Terri Deprinzio v. Judy Ludke, et al.

1). Whether the Due process Clause of the Fourteenth (14th) Amendment permits a State, after establishing procedures for further judicial review of existing claims, to extinguish a litigant’s opportunity to invoke those procedures through an inflexible jurisdictional dead-line when the litigant alleges that she did not receive the appellate decision triggering that dead-line, and the state thereafter provides no effective procedure capable of restoring the lost opportunity. 2). Whether a State may Treat federal constitutional claims as procedurally foreclosed where a self­ represented party expressly presented Due Process and Equal Protection claims during the state appellate proceedings, the appellate court regarded portions of those arguments as inadequately developed, and the litigant was thereafter allegedly deprived by non-receipt of the appellate decision of the opportunity to seek further review before the jurisdictional period expired.