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Restoring Equipoise To Child Welfare, Rebecca Aviel

Rebecca Aviel

Since the Supreme Court’s widely criticized decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, the principle that the Constitution affords no relief for a social worker’s failure to prevent harm to a child has been described as a “staple of our constitutional law.” Whatever might be said about this principle on its own terms, it produces very troubling incentives for social workers who may still face constitutional tort liability when they act affirmatively to intervene in troubled families -- the unjustified removal of a child from her parents’ custody, after all, is the sort of infringement proscribed by …