Castle Rock v. Gonzales - Opinion Announcement

Argument of Chief Justice

Mr. Justice: The opinion of the Court in the Town of Castle Rock versus Gonzales will be announced by Justice Scalia.

Argument of Justice Scalia

Mr. Scalia: This is case No. 04-278, Town of Castle Rock versus Gonzales.

I thought Castle Rock was a 1920s dance but it is also a town in Colorado.

The case is here on writ of certiorari to the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

The facts are truly horrible.

Jessica Gonzales the respondent sued the Town of Castle Rock in Federal District Court alleging that the Town had violated her rights under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause when its police officers acting pursuant to official policy in customs she alleges failed to respond to her repeated reports over several hours that her estranged husband had taken their three children in violation of her restraining order against him.

The restraining order had been entered as part of a divorce proceeding.

It generally prevented the husband from coming within 100 yards of the family home and it allowed him only limited contact with the children.

The back of the restraining order included a notice for law enforcement personnel which tract the statute and which said "You shall use every reasonable means to enforce this restraining order.

You shall arrest or if an arrest would be impractical under the circumstances, seek a warrant for the arrest of the restrained person when you have information amounting to probably cause that the restrained person has violated any provision of this order."

Early one evening in 1999, the respondent's husband took their children without making the advance arrangements that the order required.

Respondent first called the police at about 7:30 that evening.

When officers came to her house, she showed them the restraining order and asked them to enforce it and return her children.

They told her to call back if the children did not return by 10:00 p.m.

She called again at 8:30 p.m. telling them that she had spoken to her husband who had the children at an amusement park in Denver.

Again, they told her to call if the children were not returned by 10:00 p.m.

Shortly after 10:00, she called back, but was now told to wait until midnight.

She called again at midnight and again at 12:10 a.m. and then went to the police station to file an incident report at 12:50 a.m.

Finally, at 3:20 a.m., her husband showed up at the police station shooting a semi automatic handgun.

The police shot him dead and discovered in his pickup truck the bodies of all three children whom he had already murdered.

Respondent's lawsuit alleged that she had a property interest protected by the Due Process Clause in the enforcement of the restraining order.

The District Court concluded otherwise and dismissed the suit.

On appeal however, a six to five majority of the en banc Tenth Circuit found that she did have a protected property interest in enforcement of the terms of the restraining order and that by failing to give serious attention to her request to enforce the order, the police had violated her due process rights.

We granted certiorari and in an opinion filed with the Clerk today, we reverse the Tenth Circuit.

The Due Process Clause says that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

Property for this purpose does not include everything that might be described as a governmental benefit.

Our previous cases have explained that an individual must have a "legitimate claim of entitlement" to the benefit and that such entitlements are created by some independent source such as state law.

Respondent asked us to defer to the Tenth Circuit's conclusion that Colorado law created such an entitlement here.

We think that such deference is inappropriate in this case because the Tenth Circuit decision did not draw upon any deep well of state specific expertise and because if we were simply to accept its conclusion we would necessarily have to decide conclusively a federal constitutional question.

We conclude that Colorado law did not give respondent an entitlement to enforcement of the restraining order.

The key question involves the statute that says police "shall arrest or if an arrest would be impractical under the circumstances, seek a warrant for the arrest" of somebody they have probably cause to believe has violated a restraining order.

There is a well established tradition of law enforcement discretion even in the face of apparently mandatory arrest statutes.

A Colorado officer would likely have some discretion to determine that the circumstances of a violation or competing duties counsel against enforcement in a particular instance.

The practical necessity for discretion is even more apparent when as in this case, the violator is not present at the scene and his whereabouts are unknown.

In such circumstances the statute does not appear to require officers to arrest but only to seek a warrant.

That however, would be an entitlement to nothing but procedure which cannot be the basis for a property interest.

The judge would have some discretion in the issuance of the warrant and the police would have some discretion in the enforcing of it.

Even if the statute could be set to make enforcement mandatory for the police that would not necessarily mean that respondent has an entitlement to enforcement.

The statute speaks of protected persons but only in connection with other matters, matters other than enforcement.

In particular, it speaks directly to the protected person's power "initiate" civil contempt proceedings and to "request" that the prosecutor initiate criminal contempt proceedings.

This contrasts telling with statutory silence about any power on the part of the protected person to request much less demand that an arrest be made.

Finally, we note that even if we thought otherwise, about Colorado's creation of entitlement it is not clear that an individual entitlement to enforcement of a restraining order could constitute a property interest for purposes of the Due Process Clause.

Such a right would have no ascertainable monetary value and would arise incidentally out of a function that government actors have always performed, namely the function of arresting people who they have probable cause to believe have committed a criminal offense.

Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

Justice Souter has filed a concurring opinion and joined but Justice Breyer; Justice Stevens has filed a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Ginsburg.