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No. 87-154 Argued: November 2, 1988 --- Decided: February 22, 1989?
Petitioner is a child who was subjected to a series of beatings by his father,
with whom he lived. Respondents, a county department of social services and several of its social workers, received
complaints that petitioner was being abused by his father, and took various steps to protect him; they did not,
however, act to remove petitioner from his father's custody. Petitioner's father finally beat him so severely that
he suffered permanent brain damage, and was rendered profoundly retarded. Petitioner and his mother sued respondents
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that respondents had deprived petitioner of his liberty interest in bodily
integrity, in violation of his rights under the substantive component of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process
Clause, by failing to intervene to protect him against his father's violence. The District Court granted summary
judgment for respondents, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held: Respondents' failure to provide petitioner with adequate protection against his father's violence did not
violate his rights under the substantive component of the Due Process Clause. Pp. 194-203.
(a) A State's failure to protect an individual against private violence
generally does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause, because the Clause imposes no duty on the
State to provide members of the general public with adequate protective services. 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; while it forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, and property without
due process of law, its language cannot fairly be read to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure
that those interests do not come to harm through other means. Pp. 194-197.
(b) There is no merit to petitioner's contention that the State's knowledge of his danger and expressions of willingness
to protect him against that danger established a "special relationship" giving rise to an affirmative
constitutional duty to protect. While certain "special relationships" created or assumed by the State
with respect to particular individuals may give rise to an affirmative duty, enforceable through the Due Process
[p190] Clause, to provide adequate protection, see Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97"]429 U.S. 97; 429 U.S. 97;
Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 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 limitations which it has imposed
on his freedom to act on his own behalf, through imprisonment, institutionalization, or other similar restraint
of personal liberty. No such duty existed here, for the harms petitioner suffered did not occur while the State
was holding him in its custody, but while he was in the custody of his natural father, who was in no sense a state
actor. While the State may have been aware of the dangers that he faced, it played no part in their creation, nor
did it do anything to render him more vulnerable to them. Under these circumstances, the Due Process Clause did
not impose upon the State an affirmative duty to provide petitioner with adequate protection. Pp. 197-201.
(c) It may well be that, by voluntarily undertaking to provide petitioner with protection against a danger it played
no part in creating, the State acquired a duty under state tort law to provide him with adequate protection against
that danger. But the Due Process Clause does not transform every tort committed by a state actor into a constitutional
violation. Pp. 201-202.
812 F.2d. 298, affirmed.
REHNQUIST, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which WHITE, STEVENS, O'CONNOR, SCALIA, and KENNEDY, JJ.,
joined. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which MARSHALL and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined, post, p. 203. BLACKMUN,
J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 212. [p191]
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