Linda Greenhouse relates the sad denouement of DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services on nytimes.com, The Supreme Court and a Life Barely Lived. DeShaney is a Supreme Court decision from 1989 granting complete immunity from damages to a county agency which had, beyond all reasonable explanation, placed a small child in a dangerous and abusive environment in which he sustained very debilitating injuries, injuries that prevented a decent chance at life.
Here is Ms. Greenhouse's fair description of the case:
Chief Justice Rehnquist’s opinion for the 6-3 majority took the narrowest possible view of the facts in holding that the county agency, despite its employees’ absolute knowledge of the threat that Randy DeShaney posed to his son’s welfare, breached no constitutional duty to Joshua. More than a year before the final beating, the boy was hospitalized with suspicious injuries, but a “child protection team” assigned to look into the situation quickly returned him to his father. Other emergency room visits followed. County social workers visited the home 20 times, taking notes but no action on occasions when the father said the boy was too sick to see them.
It is a decision that immunizes and insulates government from the type of accountability which does not seem at all unreasonable. The decision in DeShaney is somewhat defensible, because the liability claim is premised on a notion, at least to some degree, that government has a duty to provide minimal security and safety to its citizens including even to a small child. That can be an elastic standard, because the questions could be endless as to win such a duty commences and how far it extends.
Sharing with DeShaney the effect of immunizing government and government actors from the type of accountability that is not at all unreasonable are court decisions such as the Supreme Court's own decision two years ago in Lane v. Franks, which I discussed here, Lane v. Franks: Even Though It Would be A Crime, Supreme Court Rules that Public Employer Is Entitled to Qualified Immunity From Any Damages, and several by our own Sixth Circuit, which I have likewise discussed: Qualified Immunity and "Clearly Established" Constitutional Rights and "Happily" The Sixth Circuit Rules That American Citizens Have No Constitutional Protection Against Arbitrary Arrest and Jailing.
Robert L. Abell
www.RobertAbellLaw.com
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