Court Opinion

ID: 9487704
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:24:08.062304+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:26.321519
License: Public Domain

KING, WIENER and BENAVIDES, Circuit Judges,
concur in the judgment only.
ROBERT M. PARKER, Circuit Judge, with whom POLITZ, Chief Judge and STEWART, Circuit Judge, join, concurring specially:
The notion that individuals have a fundamental substantive due process right to bodily integrity is beyond debate. It is also clear that the State1 owes no general affirmative duty to its citizens to ensure that their rights do not come to harm by other means. What is not so clear is how the Court should resolve the tension often created by the violation of the individual right to bodily integrity by non-state actors under circumstances where the State’s role is not strictly a passive one. The constitutional analysis in such circumstances should focus on the role of the State to determine whether a duty exists.
When the role of the State is such that an individual’s liberty is limited by state action through incarceration or commitment to a state institution, a corresponding duty is created to assume responsibility for the safety and well-being of the person committed. Christopher Walton, a hearing-impaired minor, was not incarcerated or committed to an institution by the State of Mississippi, but neither was the State a passive player in the facts and circumstances that led to the violation of his bodily integrity. He resided in a state-controlled environment created by the State at the Mississippi School for the Deaf where Ms. Alma Alexander presided as superintendent.
Instead of examining the role of the State in this case, the majority has focused on the role of Christopher Walton’s parents in choosing to enroll him in Ms. Alexander’s school. Finding their action to be voluntary, the majority announces a bright line rule that represents an extreme constitutional viewpoint. The Court’s holding is based on an erroneous reading of the Supreme Court’s guidance in DeShaney,2 and draws an arbitrary, illogical, and formalistic line between those persons who are entitled to constitutional protection from the State’s deliberate *1307indifference to their safety and those who are not.
I cannot agree with the conclusion that the State had absolutely no duty to residential students of the Mississippi School for the Deaf to provide at least some level of protection from assault by other students. I would nonetheless reverse the denial of Defendant Alexander’s Motion for Summary Judgment because there was no evidence that she was deliberately indifferent to Christopher Walton’s safety, and thus there was no showing that the defendant breached the appropriate constitutional standard.
I.
The question presented in this case is whether the State by accepting custody of Walton and exercising extensive control over his day-to-day activities established such a “special relationship” with Walton- as to give rise to an affirmative duty to protect him from injury by other students. Walton’s assailant was not a state actor; he was another student. However, under the special relationship theory, it is the State’s affirmative act of restraining an individual’s freedom to act on his own behalf that is the deprivation of liberty triggering the protection of the Due Process Clause. Therefore, what this Court should do is determine whether, under the circumstances, the State sufficiently restrained Walton’s personal liberty to trigger the corresponding duty to assume some level of responsibility for his safety and well-being.3
The Supreme Court has recognized such a duty in the context of incarceration and involuntary commitment.4 A duty of protection has also been recognized in cases where a child is involuntarily placed in a foster home.5 On the other hand, in DeShaney the Court found that the county department of social services had no duty to protect a child who was harmed by, and while in the custody of, his natural father.6
The plaintiffs in DeShaney argued that the rationale of Estelle and Youngberg, should apply. In distinguishing these precedents, the Court noted that “[t]aken together [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.” Apparently focusing on this characterization of Estelle and Youngberg, the majority holds that a special relationship can exist between the State and a person “only when the person is involuntarily taken into state custody and held against his will through the affirmative power of the state[.]”7
The majority gives the DeShaney holding a broad effect by defining the question presented this way: “whether the substantive component of the due process clause imposes on the state a duty of protection to non-incarcerated and non-institutionalized persons from the harmful acts of non-state actors.” 8 However, it is clear that the DeSha-ney court did not foreclose “special relationships” in all cases of non-incarcerated and non-institutionalized persons.
Although Estelle and Youngberg both involved persons who were taken into custody “involuntarily,” the Court explained that the requisite deprivation could occur through “incarceration, institutionalization, or other similar restraint of personal liberty.”9 The precise type of restraint that will create a corresponding affirmative duty was not spelled-out in DeShaney, but it seems clear *1308that “similar restraint of personal liberty” means that there may be circumstances other than those in Estelle and Youngberg that give rise to a constitutional duty to protect.10
The majority’s holding that custody must be “involuntary” and “against [a person’s] will” is so restrictive that it precludes any type of custody short of incarceration or institutionalization giving rise to the duty of protection. In effect, the majority has confined the duty of protection to the circumstances found in Estelle and Youngberg. Such a narrow application of this duty clearly was not contemplated in DeShaney.
II.
The majority attempts to support its position by ■ stating that since DeShaney, we “have held consistently that only when the state, by its affirmative exercise of power, has custody over an individual involuntarily or against his will does a ‘special relationship’ exist....”11 However, none of the cases cited by the majority held that a “special relationship” could exist only under such circumstances.
This Court’s previous opinions have recognized that a special relationship is created when the State “so restrains an individual’s liberty that it renders him unable to care for himself.”12 This standard does not limit the affirmative duty of protection to cases where a person is taken into custody “involuntarily,” and, instead, is more appropriately read to focus on the conditions of the particular custodial relationship. Indeed, in Salas v. Carpenter,13 this Court held that a “substantive due process right to protective services exists when the state holds persons in custody or similarly limits their ability to care for themselves.”14
