HIGH COURT RULING ON CHILD ABUSE REJECTS LIABILITY OF LOCAL OFFICIALS

Abstract

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Constitution doesn't give an abused child the right to sue local officials for failing to protect the child from physical harm by a parent. In an opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the high court said the 14th Amendment guarantee of "due process" doesn't require state or local officials to protect individuals against "private violence." The justices affirmed a federal court's dismissal of a lawsuit filed by the guardian and mother of a Wisconsin boy, Joshua DeShaney, who was beaten into a coma by his father in 1984 when the boy was four years old. The boy suffered permanent brain damage, leaving him retarded. The father was later convicted of child abuse. For two years before the beating that caused the coma, county social-service workers and other local officials received reports from the father's second wife and from local hospitals of signs of child abuse. But officials found no basis to take the boy from his father. The boy's mother and guardian then sued the county officials; their case was dismissed by a federal district appeals court. The chief justice said there is "natural sympathy" for the boy, but added, "It is well to remember . . . that the harm was inflicted not by the state of Wisconsin but by Joshua's father." He said that local officials may have failed to act but that didn't make them liable. Moreover, he said, if they had acted too soon, the father might have sued to block their interference.