346
Stevens, J., dissenting
leased to an unrelated adult, the Court is able to escape the clear holding of our cases that "administrative convenience" is a thoroughly inadequate basis for the deprivation of core constitutional rights. Ante, at 311 (citing, for comparison, Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645 (1972)). As explained above, however, the right at issue in this case is not the right to be released to an unrelated adult; it is the right to be free from Government confinement that is the very essence of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause. It is a right that cannot be defeated by a claim of a lack of expertise or a lack of resources. In my view, then, Stanley v. Illinois is not a case to look to for comparison, but one from which to derive controlling law. For in Stanley, we flatly rejected the premise underlying the Court's holding today.
In that case, we entertained a due process challenge to a statute under which children of unwed parents, upon the death of the mother, were declared wards of the State without any hearing as to the father's fitness for custody. In striking down the statute, we rejected the argument that a State's interest in conserving administrative resources was a sufficient basis for refusing to hold a hearing as to a father's fitness to care for his children:
"Procedure by presumption is always cheaper and easier than individualized determination. But when, as here, the procedure forecloses the determinative issues of competence and care, when it explicitly disdains present realities in deference to past formalities, it needlessly risks running roughshod over the important interests of both parent and child. It therefore cannot stand.
"Bell v. Burson[, 402 U. S. 535 (1971),] held that the State could not, while purporting to be concerned with fault in suspending a driver's license, deprive a citizen of his license without a hearing that would assess fault. Absent fault, the State's declared interest was so attenuated that administrative convenience was insufficient to excuse a hearing where evidence of fault could be con-
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