In addition, Leffall v. Dallas Independent School Dist.15 provides the majority no support. In Leffall, a student was killed by random gunfire in the high school parking lot after a school dance. In holding that the school had no duty to provide for the student’s safety, this Court noted that Leffall did not involve a school for the disabled or a boarding school with twenty-four hour custody of its students, and therefore did not involve the same level of custodial control found in Walton.16 Thus, our previous decisions do not support the bright-line rule adopted today by the majority. In fact, the majority’s holding requires them to overrule circuit precedent.
In Lopez v. Houston Independent School Dist.,17 a student was beaten unconscious by other students on a public school bus. As the majority acknowledges, we found that the school bus driver had been entrusted with the care of students attending school under the state’s compulsory education statute. Indeed, we held that the bus driver’s failure to protect one such child from injury inflicted by others would support an action under section 1983. Without elaboration, the majority states that “[e]learly, this is not the type of restraint on personal liberty nor the type óf affirmative act by the state intended by DeShaney.”18
By overruling Lopez, the majority clearly indicates that, in their view, compulsory school attendance laws impose no constitutional duty on school officials or employees. Apparently, school attendance by minors is to be considered “voluntary” under the majority’s rationale even if mandated by state *1309law. However, the majority fails to explain this patent inconsistency.
Following this decision, parents should be aware when the school bus doors close that if their child is sexually or physically assaulted, the driver of the bus has no constitutional duty to intervene, stop the assault, summon assistance, or attend to any injuries that may have been sustained. Under the majority’s reasoning, he may with full knowledge of the assault be totally indifferent to it.
III.
By requiring that the State take a person into custody involuntarily before gaining a duty to protect that person, the majority has arbitrarily limited due process rights in a way that cannot accurately reflect the nature of the custodial control actually exercised by the State. Rather than simply asking whether a person entered state custody “voluntarily,” we should examine the nature of the custodial relationship that existed between the State and the plaintiff.
Under the majority’s rule, the State could treat differently a foster child whose parents admit they cannot properly care for the child and willingly turn the child over to foster care from a child who is taken from unwilling parents. The same distinction would exist between voluntarily and involuntarily committed mental patients, even though their circumstances following commitment would show identical levels of state control, and thus identical restraint of personal liberty. The question is not so much how the individual got into state custody, but to what extent the State exercises dominion and control over that individual.
Commentators have been critical of “involuntariness” as a threshold requirement in the context of the custodial control exercised in public schools. For example, Professor Karen Blum has stated that
[a]ny insistence that a legal compulsion to attend school be present before an affirmative duty to protect is recognized would result in the drawing of irrational and arbitrary classifications defining the circumstances and situations in which students are afforded constitutional protection. The key to the duty owed should be the state’s assumption of responsibility for the care and control of students while they are physically present in a state-created and controlled environment.19
Even in the context of a regular public school, teachers and school officials exercise extensive control over the activities of the children in their custody, and during the school-day those same officials are in the exclusive position to provide for the protection of those children.20 As one member of this Court recently observed, “[t]o suggest that parents somehow are in a better position than the schools to protect their children from the ravages of weapons smuggled onto campus during the school day is cruelly irrational. To hope that students who are unarmed can protect themselves from the depredation of armed criminals in their midst is ridiculous.”21
Instead of asking whether a person was taken into custody involuntarily, we should consider several factors to determine whether a special relationship exists in a particular case: 1) the authority and discretion state actors have to control the environment and the behavior of the individuals in their custody, 2) the responsibilities assumed by the *1310State, 3) the extent to which an individual in state custody must rely on the State to provide for his or her basic needs, and 4) the degree of control actually exercised by the State in a given situation.
The majority concedes that Walton lived at the School for the Deaf five days a week. In fact, the School controlled when he went to bed and when he awoke, and where he slept in relation to other students. The School controlled when and where he ate his meals and even what he ate. The School decided when he went to class and when he could recreate. The School also strictly regulated when and under what conditions Walton could come and go.
It is certain that Walton depended on school officials to provide for his basic needs while he was in their custody. A child with Walton’s handicap would be particularly dependent on the adults with whom he resided. In other words, if the School did not provide for his basic needs while he was in its functional custody, those needs would go unmet.
There can be no doubt that extensive control measures were required in the context of a residential facility for the deaf. Nor can there be any doubt that the School had the authority and discretion to exercise control and restraint over the activities of the students in its custody. By the same token, however, the State necessarily assumed some responsibility for the students’ safety and general well-being when it accepted them into its custody and imposed restraints on their ability to act on their own behalf.22 Under these circumstances, the control exercised by the School and the restraints imposed on Walton’s personal liberty were sufficient to meet the DeShaney threshold. Yet, because Walton was not seized by the State and forced to attend the residential school against his will, the majority holds that the School had no duty with respect to Walton’s safety and well-being.

