U.S.A v. State Of Tenn.
| Decision Date | 04 August 2010 |
| Docket Number | No. 92-02062,No. 09-5474,09-5474,92-02062 |
| Parties | United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, People First of Tennessee, on behalf of all its members, Intervenors-Appellees, Parent-Guardian Associations of Arlington Developmental Center, Intervenor, v. State of Tennessee; Phil Bredesen, in his official capacity as Governor of the State of Tennessee; Virginia Betts, in her official capacity as Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities; M.D. Goetz, Jr., in his official capacity as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration; Nina Staples, in her official capacity as Chief Officer of the Arlington Developmental Center, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
ARGUED: Michael W. Kirk, COOPER & KIRK, PLLC, Washington, D.C., for Appellants.
Judith A. Gran, PUBLIC INTEREST LAW CENTER OF PHILADELPHIA, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Lisa J. Stark, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellees.
ON BRIEF: Michael W. Kirk, Charles J. Cooper, Derek L. Shaffer, Brian S. Koukoutchos, COOPER & KIRK, PLLC, Washington, D.C., Dianne S. Ducus, OFFICE OF THE TENNESSEE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellants.
Judith A. Gran, PUBLIC INTEREST LAW CENTER OF PHILADELPHIA, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Mark L. Gross, Sarah E. Harrington, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., Earle J. Schwarz, LAW OFFICE, Memphis, Tennessee, for Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee at Memphis. Bernice B. Donald, District Judge.
Before: BOGGS, SUHRHEINRICH, and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.
The State of Tennessee ("State") appeals the district court's denial of its motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 60(b)(5). The sole issue on appeal is whether the district court abused its discretion when it refused to vacate all outstanding court orders and consent decrees granting injunctive relief ("injunctive relief). This injunctive relief arises from the district court's original 1993 ruling that the State was violating the substantive due process rights of mentally retarded ("MR") residents at Arlington Development Center ("ADC"), a state-operated home for MR individuals. The State argues that this injunctive relief, which has remained in place for over a decade, should be lifted because a significant change in law has occurred since the original judgment. The United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division ("United States") and People First of Tennessee ("People First"), a certified class of MR adults that benefits from the injunctive relief, oppose the State's request. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM.
The United States brought this suit against the State and some of its officials in January 1992, pursuant to the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997. The complaint alleged, among other things, that the State failed to ensure that ADCresidents received adequate medical care, were free from neglect and abuse, and were not subject to undue bodily restraint. In support of its complaint, the United States argued that the State was violating the substantive due process rights of the MR residents at ADC, as established by the Supreme Court in Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307 (1982). In Youngberg, the mother of an involuntarily institutionalized MR man held at a state-run institution brought suit against the state on her son's behalf. Id. at 310. She contended that the state owed her son substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment because of his involuntary confinement. Id. The Court agreed and stated that when an individual is involuntarily institutionalized through state legal proceedings, he has a substantive due process right to adequate food, shelter, clothing, and medical care, as well as reasonable safety, freedom from unnecessary bodily restraint, and reasonable habilitation ("Youngberg rights"). Id. at 324. The United States argued that sufficient state action existed at ADC to trigger these Youngberg rights. The United States noted that the State ultimately decided to accept an MR individual into its care, ADC was a state-run facility, Tennessee law limited the circumstances under which a resident could be discharged from the facility, and the State controlled "virtually every aspect of the... lives" of ADC residents once admitted.
In March 1992, the State moved to dismiss the complaint. The State argued that the Supreme Court's decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189 (1989), stood for the proposition that the State did not owe Youngberg rights to ADC residents. In DeShaney, the mother of a boy who was rendered profoundly retarded by his father's beatings brought suit on the boy's behalf against social workers and other local officials who knew that he was at risk of injury by his father but did nothing. Id. at 191. Even though the boy was not in state custody at the time of his abuse, he claimed that the government officials' failure to affirmatively act to protect him from his father deprived him of his Due Process Clause right to liberty. Id. The Court disagreed and held that Youngberg rights did not exist in this circumstance. Id. at 201. It reasoned:
In the substantive due process analysis, it is the State's affirmative act of restraining the individual's freedom to act on his own behalf-through incarceration, institutionalization, or other similar restraint of personal liberty-which is the deprivation of liberty triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause, not its failure to act to protect his liberty interests against harms inflicted by other means.
Id. at 200. In reaching this conclusion, the Court limited its holding in Youngberg to "stand only for the proposition that when the State takes a person into its custody and holds him there against his will, the Constitution imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for his safety and general well-being." Id. at 199-200.
The State argued that, in accordance with DeShaney, Youngberg did not apply because residents were not at ADC due to affirmative acts by the State. It reasoned that, "with rare exception," parents or other legal representatives placed residents at ADC. Similarly, the State maintained that it did not engage in state action to involuntarily keep ADC residents at the facility because these same parents or other legal representatives could remove a resident at any time.
The district court denied the State's motion to dismiss in August 1992. United States v. Tennessee, 798 F. Supp. 483 (W.D. Tenn. 1992). The district court discussed Youngberg and DeShaney in detail and determined that "under certain circumstances the state has a duty to provide services and care to institutionalized individuals[,]" such as when "a person is institutionalized-and wholly dependent on the State." Id. at 486. Despite the fact that parents or other legal guardians voluntarily placed most ADC residents into the State's care, the court determined that the United States had alleged enough state action at ADC to implicate Youngberg rights. Id. at 487. It noted that the State had accepted ADC residents into its care and thus accepted responsibility for their needs. Id. The district court emphasized Tenn. Code Ann. § 33-5-103, which mandated that, once admitted to ADC, a resident was under the "exclusive care, custody and control of the commissioner and superintendent." Id. The district court further noted Tenn. Code Ann. § 33-5-101(b), which suggested that the superintendent had discretion to deny a resident's discharge request. Id. at 487 n.8. Lastly, the court underscored that state actors controlled every aspect of residents' daily life, including treatment, care, and movement in and out of ADC. Id. at 487.
In May 1993, Tennessee repealed Tenn. Code Ann. § 33-5-103 and amended its laws to make clear that the superintendent was required to discharge any individual within twelve hours upon request; however, a person lacking capacity still needed a parent or other legalguardian to make this request. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 33-5-303. In July 1993, the State filed a second motion to dismiss based upon, among other things, these changes to Tennessee law. Nevertheless, after a four-week bench trial on the merits that began in August 1993, the district court issued an oral opinion in November 1993, held the State liable for violating ADC residents' Youngberg rights, and ordered the State, in cooperation with the United States, to submit a plan to remedy the constitutional violations at ADC. The court issued Supplemental Findings of Fact in February 1994, where it more specifically identified which conditions at ADC violated residents' Youngberg rights. These conditions included, inter alia, substandard training of staff, deficient supervision of residents who posed dangers to themselves and others, inadequate medical care and related health services, inadequate habilitation and psychological services, and improper feeding practices. The court found that these failures had led to thousands of injuries over the years.
In August 1994, the parties submitted a comprehensive stipulated remedial order to address the concerns raised in the district court's opinion. The remedial order included more than one hundred requirements that pertained to how the State would operate ADC in a constitutionally acceptable manner and a schedule for meeting these new requirements. The order included a plan to reduce the population of ADC by transitioning some current residents to arranged community living, an agreement to cease new admissions at ADC without court approval, a guarantee to provide some community-based services to former ADC residents, and new staffing and services requirements. The order also...
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