Deshaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189 

Supreme Court of the United States

1989

Chapter

9

Title

State Action, Baselines, and the Problem of Private Power

Page

1549

Topic

Pure Inaction and the Theory of Governmental Neutrality

Quick Notes

In 1984, a 4-year-old boy in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, was severely beaten by his natural father. The resulting brain damage was so great that the boy was expected to spend the rest of his life in an institution for the profoundly retarded. The boy and his mother brought suit under 42 USCS 1983 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin against the county, its department of social services (DSS), and various individual DSS employees.

Action against State

o         The complaint alleged that the county, the DSS, and the individual employees had deprived the boy of his liberty without due process of law, in violation of his rights under the due process clause of the Federal Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, by failing to intervene to protect him against a risk of violence of which they knew or should have known.

14th Amendment Forbids States to deprive Life, Liberty and Property, NOT TO PROTECT

o         Nothing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors.

o         The Clause is phrased as a limitation on the State's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security.

Cannot be extended to PROTECT

o         It forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property without "due process of law," but its language cannot fairly be extended to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means.

o         Nor does history support such an expansive reading of the constitutional text.

Court - Applies when that State take custody of a person against his will

o         But these cases afford petitioners no help.

o         Taken together, they 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.

Book Name

Constitutional Law : Stone, Seidman, Sunstein, Tushnet.  ISBN:  978-0-7355-7719-0

Issue

o         Whether the due process clause requires a state or local government entity to protect its citizens for private violence?  No.

Procedure

Trial

o         The District Court, holding that a state agency's failure to render protective services to persons within its jurisdiction does not violate the due process clause, dismissed the boy's claim.

Appellant

o         The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed, holding that (1) the due process clause does not require a state or local governmental entity to protect its citizens from private violence, and (2) the causal connection between the county's conduct and the boy's injuries was too attenuated to establish a deprivation of constitutional rights.

Supreme

o         United States Supreme Court affirmed.

o         In an opinion by Rehnquist, Ch. J., joined by White, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, and Kennedy, JJ., it was held that the county had no duty under the due process clause to protect the boy against his father's violence, and therefore the county's failure to provide such protection did not deprive the child of liberty in violation of the due process clause, because (1) the harms suffered by the child occurred not while he was in the state's custody, but while he was in the custody of his father, and (2) the state played no part in the creation of the dangers that the child faced, nor did the state do anything to render him any more vulnerable to such dangers.

Facts/Cases

Discussion

Key Phrases

Rules/Laws

Pl -   Deshaney

Df -   Winnebago

Description

o          The facts of this case are undeniably tragic. Petitioner Joshua DeShaney was born in 1979.

o         In 1980, a Wyoming court granted his parents a divorce and awarded custody of Joshua to his father, Randy DeShaney.

o         The father shortly thereafter moved to Neenah, a city located in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, taking the infant Joshua with him.

o         There he entered into a second marriage, which also ended in divorce.

o         The Winnebago County authorities first learned that Joshua DeShaney might be a victim of child abuse in January 1982, when his father's second wife complained to the police, at the time of their divorce, that he had previously "hit the boy causing marks and [was] a prime case for child abuse.

DSS

o         The Winnebago County Department of Social Services (DSS) interviewed the father, but he denied the accusations, and DSS did not pursue them further.

o         In January 1983, Joshua was admitted to a local hospital with multiple bruises and abrasions.

Retarded for Life

o         Eventually, the father beat him so severely that he suffered permanent brain injuries and left him profoundly retarded and confined to an institution for life.

Action against State

o         Joshuas mother claiming that the states conduct deprived him of his liberty in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justice Rehnquist

Forbids States to deprive Life, Liberty and Property, NOT TO PROTECT

o         Nothing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors.

o         The Clause is phrased as a limitation on the State's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security.

Cannot be extended to PROTECT

o         It forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property without "due process of law," but its language cannot fairly be extended to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means.

o         Nor does history support such an expansive reading of the constitutional text.

Petitioners contend - protective services may arise out of special relationships

o         Even if the Due Process Clause imposes no affirmative obligation on the State to provide the general public with adequate protective services, such a duty may arise out of certain "special relationships" created or assumed by the State with respect to particular individuals.

Court - Applies when that State take custody of a person against his will

o         But these cases afford petitioners no help.

o         Taken together, they 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.

o         The affirmative duty to protect arises not from the State's knowledge of the individual's predicament or from its expressions of intent to help him, but from the limitation which it has imposed on his freedom to act on his own behalf.

Dissent - Justice Brennan

o         Wisconsin law invites -- indeed, directs -- citizens and other governmental entities to depend on local departments of social services such as respondent to protect children from abuse.

Joshua was confined and DSS made him worse off

o         In these circumstances, a private citizen, or even a person working in a government agency other than DSS, would doubtless feel that her job was done as soon as she had reported  her suspicions of child abuse to DSS.

o         If DSS ignores or dismisses these suspicions, no one will step in to fill the gap.

o         Wisconsin's child-protection program thus effectively confined Joshua DeShaney within the walls of Randy DeShaney's violent home until such time as DSS took action to remove him.

o         Conceivably, then, children like Joshua are made worse off by the existence of this program when the persons and entities charged with carrying it out fail to do their jobs.

Rules

Class Notes