In Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education, et al., No. 16-3522 (7th Cir. May 30, 2017), the Seventh Circuit Appellate Court affirmed a grant of preliminary injunctive relief that allowed a transgender boy to use the boys’ restroom while at school. Ashton (“Ash”) Whitaker is a transgender high school senior….
Read MoreOn May 30, 2017, in County of Los Angeles v. Mendez, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a $4,000,000 award in an excessive force case. In Mendez, the police entered a house looking for an armed and dangerous criminal suspect. The suspect was not found, but the owner of the house said that a homeless couple…
Read MoreChief Judge James E. Shadid in the Central District of Illinois dismissed a pro se pre-trial detainee’s civil rights complaint in favor of a correctional officer and a nurse at the Jerome Combs Detention Center in Kankakee, Illinois in Buckner v. Austin, et al., No. 16-cv-2058 (C.D. Ill. 2017). Plaintiff allegedly slipped and fell in…
Read MoreIn Isby v. Brown, No. 15-3334, (7th Cir. May 10, 2017), the Seventh Circuit Appellate Court denied Defendants’ motion to dismiss based on Plaintiff’s failure to inform the district court of his numerous strikes under the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”). In Isby, the plaintiff, a prisoner at the Indiana Department of Corrections, had been…
Read MoreLast month in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College of Ind., 853 F.3d 339 (7th Cir. 2017), the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, found that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is a…
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