## Facts

- Elnora Camp, as administrator of Anthony Young’s estate, sued George Gregory, a caseworker for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
- Camp previously served as Anthony’s guardian but sought appointment of another guardian because she believed she could not provide the “highly structured and closely supervised” environment Anthony needed to avoid neighborhood dangers.
- On June 25, 1991, an Illinois state court appointed DCFS as Anthony’s legal guardian, and Gregory became Anthony’s assigned caseworker.
- Camp alleged Gregory, despite knowing her concerns and limitations, placed Anthony back in Camp’s home and did not respond to her requests for better supervision and safety planning.
- A few months after the placement, Anthony was shot and killed two blocks from Camp’s home on his sixteenth birthday.
- Camp claimed DCFS’s guardianship created a constitutional obligation to protect Anthony from foreseeable private violence and that Gregory’s actions and omissions violated Anthony’s substantive due process rights.

## Issues

1. Whether a child-welfare agency’s court-ordered guardianship creates a substantive due process duty to protect a minor from private violence, notwithstanding the general rule that the Constitution does not require state protection from third parties.
2. If such a duty exists, whether the caseworker is shielded from personal liability by qualified immunity because the asserted right was not clearly established at the time.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed the Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal, but on grounds different from the district court’s rationale.
- The court held that court-ordered DCFS guardianship could create a custodial relationship sufficient to support a constitutional “positive duty to protect,” so the claim was not necessarily barred by the general no-duty rule for private violence.
- The court nonetheless concluded Gregory was entitled to qualified immunity because prior precedent did not clearly establish that an individual caseworker could be liable for failing to protect a child living in a private home while under state guardianship.
- Because the right was not clearly established in these circumstances, the complaint could not proceed for damages against Gregory in his individual capacity.

## Legal Principles

- The Due Process Clause generally does not impose an affirmative duty on state officials to protect individuals from private violence absent a custodial or similar special relationship.
- When the state assumes legal guardianship of a minor by court order, that status may be sufficiently custodial to support a substantive due process claim premised on a duty to provide reasonable protection.
- Qualified immunity bars § 1983 damages claims against individual officials unless existing law at the time placed the asserted constitutional obligation beyond debate for materially similar facts.
- A court may affirm dismissal based on qualified immunity even where it recognizes that a constitutional duty might exist in the abstract.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit recognized that court-ordered state guardianship can, in principle, create a substantive due process duty to protect a minor, but it affirmed dismissal because the law did not clearly establish personal liability for a caseworker under these guardianship-and-private-home facts, entitling the defendant to qualified immunity.


Camp v. Gregory, 67 F.3d 1286 (7th Cir. 1995)