The Supreme Court's decision in DeShaney v Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 US 189 (1989), continues to have an impact on the rights and claims of students against schools and school officials, to protect the student against suspected or known abuse, bullying, and harassment. If school officials ignored signs that someone was abusing your student and failed to report that abuse, or if your student has suffered injury or threats of injury and other interference with your student's enjoyment of a safe and secure school environment, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team to enforce your student's legal rights. Our attorneys help hundreds of students nationwide all manner of student rights and student defense matters. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your student's case and to obtain our skilled and experienced representation.
The Common Law's Role and Value
You may wonder about the value of case decisions like the one in DeShaney v Winnebago County. But the U.S. is a common law jurisdiction, drawing its legal tradition from the old English common law. Common law jurisdictions depend on the preservation, interpretation, and application of hundreds or thousands of case decisions. In a common law jurisdiction, law comes may come as much from the rules and principles drawn from that massive body of reported case decisions as it does from code enactments by federal and state legislatures or regulatory rules from federal and state agencies. The common law is extraordinarily valuable, positive, practical, and purposeful because it arises reliably and democratically out of the results of thousands of real private disputes rather than from the artificial and often uninformed edicts of rulers. Respect the role of cases like DeShaney v Winnebago County in how school officials must behave to respect the rights and interests of your student. Our attorneys know how to put the DeShaney case and other case law to work for your student.
The Value of Supreme Court Case Law
When our attorneys represent you and your student in a school matter, we rely on a substantial body of federal case law, including especially Supreme Court case opinions like the one in DeShaney v Winnebago County. Laws regulate schools closely. The school environment is one of the most closely regulated environments you or your student will ever encounter. Much of school law comes from state statutes and education department rules. A little of school law comes from federal statutes. But a lot more school law comes from Supreme Court interpretations of student constitutional rights and federal statutory rights. DeShaney v Winnebago County is one of several Supreme Court cases having had broad and deep impact on how schools operate to promote and protect student interests.
The Local Impact of Supreme Court Case Law
Do not mistake the DeShaney case and other Supreme Court cases as if they bear only on rights to court litigation relief. Yes, the Supreme Court in DeShaney ruled on whether students have certain claims in the courts. If we litigate your student's rights and claims in the courts, we will likely deal with the DeShaney precedent and other Supreme Court case law. But Supreme Court case law also impacts how schools, school districts, and school officials administer student discipline and resolve disputes within the school or at the district level as to student rights and responsibilities. Supreme Court case law has abundant local and practical impacts, both on how your student's teachers and other school officials conduct themselves in relationship toward your student's rights and how schools conduct their administrative procedures when questions over those rights arise. Our attorneys know how to measure the actions of your student's school and its officials against the requirements that Supreme Court case law imposes. Let us help you apply that case law to your student's matter for the best outcome in your student's school issue, proceeding, or dispute.
The Facts of DeShaney v Winnebago County
The facts of an education law case have a lot to do with its precedential value in influencing the decision in subsequent school cases. The facts of a case also have a lot to do with guiding the actions of school officials. Case facts on point with your student's school issue indicate that the case has greater control or advisory influence over your student's school matter. Case facts very different from your student's matter may mean that the case has less, little, or no precedential value. Consider the following facts of DeShaney v Winnebago County as they relate to the duty public officials owe to protect children in their care against abuse by others.
DeShaney involved the severe and permanently disabling injury of a four year old child by his father. The boy's father and mother had already divorced, leaving the father with physical custody. Indeed, the father had remarried and divorced again before the child reached four years old. A county department of social services received many complaints that the father was severely abusing the child, beating the child about the head and body over a long period. The first such complaints came from the father's second wife after the divorce. When the father took the child to the hospital for treatment from his abuse, hospital officials obtained an order to hold the child for three days while the department of social services investigated. But the investigation team returned the child to the father, while recommending preschool for the child and counseling for the father. The department did not remove the child from the father's custody, despite that signs of abuse remained while department personnel continued to visit and monitor the father. As a result, the father continued to beat the child until the child became comatose, leaving the child profoundly and permanently mentally disabled, confined lifelong to an institution.
