holding that "a child involuntarily placed in a foster home is in a situation so analogous to a prisoner in a penal institution and a child confined in a mental health facility that the foster child may bring a section 1983 action [against the foster care agency] for violation of fourteenth amendment rights [for failure to protect foster children from abuse]"
How later courts described this case
- holding that "a child involuntarily placed in a foster home is in a situation so analogous to a prisoner in a penal institution and a child confined in a mental health facility that the foster child may bring a section 1983 action [against the foster care agency] for violation of fourteenth amendment rights [for failure to protect foster children from abuse]"
- holding that the “such similarities exist between a prisoner’s situation and the situation of a minor forced into a foster home that we are justified in holding that the situations are sufficiently analogous to support a section 1983 action”
- stating that it is a Constitutional violation where one "exhibited deliberate indifference to a known injury, a known risk, or a specific duty and their failure to perform the duty or act to ameliorate the risk of injury...."
- declaring that like the plaintiff in Youngberg, foster children are “involuntarily placed ... in a custodial environment, and . . . unable to seek alternative living arrange- merits.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
ANDERSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in all of Judge Hatchett’s opinion for the majority, except his resolution of the procedural due process claim based on Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564 , 92 S.Ct. 2701 , 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). I agree with Judge Hatchett that the Georgia statutory scheme creates a liberty interest which would be protected by procedural due process. However, I conclude that plaintiff has not stated a viable procedural due process claim. Plaintiffs brief to the en banc court makes it clear that plaintiff is pursuing a substantive due process claim (which the majority opinion, following Doe v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 649 F.2d 134 (2d Cir.1981), finds to be viable in this case), and that plaintiff is not pursuing a procedural due process claim. In any event, for the reasons expressed by Judge Tjoflat in the last two paragraphs of Part III of his opinion, a predeprivation denial of procedural due process makes no sense in the context of this case. Any procedural due process claim based on a post-deprivation denial of due process would fail for failure to establish the inadequacy of Georgia’s general tort remedies. Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527 , 101 S.Ct. 1908 , 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981); Rittenhouse v. DeKalb County, 764 F.2d 1451 (11th Cir.1985).