Hodge v. Jones (1994)

First, we note that although the family unit is a "fundamen- tal precept firmly ensconced in the Constitution and shielded by Due Process," it is "neither absolute nor unqualified." Hodge, 31 F.3d at 163.

First, we note that although the family unit is a "fundamental precept firmly ensconced in the Constitution and shielded by Due Process," it is "neither absolute nor unqualified." Hodge, 31 F.3d at 163.

See Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U.S. 248, 256 , 103 S.Ct. 2985 , 77 L.Ed.2d 614 (1983) (constitutional protection available for parent-child relationship in "appropriate cases"); Croft v. Westmoreland Co. Children and Youth Serv., 103 F.3d 1123, 1125 (3d Cir.1997) (interest of parents in the care, custody and management of children is "not absolute"; "liberty interest in familial integrity is limited by the compelling governmental interest in the protection of children"); Hodge v…

See Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U.S. 248, 256 , 103 S.Ct. 2985 , 77 L.Ed.2d 614 (1983) (constitutional protection available for parent-child relationship in “appropriate cases”); Croft v. Westmoreland Co. Children and Youth Serv., 103 F.3d 1123, 1125 (3d Cir.1997) (interest of parents in the care, custody and management of children is “not absolute”; “liberty interest in familial integrity is limited by the compelling governmental interest in the protection of children”); Hodge v…

Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir. 1994).

Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir.1994).

See Martinez, 35 F.3d at 1490 ; Hodge, 31 F.3d at 164; Frazier, 957 F.2d at 930 ; Myers, 810 F.2d at 1462-63 ....

See Martinez, 35 F.3d at 1490 ; Hodge, 31 F.3d at 164; Frazier, 957 F.2d at 930 ; Myers, 810 F.2d at 1462-63 .

See Martinez, 35 F.3d at 1490 ; Hodge, 31 F.3d at 164; Frazier, 957 F.2d at 930 ; Myers, 810 F.2d at 1462-63 .

Thus, Neat Print has met its “formidable burden of showing that it is absolutely clear the allegedly 5 See also Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 166 (4th Cir. 1994) (finding claims for injunctive and declaratory relief moot and analyzing appeal as to “justiciable claims for damages and attorney fees”); 6 J.

Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir. 1994).

“Qualified immunity is an accommodation by the courts to the conflicting concerns of, on one hand, government officials seeking freedom from personal monetary liability and harassing litigation and, on the other hand, injured persons seeking redress for the abuse of official power.” Id. at 162 (internal quotation marks omitted).

"Qualified immunity is an accommodation by the courts to the con- flicting concerns of, on one hand, government officials seeking free- dom from personal monetary liability and harassing litigation and, on the other hand, injured persons seeking redress for the abuse of offi- cial power." Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 162 (4th Cir. 1994) (inter- nal quotation marks omitted).

Reviewing the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, see Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir.1994), we affirm, though on somewhat different reasoning.

We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir.1994), and its denial of the Rule 60(b)(2) and (3) motion for abuse of discretion.

The court distinguished Bohn v. County of Dakota, supra, in a footnote, noting that in Bohn , the social workers had “repeatedly met with the Bohn family in an attempt to halt the purported abuse and related problems, thereby engaging in a campaign of intrusive conduct,” whereas in Hodge, once the investigation was complete, the record was allowed to “lie fallow.” 31 F.3d at 164.

Id. at 163-64 (citation omitted); see also Prescott v. Wade, No. 12-126, 2013 WL 1352168 , at *5 (E.D.

As the Fourth Circuit long has recognized, “[t]he contours of the right to family integrity may not be ‘sufficiently clear’ in certain situations, to be deemed ‘clearly established’ as required.” Martin, 346 F.3d at 506 (quoting Renn, 100 F.3d at 349 ); see also Hodge, 31 F.3d at 164 (“The dimensions of the right to familial privacy have yet to be clearly established.”) (quoting Frazier v. Bailey, 957 F.2d 920, 931 (1st Cir. 1992)). 1.