The DeShaney case did not directly involve school actions and omissions. The DeShaney case instead evaluated the actions and omissions of a county department of social services. But the law, rules, and principles that the Supreme Court applied and announced in DeShaney apply just as much in the public school setting as they do in the social service setting. Public school employees are public officials, like the public officials in the county department of social services in the DeShaney case. Schools also employ social workers and provide social services through those workers and other school staff and administrators. Schools are also caretakers for children, not too unlike county departments of social services. Indeed, schools may have greater duties of care insofar as they have practical physical custody of children for many hours each day and week, independent of direct parental observation and supervision. In short, the DeShaney case impacts school officials much like it impacts other public officials. Our attorneys know how to draw the appropriate contrasts and comparisons for your student's best outcome.
Procedural Posture of DeShaney v Winnebago County
The procedural posture of a case can also influence its impact on future cases. In DeShaney v Winnebago County, the injured child's mother sued the county department and its involved officials in the local federal district court. The district court dismissed the mother's case for lack of legal merit. The mother appealed the dismissal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The federal appellate court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the case for lack of legal merit. The mother sought the Supreme Court's review. The Supreme Court noted that the federal appellate courts disagreed on how to address public agency and public official liability for negligent or reckless failure or refusal to protect individuals under their care from known serious harm. The Supreme Court granted review of the mother's case to resolve those disagreements. After briefing and argument, the Supreme Court released a 6-3 decision affirming the federal appellate court's dismissal of the mother's claim.
This procedural posture of the DeShaney case means several things as to the case's application and impact. First, the fact that the Supreme Court decided the case means that all federal courts must follow the Supreme Court's precedent, which binds all lower federal courts. Second, the mother's choice to bring the case in the federal system rather than the state system, and to bring the case under federal law rather than state law, also meant that the Supreme Court decision would control only federal court decisions and decisions of the courts on the involved federal laws. The DeShaney decision does not directly control state court decisions on state law issues. If your student has greater state law rights than the federal law claims the Supreme Court refused to recognize in DeShaney, then those state claims are still valid despite DeShaney. Let us interpret, apply, and distinguish DeShaney and other case law for your student's best possible outcome.
Legal Claims in DeShaney v Winnebago County
The legal claims and defenses that the parties in a case raise and argue, and that the court decides, also influence the case's value as controlling or advisory precedent. The facts of a prior decided case may be right on point to your student's case facts, but if the prior case did not address the same legal rights and claims that your student needs to pursue, then the prior case will not help in the interpretation of those rights and application of those claims.
The Section 1983 Claim in DeShaney v Winnebago County
The mother in DeShaney v Winnebago County brought her severely injured child's claim under a federal statute 42 USC Section 1983. Congress initially enacted Section 1983 to address public deprivations of private life, liberty, and property interests, by state officials in the post-Civil War era. Section 1983 authorizes a civil remedy for damages that a state actor's violation of an individual's constitutional due process rights causes.
The Typical Section 1983 Claim in Civil Rights Cases
Courts and advocates treat Section 1983 as a civil rights statute. Section 1983's typical application would be if a police officer deliberately shot and injured or killed a defenseless citizen who presented no danger, in violation of that citizen's constitutional right against unreasonable seizure. Another typical Section 1983 application would be if corrections officials deliberately and maliciously whipped and seriously injured a prisoner, or refused critical medical care for a prisoner whom they knew would suffer serious injury or death without the care, in violation of that prisoner's constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment.
Extending Section 1983's Reach in DeShaney v Winnebago County
You may already see that the mother's claim in DeShaney differed from the usual Section 1983 claim in that the mother did not assert that the department officials had deliberately injured her child. She instead asserted that the department officials had failed to prevent her child's injury under special circumstances where they should have done so. Under the extraordinarily sad and compelling facts of DeShaney, the mother's claim to extend Section 1983 to public official failures to act seemed reasonable. But accepting that argument could create private causes of actions for damages against a host of different public officials in social services, schools, law enforcement, and other roles, for failing to protect a host of vulnerable citizens against an onslaught of violent crime. Public officials might then be liable for every assault, homicide, or other violent harm that they could and should have foreseen and prevented, placing an unreasonable burden on public officials, public coffers, and private taxpayers funding those coffers. The DeShaney opinion's ultimate question was who pays for violent harm?
Treatment of Section 1983 Liability in DeShaney v Winnebago County
The Supreme Court's DeShaney decision refused to recognize the mother's Section 1983. The mother had done a good job of framing the special relationship the county department and its officials had with her child. The mother argued that they had not simply ignored a known risk of harm. She also argued that they had undertaken affirmative steps to protect her child against that harm, effectively making the child their ward. She even argued that their steps, wholly and obviously inadequate under the circumstances, prevented others, such as local law enforcement, from taking steps that would have saved her child from harm. But the Supreme Court still held that the child's relationship with the defendants was not enough because the defendants had not taken actual physical protective custody of the child, in a way that prevented the child, the mother, or others from protecting the child from harm.
