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March 21
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2005
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June 27
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2005
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Town of Castle Rock, Colorado, Petitioner v Jessica Gonzales, individually and as next friend of her deceased minor children, Rebecca Gonzales, Katheryn Gonzales, and Leslie Gonzales
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545
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748
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545 US 748 125 S Ct 2796 162 L Ed 2d 658 2005 US LEXIS 5214 18 Fla L Weekly Fed S 511
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04-278
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On writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ''Gonzales v City of Castle Rock'', 366 F3d 1093, 2004 US App LEXIS 19049 (10th Cir Colo, 2004)
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On remand at ''Gonzales v City of Castle Rock'', 144 Fed Appx 746, 2005 US App LEXIS 19072 (10th Cir, Sept 2, 2005)
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The town of Castle Rock, Colorado and its police department could not be sued under 42 USC §1983 for failure to enforce a restraining order against respondent's husband, as enforcement of the restraining order does not constitute a property right for 14th Amendment purposes
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1994-2005
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Scalia
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Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Breyer
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Souter
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Breyer
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Stevens
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Ginsburg
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US Const Amend XIV , Due Process Clause
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'',
545 U.S. 748 (
2005 ), was a case decided by the
Supreme Court Of The United States , in which the court ruled, 7-2, that a town and its police department could not be sued under
42 U.S.C. §1983 for failing to enforce a
Restraining Order , which had led to the murder of a woman's three children by her estranged husband.
During divorce proceedings, Jessica Gonzales, a resident of Castle Rock, Colorado, obtained a restraining order against her husband on June 4, 1999, requiring him to remain at least 100 yards from her and their three daughters except during specified . At approximately 3:20 am on June 23, 1999, the husband appeared at the Castle Rock police station and instigated a fatal shoot-out with the police. A search of his vehicle revealed the corpses of the three daughters, whom the husband had killed prior to his arrival.
Gonzales filed suit in the
United States District Court For The District Of Colorado against Castle Rock, Colorado, its police department, and the three individual police officers with whom she had spoken under
42 U.S.C. §1983 , claiming a Federally-protected property interest in enforcement of the restraining order and alleging "an official policy or custom of failing to respond properly to complaints of restraining order violations." A motion to dismiss the case was granted, and Gonzales appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. A panel of the
United States Court Of Appeals For The Tenth Circuit rejected Gonzales's substantive due process claim but found a procedural due process claim; an en banc rehearing reached the same conclusion. The court also affirmed the finding that the three individual officers had
Qualified Immunity and as such could not be sued.
The Supreme Court reversed the Tenth Circuit's decision, reinstating the District Court's order of dismissal. The Court's majority opinion by Justice
Antonin Scalia held that enforcement of the restraining order was not mandatory under Colorado law (thus making this a technically narrow ruling); were a mandate for enforcement to exist (making Scalia's statements afterward technically
Obiter Dicta ), it would not create an individual right to enforcement that could be considered a protected entitlement under the precedent of ''
Board Of Regents Of State Colleges V. Roth ''; and even if there were a protected individual entitlement to enforcement of a restraining order, such entitlement would have no monetary value and hence would not count as property for the
Due Process Clause .
Justice
David Souter wrote a concurring opinion, using the reasoning that enforcement of a restraining order is a process, not the interest protected by the process, and that there is not due process protection for processes.
Justice
John Paul Stevens wrote a dissenting opinion, in which he wrote that with respect to whether or not an arrest was mandatory under Colorado law, the court should either have deferred to the 10th Circuit court's finding that it was or else certified the question to the
Colorado Supreme Court rather than decide the issue itself. He went on to write that the law created a statutory guarantee of enforcement, which is an individual benefit and constitutes a protected property interest under ''Roth,'' rejecting the court's use of ''
O'Bannon V. Town Court Nursing Center '' to require a monetary value and the concurrence's distinction between enforcement of the restraining order (the violator's arrest) and the benefit of enforcement (safety from the violator).
This case was widely seen within the movement to end
Violence Against Women as validating the argument that restraining orders are of little use in the
Domestic Violence arena and as giving abusers a "green light."
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As this case is the latest in a lineage of high-profile cases, such as ''
DeShaney V. Winnebago County '', in which lawsuits against governmental entities for failure to prevent harm to an individual were dismissed, it has also been used by gun-control opponents in the United States to add additional weight to the
Self-defense Argument for private gun ownership.
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