Opinion
22-1821
03-09-2023
CHARLES A. McRAE Plaintiff-Appellant, v. SHANNON N. MYERS, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
Submitted February 14, 2023[*]
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. No. 20-cv-410-DWD David W. Dugan, Judge.
BEFORE DIANE P. WOOD, CIRCUIT JUDGE MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, CIRCUIT JUDGE CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, CIRCUIT JUDGE
ORDER
In April 2020, Charles McRae, an Illinois prisoner, sued a prison dental hygienist under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for allegedly assaulting him sexually more than a decade earlier. McRae also sued various officials at the prison and in the Illinois Department of Corrections ("IDOC") for covering up the sexual assaults at the time or inadequately investigating his grievances later. After allowing multiple amendments, the district court determined that McRae's claims were either time-barred or pled insufficiently and dismissed the second amended complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. We affirm.
In reviewing the sua sponte dismissal of McRae's complaint, we take his allegations as true and draw all reasonable inferences in his favor. See Perez v. Fenoglio, 792 F.3d 768, 776 (7th Cir. 2015). From mid-2008 until mid-2009, McRae's job at Big Muddy River Correctional Center was to clean the health care unit, often under the supervision of hygienist Shannon Myers. Throughout the year, Myers forced sexual contact with McRae, which included kissing, grabbing, oral sex, and intercourse. McRae resisted at first but acquiesced when Myers became aggressive. Two of Myers's coworkers facilitated her meetings with McRae by being lookouts. Myers threatened McRae that if he told anyone about what was happening, she and her coworkers would say that he sexually assaulted her. McRae did not tell anyone, afraid that reporting the conduct would interfere with his upcoming release. McRae was not aware that he was legally unable to consent to sexual conduct with Myers. See 720 ILCS 5/11-9.2(e).
In May 2009, McRae was placed on supervised release. Soon after, Myers convinced McRae's approved home-confinement host to back out because Myers was pregnant with his child and wanted him to live with her. McRae's parole officer approved her home as McRae's new host site. Myers then stopped working and helped McRae get a construction site job. They lived together for eleven months, during which Myers had "complete control over [him] and what he did," keeping him in "physical, financial, and sexual servitude," and not allowing him access to mental health services for his bipolar disorder and other mental health issues. McRae felt he had no choice but to stay with Myers because she threatened to report him for violating the conditions of his release. Two months after their child was born, McRae had a "breakdown," broke the law again, and went back to state prison.
When McRae was back in prison (not at Big Muddy), Myers, who had begun a relationship with a correctional officer, threatened McRae that her boyfriend and other friends throughout IDOC would sabotage him if he told anyone about what had happened between them. Myers also threatened to change their daughter's name and put her up for adoption. McRae remained silent out of fear.
Eight years later, in May 2019, McRae questioned Myers at a court hearing (perhaps pertaining to their shared daughter), where she denied that they had a relationship while he was at Big Muddy or that they had lived together later. Perplexed by the lies, McRae did some research and discovered that engaging in a sexual relationship with an inmate is illegal under state law.
Armed with this new information, McRae submitted a grievance reporting Myers for custodial sexual assault. He filed the grievance with the facility where he resided (the Joliet Treatment Center) and directly with the IDOC's Administrative Review Board. The Board responded that his grievance was moot because the alleged assault was already being investigated by the Investigations and Intelligence Division. McRae was interviewed during that inquiry, and an investigator told McRae that he had provided enough information to substantiate his allegations. But no one followed up with McRae afterward. McRae filed more grievances criticizing the prison's and IDOC's responses to his reports of sexual misconduct and requesting the services mandated for assault victims under the Prison Rape Elimination Act ("PREA"), 34 U.S.C. §§ 30301-30309. His grievances and requests were all ignored or denied.
In 2020, McRae sued Myers, her two Big Muddy coworkers, his parole officer, and the IDOC and prison officials who handled his grievances and other requests. In his operative second amended complaint, McRae asserted that Myers's assaults (in prison and while he was on home monitoring) constituted cruel and unusual punishment from which the other dental hygienists and his parole officer were obligated to protect him. He also claimed that IDOC officials unconstitutionally retaliated and discriminated against him by not investigating and reporting Myers's crimes or providing victims' services, despite laws and policies that required them to do so. Finally, McRae alleged violations of state law, including custodial sexual assault.
The district court dismissed the second amended complaint with prejudice. First, the court determined that the constitutional claims were time-barred because the alleged unlawful conduct ended in 2010, and McRae did not file his complaint until 2020, well past the two-year statute of limitations for § 1983 suits in Illinois. As for the handling of McRae's grievances, the court concluded that McRae did not state an equal protection claim as a class of one because he did not plausibly plead that the defendants had an improper personal motive to ignore his reports of sexual assault. And he did not state a First Amendment retaliation claim, the court reasoned, because he did not allege a causal connection between the alleged retaliation and protected speech. Finally, the court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over McRae's state-law claims.
