The purpose of the Due Process Clause is "to protect the people from the State, not to ensure that the State protect [s] them from each other."

And "nothing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors."

"[A] State's failure to protect an individual against private violence simply does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause."

The Supreme Court expressed that the due process clause is "phrased as a limitation on the State's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security."

In the substantive due process analysis, it is 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—which is the deprivation of liberty triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause, not its failure to act to protect his liberty interests against harms …

"[W] hen the State takes a person into its custody and holds him there against his will, the Constitution imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for his safety and general well-being."

"The Due Process Clauses generally confer no affirmative right to governmental aid, even where such aid may be necessary to secure life, liberty, or property interests of which the government itself may not deprive the individual."

As such, when 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—eg, food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and reasonable safety—it transgresses the substantive limits on state action set by the Eighth Amendment and the Due …

This is because, our colleague says, DeShaney stands for the proposition that "[s] ubstantive due process does not regulate a state's failure to provide public services," regardless of the context.(Dissent at 76

Joshua's father subsequently beat him so brutally that Joshua suffered permanent brain damage, leaving him severely retarded.