The Fourth Circuit has held that “the sanctity of the family unit is a fundamental precept firmly ensconced in the Constitution and shielded by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Hodge, supra, at 163.

See also Hodge, 31 F.3d at 167 (“this would be a proper case for the application of qualified immunity because officials are not liable for bad guesses in gray areas; they are liable for transgressing bright lines.”) (internal citations omitted).

Accordingly, courts have “strictly construed actional violations of the familial privacy right to encompass” instances where state action: (1) was “directly aimed at the parent-child relationship;” (2) implicated “the right of the family to remain together without the coercive interference of the awesome power of the state;” (3) “drove a wedge into a family and threatened its very foundations;” or (4) “eroded the family’s solidarity internally and impaired the family’s abili…

“The sanctity of the family unit is a fundamental precept firmly ensconced in the Constitution and shielded by the Due Process Clause.” Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir. 1994).

Hodge, 31 F.3d at 166; 8 see United States v. Pinto, 1 F.3d 1069, 1070 (10th Cir.1993); United States v. Scott, 793 F.2d 117, 118 (5th Cir.1986).

Social services officials engaged in child abuse investigations “may properly assert qualified immunity in appropriate situations.” Hodge, 31 F.3d at 162 (citations omitted).

While it is, of course, possible that information in the Registry will be misused, despite the statutory and regulatory safeguards, “[t]he tangential possibility of public disclosure . . . through such theoretical means as negligent or improperly-motivated state employees or fortuitous computer hackers, cannot by itself implicate a constitutional privacy right.” Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d at 166.

The Court, quoting Whalen, noted that the state’s statutory scheme properly protected the plaintiffs’ privacy concerns, and, thus, it declined to “expand the penumbral privacy rights beyond the fixed boundaries of established precedent.” Id. at 166-67; see also Adams, 906 F.Supp. at 1057 (‘[M]erely because an interest is protected by the legislature does not mean that it is also safeguarded by the Due Process Clause.”).

Hodge, 31 F.3d at 168 (internal citations omitted).

Rather, “[t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right.” Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640 , 107 S.Ct. at 3039 ; Hodge, 31 F.3d at 167.

Watterson, supra, 987 F.2d at 8 (“The right to family integrity clearly does not include a constitutional right to be free from child abuse investigations.”) (citations omitted); Hodge v. Jones, supra, 31 F.3d at 164 (no constitutional right to be free from child abuse investigations).

Servs., 346 F.3d 502 , 506 (4th Cir. 2003) (quoting Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir. 1994)).

Servs., 346 F.3d 502 , 506 (4th Cir. 2003) (quoting Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir. 1994)).

The key inquiry is whether “the law provided ‘fair warning’ that [the defendant’s] conduct was unconstitutional.” Id. at 538 (quoting Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002)). “[T]he right to familial integrity is ‘amorphous’ in many cases,” Martin, 346 F.3d at 506 (quoting Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 164 (4th Cir. 1994)), and a social worker “will not be held liable for ‘bad guesses in gray areas,’” id. (quoting Maciariello v. Sumner, 973 F.2d 295, 298 (4th Cir. 1992)).

Indeed, “the sanctity of the family unit is a fundamental precept firmly ensconced in the Constitution and shielded by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir. 4 While the Plaintiffs’ Complaint couches the claimed liberty interest of the children in terms of their right to live with “their” parents, [id. at ¶ 79], the Plaintiffs make no argument that the deprivation of the children’s right to live with their father const…

Indeed, while familial privacy is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the “concept of familial privacy has been restricted by the Supreme Court to (1) thwarting governmental attempts to interfere with particularly intimate family decisions, and (2) voiding government actions that sever, alter, or otherwise affect the parent/child relationship.” Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir. 1994).

