After years of abuse by his father, four-year old Joshua DeShaney entered a hospital emergency room in a deep coma that left him permanently paralyzed and brain damaged. The child protection agency in Winnebago County, Wisconsin had intervened in Joshua's family before and had known for more than two years the history of abuse and the continuing serious risk the boy faced. Joshua and his mother filed a civil rights suit against the caseworkers and the agency, alleging that their failure to protect the child from his father violated the boy's substantive due process rights. The United States Supreme Court in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (1989) held that Joshua and his mother had no cause of action, reasoning that the government had no constitutional duty to protect anyone from harm unless the state first deprived that person of liberty by placing him or her in its custody.