Children’s Hospital Faces Claim for Violating Parents’ Rights

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center will have to face claims it violated the procedural constitutional due process rights of a psychiatric patient’s parents when it declined to release the child to them after their insurance ran out, the Sixth Circuit said Tuesday.

Joseph and Melissa Siefert adequately alleged the hospital was a state actor for purposes of their 14th Amendment due process claim, the U.S. District Court for the Sixth Circuit said. They also sufficiently pleaded that due process entitled them to at least a hearing on the alleged deprivation of their constitutional rights, it said.

Children’s treated the teen ...