See, e.g., Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341, 348 (1976); Sciolino v. City of Newport News, Va., 480 F.3d 642, 649 (4th Cir. 2007); Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 165 (4th Cir. 1994); Echtenkamp v. Loudon Cnty.

The Fourth Circuit has held that “the sanctity of the family unit is a fundamental precept firmly ensconced in the Constitution and shielded by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir. 1994); see also, Martin v. Saint Mary’s Dept.

Hodge, 31 F.3d at 164 (citation omitted).

See e.g., Barclay v. Florida, 463 U.S. 939 , 951 n.8 & 956 (1983) (finding that the trial court’s consideration of the plaintiff’s “criminal record as an aggravating circumstance was improper as a matter of state law,” but a “mere error of state law is not a denial of due process” (quotations marks omitted)); Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157 , 168 (4th Cir. 1994) (“[A] State’s violation of its own laws or procedural rules, creating rights beyond those guaranteed by the constituti…

(Bohn v. County of Dakota (8th Cir. 1985) 772 F.2d 1433 , 1435-1436 [federal constitutional familial privacy right was implicated when parents were identified in county social services records as subjects of a substantiated report of child abuse]; Hodge v. Jones (4th Cir. 1994) 31 F.3d 157, 163-165 [discussing scope of federal constitutional familial privacy rights, but determining that those rights were not violated in a case where parents had been cleared of child abuse al…

See also Commonwealth v. Holloway, 225 S.W.3d 404, 407 (Ky. Ct. App. 2007) (“The mere fact that an individual is not convicted on the charges on which he was arrested does not entitle him to expungement of the arrest record”) (quoting Coles v. Levine, 561 F. Supp. 146, 153 (D.Md.1983)); Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157 , 166 (4th Cir. 1994) (“While it is true that such records may be expunged, there is no automatic right to expunction once an individual’s name has been cleared.”)…

“Unpublicized accusations do not infringe constitutional liberty interests because, by definition, they cannot harm ‘good name, reputation, honor, or integrity.’ ” Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 165 (4th Cir.1994).

(Hodge v. Jones (4th Cir. 1994) 31 F.3d 157, 163 [while not absolute or unqualified, “[m]uch like the foundational concept of individual privacy, [citation], the sanctity of the family unit is a fundamental precept firmly ensconced in the Constitution and shielded by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”]; Bohn v. County of Dakota (8th Cir. 1985) 772 F.2d 1433 , 1435 [“[t]he privacy and autonomy of familial relationships involved in a case like this are unargua…

Unlike this case, the “[s]tate action affected the parental relationship only incidentally.” Id. at 163-64.

Hodge, 31 F.3d at 167 (footnote and citation omitted).

(Cf., Hodge v Jones, 31 F3d 157, 169 [4th Cir 1994] [Powell, J., concurring].) Given the particularly egregious conduct of respondents in forcing petitioners to resort to legal action in order to secure their right to compensation, thereby incurring considerable expense in legal fees, this court finds petitioners are entitled to be awarded legal fees pursuant to 42 USC § 1988 .

See Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 162 (4th Cir. 1994) (citing Wildauer v. Frederick County, 993 F.2d 369, 373 (4th Cir. 1993)), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1018 , 115 S.Ct. 581 , 130 L.Ed.2d 496 (1994).

See Hodge, 31 F.3d at 168 (“The fact that Defendants’ acts may have violated various [state] statutory provisions ... is of no consequence in a [section] 1983 action, since a State’s violation of its own laws or procedural rules, creating rights beyond those guaranteed by the Constitution, cannot support a federal due process claim.”).

See id. at 708-09 , 96 S.Ct. at 1164 .” Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157 , 165 (4th Cir.1994) (footnote omitted).

See Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157 , 166 (4th Cir.1994) (noting that “[ejxpunction ... is a discretionary function of the court, rarely utilized absent extreme circumstances”). *784 III.

See Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157 , 167 (4th Cir.1994).