Justice Thomas in his dissent in today's much diaried
Kelo case took the unusual and probably inadvertant step of referring to an opinion,
Castle Rock v. Gonzales that won't be announced until Monday. The case involves a woman whose children were killed by her husband when the police in Castle Rock, Colorado ignored her pleas to have them enforce her restraining order against him. Justice Thomas said, in the pertinent part:
We would not defer to a legislature's determination of the various circumstances that establish, for example, . . . when state law creates a property interest protected by the Due Process Clause, see, e.g., Castle Rock v. Gonzales, post, at __
The reference is ambigiuous, but could imply that the Court will hold that a woman with a restraining order has a property right which cannot be deprived without due process, to have police enforce that order or give proper consideration to why they won't.
If this is the ruling it would be a landmark ruling against a legal backdrop in which the general rule is that police have no legally enforceable duty to protect the public.