Cite as: 523 U. S. 833 (1998)
Scalia, J., concurring in judgment
"Historically, th[e] guarantee of due process has been applied to deliberate decisions of government officials to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property." Daniels v. Williams, 474 U. S. 327, 331 (1986) (citations omitted); Collins, supra, at 127, n. 10 (same). Though it is true, as the Court explains, that "deliberate indifference" to the medical needs of pretrial detainees, City of Revere v. Massachusetts Gen. Hospital, 463 U. S. 239, 244-245 (1983), or of involuntarily committed mental patients, Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U. S. 307, 314-325 (1982), may violate substantive due process, it is not the deliberate indifference alone that is the "deprivation." Rather, it is that combined with "the State's affirmative act of restraining the individual's freedom to act on his own behalf—through incarceration, institutionalization, or other similar restraint of personal liberty," DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Servs., 489 U. S. 189, 200 (1989). "[W]hen the State by the affirmative exercise of its power so restrains an individual's liberty that it renders him unable to care for himself, and at the same time fails to provide for his basic human needs[,] . . . it transgresses the substantive limits on state action set by the . . . Due Process Clause." Ibid. (emphasis added). We have expressly left open whether, in a context in which the individual has not been deprived of the ability to care for himself in the relevant respect, "something less than intentional conduct, such as recklessness or 'gross negligence,' " can ever constitute a "deprivation" under the Due Process Clause. Daniels, 474 U. S., at 334, n. 3. Needless to say, if it is an open question whether recklessness can ever trigger due process protections, there is no precedential support for a substantive-due-process right to be free from reckless police conduct during a car chase.
To hold, as respondents urge, that all government conduct deliberately indifferent to life, liberty, or property violates the Due Process Clause would make " 'the Fourteenth Amendment a font of tort law to be superimposed upon whatever
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