Henry v. City of Erie, No. 11-3738 (3d Cir. 2013)
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A 2010 fire at an apartment in Erie, Pennsylvania took the lives of a tenant and her guest. The third-floor bedroom purportedly lacked a smoke detector and an alternate means of egress, both of which are required under the Section 8 housing choice voucher program (42 U.S.C. 1437f) in which Richardson participated. The district court rejected a defense of qualified immunity in a suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 by the estates of the deceased. The Third Circuit reversed. State officials’ approval and subsidization of the apartment for the Section 8 program, even though the apartment allegedly failed to comply with Section 8’s standards, did not constitute a state-created danger toward the apartment’s tenant and her guest in violation of their constitutional substantive due process rights.
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