procedural due process Flashcards
County of Sacramento v Lewis
Are the Fourteenth Amendment’s substantive due process protection, or the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against illegal seizure, violated by a police officer who, in the course of pursuing a subject, causes their death through deliberate or reckless indifference?
Moreover, addressing the Fourteenth Amendment challenge, the Court held that Smith’s actions, while perhaps unwise, were not intended to injure or kill those pursued. As such, the negligent infliction of harm during a police chase does not violate due process since it is not an unexpectedly shocking or egregious result under the circumstances.
Daniels v WIlliams
Is the Due Process Clause implicated by a negligent act of an official causing unintended loss of or injury to life, liberty or property?
No. Affirmed.
The Due Process Clause is not implicated by a negligent act of an official causing unintended loss of or injury to his life, liberty or property. The Due Process Clause was intended to secure the individual from the arbitrary exercise of the powers of government by promoting fairness in decisions involving life, liberty or property.
The action of prison custodians leaving a pillow on the stairs of the Richmond City Jail is remote from these concerns. Lack of due care suggests no more than a failure to measure up to the conduct of a reasonable person. The Due Process Clause is not meant to supplant traditional tort law in laying down rules of conduct to regulate liability for injuries.
DeShawney v WInnebago County DPSS
Does a state’s failure to protect an individual against private violence constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?
No. The Due Process Clause does not impose a special duty on the State to provide services to the public for protection against private actors if the State did not create those harms. “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.”
Goldberg v Kelly
Does a state’s termination of public aid, without affording the beneficiary a hearing prior to termination, violate notions of procedural due process as set out in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause?
the Court held that states must afford public aid recipients a pre-termination evidentiary hearing before discontinuing their aid. Noting that welfare benefits are statutory entitlements, rather than “privileges,” the Court weighed welfare recipients’ need for procedural due process against the competing considerations of the possible harm they might suffer from discontinuation and the government’s interest in summary adjudication. The Court concluded that state interests in conserving administrative costs are not sufficient to override public aid recipients’ interest in procedural due process.
Board of Regents v Roth
Does the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment require that a state university provide a one-year contract employee a hearing and reasons when he is not retained after the termination of his contract?
The Fourteenth Amendment does not require opportunity for a hearing prior to the nonrenewal of a nontenured state teacher’s contract unless he can show that the nonrenewal deprived him of an interest in “liberty” or that he had a “property” interest in continued employment, despite the lack of tenure or a formal. more specifically he didn’t have an independent source for
Goss v Lopez
Did the imposition of the suspensions without preliminary hearings violate the students’ Due Process rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment?
Yes. In a 5-to-4 decision, the Court held that because Ohio had chosen to extend the right to an education to its citizens, it could not withdraw that right “on grounds of misconduct absent fundamentally fair procedures to determine whether the misconduct ha[d] occurred.” The Court held that Ohio was constrained to recognize students’ entitlements to education as property interests protected by the Due Process Clause that could not be taken away without minimum procedures required by the Clause
Paul v Davis
Did the distribution of the flyer violate Davis’s right to privacy and liberty under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?
the Court held that Davis had not been deprived of any constitutional rights under the Due Process Clause. The Court also emphasized that constitutional privacy interests did not cover Davis’s claims. The Court argued that the constitutional right to privacy was limited to matters relating to “marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, and child rearing and education.” The publication of records of official acts, such as arrests, did not fall under the rubric of privacy rights.
Sandin v Connor
Under what circumstances do state prison regulations afford inmates a liberty interest under the Due Process Clause?
Neither the Hawaii prison regulations nor the Due Process Clause afforded Conner a protected liberty interest that would entitle him to the procedural protections set forth in Wolff. Conner’s discipline in segregated confinement did not present the type of atypical, significant deprivation in which a state might conceivably create a liberty interest. Conner’s confinement did not exceed similar but totally discretionary confinement in duration or degree of restriction.
Matthews v Eldridge
Did the lack of an evidentiary hearing prior to the termination of disability benefits violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment?
the Court held that the initial termination of Eldridge’s benefits without a hearing did not violate due process. The Court noted that due process was “flexible” and called for “such procedural protections as the particular situation demands.” The Court found that there were numerous safeguards to prevents errors in making decisions to terminate disability benefits and argued that “[a]t some point the benefit or an additional safeguard to the individual affected by the administrative action and to society, in terms of increased assurance that the action is just, may be outweighed by the cost.”
