the State agency determines best serve households in the State....”); 7 C.F.R. § 272.3(a) (“State agencies shall prepare and provide to staff responsible for administering the Program written operating procedures.”); see also 42 U.S.C. § 1396a(a)(4)(B) (specifying that the state plan for medical assistance must provide “for the training and effective use of paid subprofessional staff ... in the administration of the plan”).2
In addition, the state must conduct regular reviews of the local agencies to ensure that the correct procedures are being followed and that the rights of eligible beneficiaries are not being violated. See 7 C.F.R. § 275.5 (requiring the state agency in charge of the food stamp program to conduct Management Evaluation reviews “to measure compliance with the provisions” of Food and Nutrition Service regulations); see also 42 C.F.R. § 435.903(a) (mandating that the state agency charged with overseeing the Medicaid program “[h]ave methods to keep itself currently informed of the adherence of local agencies to the State plan provisions and the agency’s procedures for determining eligibility”). If deficiencies are discovered, the state must promptly formulate a corrective action plan to address them, and then undertake follow-up measures to ensure that the plan is fully implemented and the identified deficiencies cured. See 7 C.F.R. § 275.16(c) (providing that the state agency in charge of the food stamp program “shall ensure that appropriate corrective action is taken on all deficiencies including each case found to be in error by quality control reviews and those deficiencies requiring corrective action only at the project area level”); id. § 275.18(b) (stating that “[pjroject area/management unit corrective action plans shall contain all the information necessary to enable the State agency to monitor and evaluate the corrective action properly”); id. § 275.19(b) (directing the state agency to “ensure that corrective action on all deficiencies identi*204fied in the State Corrective Action Plan and Project Area/Management Unit Corrective Action Plan is implemented and achieves the anticipated results within the specified time frames”); see also 42 C.F.R. § 435.903(b) (requiring that the state agency responsible for the Medicaid program “[t]ake corrective action to ensure [the local agencies’] adherence [to the state plan provisions and the agency’s procedures for determining eligibility]”).
As detailed in the following sections, there is evidence in this record indicating that, despite a long history and alarmingly high rate of HRA staff mishandling food stamp and Medicaid applications following the implementation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (“PRWORA”), Pub.L. 104-193, 110 Stat. 2105 (1996), the State defendants continually failed to provide the training and supervision needed to remedy systemic problems. To point to two examples in particular, the record contains evidence that the State defendants: (A) failed to provide adequate guidance regarding the proper method of processing applications, so as to ensure that applicants’ eligibility for food stamps and Medicaid benefits was determined separately from their eligibility for cash assistance; and (B) failed to adequately review the local agencies and monitor the success of corrective action plans. Although the State defendants cannot be held liable under § 1983 merely for not living up to its statutory obligations, Doe teaches that evidence of a pattern of inattention to statutory duties can support an inference of deliberate indifference. 649 F.2d at 145-46. I would therefore remand to allow the fact finder to decide whether that inference should be drawn here.
A.
As the District Court aptly described it, PRWORA “represent[ed] a legislative sea change in thinking about welfare.” Reynolds v. Giuliani, 35 F.Supp.2d 331, 347 (S.D.N.Y.1999). Among other things, PRWORA eliminated the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program and replaced it with a new cash assistance program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (“TANF”). A central purpose of TANF, as articulated in the statute itself, is to “end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage.” 42 U.S.C. § 601(a)(2). Consistent with that purpose, PRWORA provides that a participating state must “[r]equire a parent or caretaker receiving assistance under the program to engage in work (as defined by the State) once the State determines the parent or caretaker is ready to engage in work, or once the parent or caretaker has received assistance under the program for 24 months (whether or not consecutive), whichever is earlier_” 42 U.S.C. § 602(a)(1)(A)(ii); see also id. § 607 (describing mandatory work requirements).