Holding of DeShaney v Winnebago County
Attorneys and judges apply the holding of a decided case to evaluate, advocate, and justify the decision in subsequent cases. The holding of a case is the law, rule, or principle the case reflects, based on its claims, reasoning, and outcome. Judges writing opinions deciding cases may or may not state the case holding, even when stating reasons for the decision they make. Sometimes, opinions state laws, rules, or principles in a case opinion that are not necessary to the case's outcome, in which instance those statements are only advisory dicta. Attorneys and judges can also disagree about what a case holds, leaving the question open to interpretation. The following discussion may well be what attorneys and judges draw from the DeShaney decision, although they may draw other holdings or phrase the holding in other ways. Those disagreements are not a fault of poor reasoning, writing, or analysis but instead an important positive feature of the common law, allowing for its constant adjustment to new case circumstances.
In DeShaney v Winnebago County, the Supreme Court held that Section 1983 liability extends to public officials for private injury caused to an individual with whom they have a special relationship, only when the public officials imprison, institutionalize, or similarly take custody of and restrain the individual so that the individual and others cannot protect the individual from private harm. That's a mouthful. Let's break it down. The county department would have had to take actual physical custody of the child, removing the child to a public ward for endangered children, and then fail or refuse to keep the father from deliberately injuring the child when the department had the knowledge, warning, and means to do so. Those were not the DeShaney facts, though. The department had instead left the child with the father, which the Supreme Court ruled wasn't enough to prevent the child, the mother, or other protectors from coming to the child's aid. Put another way, the public agency must by taking custody make the victim unable to gain protection from the harm the agency knows is coming.
Impact of DeShaney v Winnebago County
Consider here the potential impact on school students of the DeShaney ruling, relative to the subjects of (1) mandated reporting of child abuse and (2) bullying, harassment, and other intentional injury on school grounds. The DeShaney holding may have other impacts. Consult our attorneys about your student's rights and protections under DeShaney and other case law, statutes, and rules.
Mandated Reporting of Suspected Child Abuse
Students face intentional abuse, too, just like young children. Students come to school with signs of abuse that teachers and other school officials notice. State laws commonly require teachers and other school officials to report suspected child abuse to protective services, just as state laws commonly require physicians, nurses, and other professionals regularly coming into contact to report suspected child abuse. Yet DeShaney makes clear that teachers and other mandated abuse reporters will not have civil liability under Section 1983 for failing to do so, without much more care, custody, and control over the abused child, amounting not merely to a special relationship but to depriving the child of other protections from the known coming harm. State statutes and common law may provide students with other remedies against school officials for failure to make mandated reports. School officials may face criminal responsibility, civil fines, employment termination, loss of teacher certification, and other consequences for not reporting suspected abuse of students. Let us help you explore your student's full rights and remedies, notwithstanding the limitations that the DeShaney opinion imposes.
Bullying, Harassment, and Other Injury at School
The DeShaney case involved a child's injury off school or other public premises, at the child's home, while in the physical custody of the child's father. DeShaney did not involve an injury to a student at school during school hours and school activities. Supreme Court decisions, other federal case law, state statutes, and state agency rules may all provide significant protections and even civil damages recoveries for students who suffer injury or other harm from assaults, bullying, harassment, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other intentional harms on school grounds. Civil damage recoveries, injunctive relief, and other relief may be possible even when the harms are at the hands of teachers, other school personnel, other students, school volunteers, or members of the public perpetrate, depending on the knowledge and notice that school officials have of the threat or occurrence of the harm.
Our Role in Your Student's Protection
Do not assume from the above discussion that your student is without a remedy for school harm. We have helped hundreds of students nationwide obtain injunctive relief, civil damages remedies, no-contact orders, and all manner of other protections to ensure that the students enjoy a safe and secure school environment. Let us help you and your student with the best outcome to your student's serious school matter.
Premier Student Defense Attorneys Available
If your student's school officials ignored signs that others were abusing your student and failed to protect your student, or if your student faces school bullying, harassment, or other threats and abuse endangering your student or interfering with your student's education, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for highly qualified representation for all appropriate relief. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your student's case and for our skilled and experienced attorney services.
