Schmidt v. Des Moines Public Schools, et al., No. 10-3411 (8th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseThis case arose out of a dispute between plaintiff and her ex-husband over the education and custody of their three minor children. Plaintiff sued City Defendants, alleging that they unlawfully impeded her access to the children. Plaintiff sued the School District Defendants, asserting that they unlawfully denied her access to the children and their education records. The district court dismissed plaintiff's claims against the City Defendants for failure to state a claim and granted summary judgment for the School District Defendants. The court held that the fact that plaintiff lived in a different state did not suffice to convert the loss of a single three-hour visit into a deprivation of a fundamental right for purposes of substantive due process and, even if plaintiff could show a deprivation, the City Defendants' alleged conduct would not shock the conscience. The court also held that plaintiff failed to state a procedural due process claim against the City Defendants, given the relatively minimal deprivation alleged in this case, where the post-deprivation procedures were adequate to protect her rights to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner. The court further held that plaintiff had no fundamental liberty interest in contacting her children at their schools and the court agreed with the district court that an attendance clerk's one-time refusal to tell plaintiff why one of the children had been absent from school, a coach's referral of plaintiff to her ex-husband for information about the children's swimming activities, and the school's refusal to send plaintiff all of the school's projects she requested did not amount to a deprivation of a fundamental liberty interest. Given the limited nature of any infringement of plaintiff's protected liberty interest, the procedures at issue were sufficient to protect plaintiff's right to procedural due process. The court finally held that plaintiff's right, as a non-custodial parent, under state law and her role in the children's lives vary significantly from the rights and role afforded to the ex-husband or to a typical married parent. Therefore, the court affirmed the grant of summary judgment to defendants with respect to her equal protection claims. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.
Court Description: Civil case - civil rights. Fact that plaintiff lived in a different state from her children did not suffice to convert the loss of a three-hour visit into the deprivation of a fundamental right for purposes of substantive due process; even if plaintiff could show a deprivation of a fundamental liberty interest in visiting her children, the police officers' alleged conduct would not shock the conscience where they tried to intercede in a contentious custody dispute involving a court-ordered visitation that the children were unwilling to attend; post-deprivation remedies, such as contempt, were adequate to satisfy procedural due process where visitation was interfered with; divorce decree restricted plaintiff's visitation to a specific schedule and allowed her to exercise visitation outside of those times only with her ex-husband's assent, and plaintiff had no fundamental liberty interest in contacting her children at school; school district's interpretation of the decree was reasonable and not actionable as a substantive due process claim; school district did not violate plaintiff's procedural due process rights by declining requests for information as plaintiff had a procedural remedy through making a formal written request for information; plaintiff, who does not have primary physical custody of her children is not similarly situated to a married parent who has physical custody.
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