In response to the PRWORA, HRA began converting its “Income Support Centers” into new “Job Centers” in March of 1998. The conversion encompassed much more than switching the sign above the buildings; it entailed a complete overhaul of the application and eligibility determination procedures. Prior to PRWORA, any individual seeking public assistance was provided with a state-approved joint application form for food stamps, Medicaid, and cash assistance. Once the individual completed the application, the application specialist registered the applicant and scheduled an appointment for a full application interview for five to seven days later, or in emergency need cases, for that same day. See Reynolds, 35 F.Supp.2d at 335. After PRWORA, the state must first determine that the individual seeking cash assistance *205is exempt from work activities or ready to engage in work. If the individual is ready to work, then he or she must immediately be assigned job search activities and placed on the path towards gainful employment. See id. at 335-86. These new requirements apply only to cash assistance and do not affect the eligibility standards or statutorily-prescribed time frames for providing food stamps or Medicaid. Hence, as a result of PRWORA, cash assistance had to be delinked from food stamps and Medicaid.
The Welfare Management System (‘WMS”) is a code-driven computer system used to process and track applications at the local centers. Before PRWORA, when an individual applied for cash assistance, WMS automatically enrolled the applicant for a food stamp and/or Medicaid eligibility determination. In an effort to implement PRWORA, the system was changed to require a cash assistance worker to affirmatively input a code into WMS to indicate when an individual is also applying for food stamps or Medicaid, thereby signaling the need for a separate determination. If the cash assistance worker uses the incorrect code and cash assistance is later denied, the application is never reviewed for food stamp and Medicaid eligibility, and it is impossible to detect this error through WMS. Furthermore, even if the cash assistance worker uses the correct code, the denial of cash assistance requires that the entire application be closed in WMS. For a separate determination on food stamp and Medicaid eligibility to be made, the cash assistance worker must make a copy of the application and forward it to the food stamp or Medicaid specialist, who is most likely located in a different office. The specialist must then reenter the information and re-register the application using the original filing date.
In January 1999, the District Court found that the staff at the new Job Centers were denying applicants food stamps and Medicaid benefits for failing to comply with PRWORA’s work rules. See id. at 346. The District Court preliminarily enjoined the HRA from converting any more Income Support Centers into Job Centers pending approval of an adequate corrective plan, which was to include, inter alia, “[procedures for processing applications for food stamps and/or Medicaid where applicants fail to comply with work requirements.” Id. at 348.
Although a corrective action plan was approved in May 1999, see Reynolds v. Giuliani, 43 F.Supp.2d 492 (S.D.N.Y.1999), a November 1999 review by the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) confirmed that there was still a “serious program deficiency” relating to separate determinations. The HRA’s program evaluation of Job Centers and Income Support Centers for the period November 1999 to June 2000 revealed that 96% of cases requiring a separate determination for food stamps were not prepared for transfer to the food stamp office, and that 86% of cases requiring a separate determination for Medicaid did not have a copy of the correct referral form. An audit performed in September 2000 showed that the Job Centers were making separate food stamp and Medicaid determinations “only about 14 percent of the time.” Reynolds, 2005 WL 342106, at *20.
Against this backdrop, a fact finder could conclude that the State defendants knew to a “moral certainty” that HRA employees were often entering the wrong code and not referring applications for separate determinations — choices that frequently resulted in the deprivation of beneficiaries’ rights. See Walker, 974 F.2d at 297-98. Despite the urgency of this problem, it appears that as of 2001, when the *206trial in this case was held, no effort had been made to remedy these problematic aspects of WMS. The February 2001 deposition testimony of Betty Rice, a director within DOH’s Office of Medicaid Management, is revealing. When asked whether it was the case that WMS “closes the application [when cash assistance is denied] and that the Medicaid application has to be re-registered with the original filing date,” Rice replied: “I am not denying that.” When asked whether DOH had a plan to change that feature of WMS, Rice answered: “No, it does not.” Later in the deposition, Rice was questioned about how an applicant who has been denied cash assistance for a reason that requires a separate Medicaid determination can tell whether the necessary referral has been made. Rice responded: “[I]f a person is supposed to have a separate determination, they would be notified on their notice that they are to have a separate determination, and a prudent person I think could determine if in a reasonable amount of time they didn’t get a determination about the separate determination that maybe something was wrong and they should look into that.” When pressed about what would happen if an applicant were to inquire and discover that the referral had not been made, Rice stated that “one would expect that [the Medicaid application] would go back to the date that the case should have been referred for the separate determination.” However, Rice also admitted that DOH’s instructions “may be silent on the issue.”
