Parratt v. Taylor

In Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527 (1981), the Court held that an inmate's loss of property (a $23 hobby kit), through the negligence of a prison guard, was not actionable under Section 1983 where the state tort claims procedures supplied the due process of law requirement under the Constitution.

Four Justices joined the Court's opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. But Justice Harry Blackmun, joined by Justice Byron White, concurred with the following caveat:

I ... do not understand the Court to intimate that the sole content of the Due Process Clause is procedural regularity. I continue to believe that there are certain governmental actions that, even if undertaken with a full panoply of procedural protection, are, in and of themselves, antithetical to fundamental notions of due process.

Most importantly, I do not understand the Court to suggest that the provision of "postdeprivation remedies" ... within a state system would cure the unconstitutional nature of a state official's intentional act that deprives a person of property.