Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 2 (1992)

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116

COLLINS v. HARKER HEIGHTS

Syllabus

train its sanitation department employees is sufficient to hold the city responsible if the complaint has also alleged a constitutional violation. See Canton v. Harris, 489 U. S. 378. Pp. 120-124. (c) The complaint has not alleged a constitutional violation. Neither the Due Process Clause's text—which, inter alia, guarantees due process in connection with any deprivation of liberty by a State—nor its history supports petitioner's unprecedented claim that the Clause imposes an independent substantive duty upon municipalities to provide certain minimal levels of safety and security in the workplace. Although the "process" that the Clause guarantees includes a continuing obligation to satisfy certain minimal custodial standards for those who have already been deprived of their liberty, petitioner cannot maintain that the city deprived Collins of his liberty when it made, and he voluntarily accepted, an employment offer. Also unpersuasive is petitioner's claim that the city's alleged failure to train its employees, or to warn them about known risks of harm, was an omission that can properly be characterized as arbitrary, or conscience shocking, in a constitutional sense. Petitioner's claim is analogous to a fairly typical tort claim under state law, which is not supplanted by the Due Process Clause, see, e. g., Daniels v. Williams, 474 U. S. 327, 332-333, particularly in the area of public employment, see, e. g., Bishop v. Wood, 426 U. S. 341, 350. In light of the presumption that the administration of government programs is based on a rational decisionmaking process that takes account of competing forces, decisions concerning the allocation of resources to individual programs, such as sewer maintenance, and to particular aspects of those programs, such as employee training, involve a host of policy choices that must be made by locally elected representatives, rather than by federal judges interpreting the country's basic charter of Government. For the same reasons, petitioner's suggestion that the Texas Hazard Communication Act supports her substantive due process claim is rejected. Pp. 125-130.

916 F. 2d 284, affirmed.

Stevens, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

San ford Jay Rosen argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Don Busby and Andrea G. Asaro.

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