TV.

The majority’s zeal to ensure that those state actors entrusted with the responsibility to care for and protect our most vulnerable citizens may do so with constitutional impunity — regardless of their conduct — produces a result that surely must appear absurd to the average citizen. Under the holding of this opinion, law abiding, tax paying citizens who, because they may be simply obeying the compulsory attendance laws or because they have no other economic choice, deliver a child to the care, custody and control of the State, do so at their own risk. At the same time, those who find themselves in the care, custody and control of the State because they are criminals are wrapped in the protective cloak of the constitution.

. The term “State" refers to state and local governmental entities and their agents. DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 195 n. 1, 109 S.Ct. 998, 1002 n. 1, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989).

. DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989).

. DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 199-202, 109 S.Ct. at 1005-06.

. See Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 102 S.Ct. 2452, 73 L.Ed.2d 28 (1982); Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 97 S.Ct. 285, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976).

. See Yvonne L., by and through Lewis v. New Mexico Dept. of Human Services, 959 F.2d 883 (10th Cir.1992); Taylor, by and through Walker v. Ledbetter, 818 F.2d 791 (11th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1065, 109 S.Ct. 1337, 103 L.Ed.2d 808 (1989).

. DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 201-02, 109 S.Ct. at 1006.

. Maj. op. at 1304.

. Maj. op. at 1302.

. DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 200, 109 S.Ct. at 1006.

. Graham v. Independent School Dist. No. 1-89, 22 F.3d 991, 994 (10th Cir.1994) ("Nonetheless, DeShaney left undefined the precise measure of state restraint that engenders an individuals right to claim a corresponding affirmative duty.”).

. Maj. op. at 1303.

. Griffith v. Johnston, 899 F.2d 1427 (5th Cir.1990) (quoting DeShaney); de Jesus Benavides v. Santos, 883 F.2d 385 (5th Cir.1989) (same).

. Salas v. Carpenter, 980 F.2d 299 (5th Cir.1992).

. Salas, 980 F.2d at 308 (emphasis added).

. Leffall v. Dallas Independent School Dist., 28 F.3d 521 (5th Cir.1994).

. Leffall, 28 F.3d at 529.

. Lopez v. Houston Independent School Dist., 817 F.2d 351 (5th Cir.1987).

. Maj. op. at 1303 n. 4.

. Karen M. Blum, DeShaney: Custody, Creation of Danger, and Culpability, 27 Loy.L.A.L.Rev. 435, 450 (1994); see also Susanna M. Kim, Comment, Section 1983 Liability in the Public Schools After DeShaney: The "Special Relationship" Between School and Student, 41 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. 1101, 1126 (1994); Stephen F. Huefher, Note, Affirmative Duties in the Public Schools After DeShaney, 90 Colum.L.Rev. 1940, 1957 (1990).

. See Maldonado v. Josey, 975 F.2d 727, 735 (10th Cir.1992) (Seymour, J., concurring) ("I cannot fathom who, other than a teacher or other school staff member, is capable of ensuring the 'reasonable safety' of school children during the school day and class periods.”); D.R., by L.R. v. Middle Bucks Area Voc. Tech. School, 972 F.2d 1364, 1380 (3d Cir.1992) (Sloviter, C.J., dissenting) ("During the school day, school officials exercise substantial control over students, either because they are considered to stand in loco parentis toward the students, or because proper discipline so requires.” (citations omitted)).

. Johnson v. Dallas Independent School Dist., 38 F.3d 198, 203 n. 7 (5th Cir.1994).

. K.H., through Murphy v. Morgan, 914 F.2d 846 (7th Cir.1990) (“Once the state assumes custody of a person, it owes him a rudimentary duty of safekeeping no matter how perilous his circumstances when he was free.”).