Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales’s Empirical Analysis
2005
Citation profile
332 federal appellate · 223 district · 123 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,263 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2025 · most notably Georgia v. Randolph (2006), Yuen Jin v. Mukasey (2008)
332 federal appellate · 223 district · 123 state decisions — followed in 24 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · Mathews v. Eldridge · Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill · Goldberg v. Kelly · Perry v. Sindermann
Cited together with Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly · Ashcroft v. Iqbal · Mathews v. Eldridge · Joshua Deshaney, a Minor, by His Guardian Ad Litem, and Melody Deshaney,s v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, et al.
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 1,263 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“`rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law.'”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[A] benefit is not a protected entitlement if government officials may grant or deny it in their discretion.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“The Due Process Clause extends procedural protection to guard against unfair deprivation by state officials of substantive state-law property rights or entitlements; the federal process protects the property created by state law. But Gonzales claims a property interest in a state-mandated process in and of itself. This argument is at odds with the rule that “process is not an end in itself. Its constitutional purpose is to protect a substantive interest to which the individual has a legitimate claim of entitlement.” ... Just as a State cannot diminish a property right, once conferred, by attaching less than generous procedure to its deprivation, neither does a State create a property right merely by ordaining beneficial procedure unconnected to some articulable substantive guarantee.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.