As Judge Cardamone points out, the State defendants did take some measures after the initiation of this lawsuit to foster compliance by the HRA. See Reynolds, 2005 WL 342106, at *21. As I read Canton, however, the operative question is not whether the State defendants provided any training at all, but whether the State defendants ignored an obvious “need for more or different training” in light of the duties assigned to the HRA. 489 U.S. at 390, 109 S.Ct. 1197 (emphasis added). In my view, a reasonable fact finder could conclude, based upon the above evidence, that the State defendants failed to respond to such a need for more training and corrective action relating to separate determinations, despite their knowledge that the inadequacy would continue to result in violations of beneficiaries’ rights. This evidence counsels remand.
B.
The record also contains evidence indicating that the State defendants “persistently violated [their] statutory duty to inquire about ... conditions” at the new Job Centers “and to be responsible for them.” Doe, 649 F.2d at 145. Given the significance of PRWORA’s reforms, one might have expected the State defendants to step up their supervision efforts to ensure that the implementation of those reforms did not affect eligible beneficiaries’ access to food stamps and Medicaid. In its November 1998 review, the USDA discovered exactly the opposite situation — a “lack of effective state agency oversight over the local district offices.” Reynolds, 2005 WL 342106, at * 12. The USDA found that due to the OTDA’s inadequate supervision, “[substantial non-compliance with the [Food Stamp Act] and regulations had gone undetected and unaddressed at the local level.” Id. As for the DOH, it acknowledged before the District Court that it did not even know about the HRA’s intention to convert the Income Support Centers into Job Centers until early 1998, and did not learn of the complaints regarding the inappropriate denials, withdrawals, and deterrence of Medicaid applications until plaintiffs filed this lawsuit in December 1998. See id. at * 14. As Betty Rice put it: “[T]he first we understood that *207there was a problem were [sic] when things came to light in the newspaper articles.”
As noted, in January 1999 the District Court preliminarily enjoined the HRA from further converting its Income Support Centers into Job Centers, finding that the HRA’s administration of the food stamp and Medicaid programs at the Job Centers did not comport with legal standards. Two years later, however, the DOH still had not conducted any on-site reviews of the Job Centers in New York City. The preliminary injunction did prompt the OTDA to conduct reviews of the Job Centers in 2000 and 2001. But as the District Court pointed out in its post-trial order, “reviews were not conducted at regular intervals, and OTDA has no policy regarding how much time may elapse between those reviews.” Id. at *12. Rosella Bryson, a senior OTDA official, was questioned about the agency’s schedule for future reviews during her February 2001 deposition. She speculated that “with the current schedule we have,” it would take about three years to complete a round of Management Evaluation reviews — i.e., that each site would receive a review about once every three years.
Perhaps more important than conducting regular reviews is following up on reviews to make sure that problems are corrected. There is evidence to suggest that even when the reviews uncovered serious deficiencies, the OTDA made little effort to ensure that corrective action plans were properly implemented. For example, Bry-son recounted that during a review of the Waverly Job Center, the OTDA found that personnel were not having discussions with applicants about food stamp eligibility after cash assistance applications were withdrawn. Despite the severity of the problem, the OTDA did not investigate or evaluate the center’s implementation of a corrective action plan for more than a year afterwards. Bryson also acknowledged that the OTDA does not provide written instructions to its staff on how to conduct a corrective action plan review, nor do supervisors discuss any particular center with staff prior to the review. Only one OTDA staff member is assigned to a center, and each visit lasts one and a half days. In that short time, the OTDA staff member reviews just five cases and speaks only to the center director. And although the OTDA makes findings based on the corrective action plan review, the HRA is not required to take any action in response to those findings.
I believe that the above evidence could “constitute! ] incremental documentation of a pervasive pattern of indifference” on the part of the State defendants. Doe, 649 F.2d at 146. I would remand to allow the District Court to decide whether it does.
II.
Demonstrating that a governmental entity was deliberately indifferent to citizens’ rights is not enough to hold it liable under § 1983; the plaintiffs “must still prove that the deficiency in training [or supervision] actually caused” their injury. Canton, 489 U.S. at 391, 109 S.Ct. 1197. In other words, the plaintiffs must “prove that the deprivation occurred as a result of a [governmental] policy rather than as a result of isolated misconduct by a single actor.” Amnesty Am. v. Town of West Hartford, 361 F.3d 113, 130 (2d Cir.2004).
