Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Commentary : In Their Opinion : Lawyer & Attorney Michael E. Rigney : Kelley Drye & Warren Law Firm

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MCCAULEY v. CITY OF CHICAGO (October 20, 2011)

Glenford Martinez was released from prison in 2006, after serving 13 years for attempted murder. The following year, he was arrested for domestic battery after he allegedly choked his former girlfriend, Mersaides McCauley. Martinez could have been held without bail had the Illinois Department of Corrections issued a parole violation warrant. They did not -- and he was released on bail. McCauley obtained an order of protection, but to no avail. Martinez continued to violate the order. In early 2008, Martinez shot and killed McCauley and then killed himself. McCauley's estate brought a number of federal and state claims against numerous defendants, including an equal protection claim against the City of Chicago and Roger Walker, the then-IDOC Director. Judge St. Eve (N.D. Ill.) dismissed the federal claims and declined to exercise jurisdiction over the state claims. With respect to the equal protection claims, she concluded that female victims of domestic violence are not a protected class and that Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity precluded any recovery against Walker in his official capacity. The court denied the estate's request to conduct discovery to support a personal capacity claim against Walker. The estate appeals.

In their opinion, Seventh Circuit Judges Manion, Sykes, and Hamilton (dissenting in part) affirmed. The Court criticized the district court's analysis but ended up with the same result. The Court approached the case by asking whether the complaint sufficiently pleaded facts that would allow an inference that the City maintained a "policy, custom, or practice" of discrimination against a group to which McCauley belonged. Twombly and Iqbal require specific facts that support the legal claims, rather than legal conclusions and conclusory allegations. After disregarding the complaint's legal conclusions, the Court found that the factual allegations did not satisfy the Monell standard. In fact, the factual allegations alleged that the City failed to provide special protection to female victims of domestic violence, not that it failed to provide equal protection. The equal protection claim against the City was properly dismissed. The Court also affirmed the denial of discovery related to the Walker personal capacity claim, although again for different reasons. Given that there is nothing in the record to suggest that Walker had any personal involvement in Martinez' parole, the district court's refusal to allow discovery on the issue was not an abuse of discretion.

Judge Hamilton dissented from the majority's dismissal of the equal protection claim against the court City. His dissent was primarily an attack on Iqbal, its heightened pleading requirements, its inconsistency with other rules and practice, and its difficulty in application. He believed that the estate's complaint adequately alleged an equal protection claim by alleging that the City treated domestic violence less seriously than other crimes and that it had a custom of doing so. Even if he concluded that the complaint fell short, however, he would have remanded to give the estate an opportunity to amend its pleading to meet the heightened standard.