McRae appeals the dismissal. He argues that (1) none of his claims were time-barred because the statute of limitations did not begin to run while Myers still threatened him; (2) he properly pled his First Amendment and equal protection claims; and (3) the district court should have exercised supplemental jurisdiction over his statelaw claims. We review the dismissal de novo. Perez, 792 F.3d at 776.
McRae also challenges the dismissal with prejudice of three claims from his first amended complaint. But he realleged those claims in the operative complaint, and the district court ruled on them again. Thus, we need only address the final dismissal order.
McRae contends that the statute of limitations has not run on any of his claims because he is still being injured by Myers's threats. He relies on an Illinois statute providing that the statute of limitations for criminal sexual conduct does not run while "the person injured is subject to threats, intimidation, manipulation, or fraud perpetrated by the perpetrator." 735 ILCS 5/13-202.3. But even though we borrow the statute of limitations itself from state law, "the accrual date of a § 1983 cause of action is a question of federal law that is not resolved by reference to state law." Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 388 (2007). Under federal law, the clock starts when the constitutional violation is complete, and the plaintiff knows of his injury and its cause. Id.; O'Gorman v. City of Chicago, 777 F.3d 885, 889 (7th Cir. 2015).
Any constitutional violations by Myers and the parole officer were complete in 2010-when McRae last interacted with Myers-and earlier for the other hygienists. (Myers and McRae attended the hearing in 2019, but he does not allege that she injured him then.) By 2010, McRae knew the facts and cause of his injury even if he did not know the law on custodial rape (and he never says when he learned of possible constitutional claims). See Tobey v. Chibucos, 890 F.3d 634, 646 (7th Cir. 2018). Thus, his 2020 complaint was filed past the two-year limitations period. See id. at 645.
McRae's claims arising from the handling of his 2019 grievances are timely, but their dismissal was proper. McRae contends that he stated a class-of-one equal protection claim because his complaint allowed the inference that the officials who rejected or ignored his grievances were personally motivated to avoid liability for his abuse. It is not settled (though the district court stated otherwise) that McRae had to allege that the defendants held personal animus against him. See Brunson v. Murray, 843 F.3d 698, 706 (7th Cir. 2016) (citing Del Marcelle v. Brown Cnty. Corp., 680 F.3d 887 (7th Cir. 2012) (en banc)). At a minimum, however, plaintiffs must allege that they were "intentionally treated differently from others similarly situated and that there is no rational basis for the difference in treatment." Vill. Of Willowbrook v. Olech, 528 U.S. 562, 564 (2000). Here, McRae alleges the defendants were required to follow certain protocol for victims of sexual assault, and instead they either ignored his grievances or wrongly decided them. Responding improperly might allow an inference of negligence, but without more, not intentional discrimination. See Fares Pawn, LLC v. Indiana Dep't of Fin. Insts., 755 F.3d 839, 846 (7th Cir. 2014) ("Negligent or accidental differential treatment does not count."). Nothing suggests that the defendants targeted McRae for mistreatment or tried to suppress reports of sexual assault.
Next, McRae argues that he stated a First Amendment claim by alleging that certain defendants retaliated against him for reporting sexual assault by not responding to his grievances as legally required. Generally, liability cannot be based simply on reviewing or processing inmate grievances. Owens v. Evans, 878 F.3d 559, 563 (7th Cir. 2017) (citing Sanville v. McCaughtry, 266 F.3d 724, 740 (7th Cir. 2001)). An exception would be if the defendants had a retaliatory motive. But McRae does not allege a "causal link" between his reports of decade-old assaults and the defendants' handling of the grievances. Manuel v. Nalley, 966 F.3d 678, 680 (7th Cir. 2020).
Our conclusion is limited to affirming the district court's dismissal of McRae's claims under § 1983. His allegations are serious, but the federal Constitution does not protect persons from state actors' violations of state law. Scott v. Edinburg, 346 F.3d 752, 760 (7th Cir. 2003). And, though PREA is a federal law, it does not create a private cause of action. See 34 U.S.C. §§ 30301-30309.
With no remaining federal claims to adjudicate, the district court appropriately declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over McRae's state-law claims. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3). We presume that district courts will relinquish jurisdiction unless the statute of limitations has run on the state claims, substantial resources have already been committed to adjudicating the case, or it is obvious how the state claims should be decided. RWJ Mgmt. Co. v. BP Prod. N. Am., Inc., 672 F.3d 476, 479-80 (7th Cir. 2012). None of those concerns are present here. We note, however, that despite relinquishing supplemental jurisdiction, the court stated in its judgment that the operative complaint was dismissed for failure to state a claim. That is a merits dismissal, not appropriate for the portion of the case over which the court relinquished jurisdiction. See Rivera v. Allstate Ins. Co., 913 F.3d 603, 618 (7th Cir. 2018); Fields v. Wharrie, 672 F.3d 505, 518 (7th Cir. 2012). The judgment must specify that the state-law claims are dismissed without prejudice to refiling in the appropriate forum. We modify the judgment accordingly, and as so modified, the judgment is AFFIRMED.
[*] Appellees were not served with process and are not participating in this appeal. We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the brief and record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. p. 34(a)(2)(C).