The District Court found that the Job Centers were, inter alia: (A) improperly denying applicants expedited food stamps about 57.33 to 67 percent of the time, Reynolds, 2005 WL 342106, at *7; (B) making separate food stamp determinations when denying cash assistance applications only sporadically, and making separate Medicaid determinations less than 11 *208percent of the time, id. at *8; and (C) causing applicants to withdraw applications based on misleading information, which accounted for 45 percent of food stamp application withdrawals and 56 percent of Medicaid withdrawals, id. These statistics suggest that the programs’ deficiencies resulted from more than the actions of a few rogue employees. Instead such problems arguably implicate the very policies and practices of the HRA, which the State defendants are responsible for overseeing and correcting.
As Canton instructs, the proper inquiry in addressing the causation issue is as follows: Would plaintiffs’ injury have been avoided if the HRA had been trained or supervised under a program that was not deficient in the respects identified above? 489 U.S. at 391, 109 S.Ct. 1197. “Predicting how a hypothetically well-trained [and well-supervised] officer would have acted under the circumstances may not be an easy task,” but it is one that the “judge and jury, doing their respective jobs, will be adequate to” address. Id. In my view, there is sufficient evidence to present a triable issue on causation. I would therefore let the question go to the District Court, which is intimately familiar with the facts in this case and is more than adequate to the task.
III.
In closing, I reiterate that my aim has not been to show that the State defendants must, or should, be held liable under § 1983, but merely to demonstrate that the record does not foreclose a possible finding of liability by the District Court under the correct legal standards. Granted, six years have passed since the trial, so the existing record may be too stale to support the reentry of a permanent injunction. But whether new evidence should be received is a matter for the District Court to decide, as are the factual issues of deliberate indifference and causation. Because I believe that the record permits more than one resolution of these issues, I would remand.

. In Henrietta D., we considered the scope of a state agency’s liability under another Spending Clause legislation — the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794, et seq. Observing that "Spending Clause legislation is 'much in the nature of a contract,’ ” we looked to general principles of contract law to determine the proper remedy. 331 F.3d at 285 (quoting Barnes v. Gorman, 536 U.S. 181, 186, 122 S.Ct. 2097, 153 L.Ed.2d 230 (2002)). Applying these principles, we determined that the State of New York — like any obligor that promises performance in exchange for consideration — was "liable to guarantee that those it [had] delegate[d] to carry out its programs satisfied] the terms of its promised performance, including compliance with the Rehabilitation Act.” Id. at 286. We also noted that "[a] number of non-Second Circuit cases ... seem to take the view that the state’s assumption of liability under [other Spending Clause legislation such as] the Food Stamp and Medicaid Acts renders it liable for violations of those acts by local agencies.” Id. (citing, inter alia, Robertson, 972 F.2d at *203534). Consistent with those cases, we held that the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Social Services was subject to supervisory liability for localities' non-compliance with the Rehabilitation Act. Id. at 287. We declined to decide "what factual showing would adequately establish an actionable failure to supervise,” however, as the issue was not squarely presented. Id.
Here, plaintiffs chose 42 U.S.C. § 1983 as the statutory vehicle to enforce their rights to food stamps and Medicaid assistance. Therefore, we need not decide whether a cause of action exists against the State defendants directly under the Food Stamp and Medicaid Acts, or what standard of fault, if any, would apply to such a hypothetical claim. Section 1983, which sounds in tort rather than contract, see City of Monterey v. Del Monte Dunes at Monterey, Ltd., 526 U.S. 687, 709-10, 119 S.Ct. 1624, 143 L.Ed.2d 882 (1999), demands some showing of fault, and where the claim alleges a failure to train or supervise, the requisite standard is deliberate indifference. See Canton, 489 U.S. at 388, 109 S.Ct. 1197.

. HRA submits its proposed local procedures, relating to policy matters as well as operational issues such as computer support, to the DOH for review and sign-off. The OTDA likewise has the authority to disapprove of local rules and procedures.