This case addresses the Illinois Department of Corrections’ treatment of a prisoner during two decades of solitary confinement.

Initially, the prisoner had been sentenced to serve seven years in prison as a young adult. However, during his first years in prison, he accumulated infractions for violent behavior caused by an untreated personality disorder. As a result, his sentence was extended to almost two lifetimes in solitary confinement. Released in August 2018 as the result of a habeas petition (one of more than 3 dozen federal lawsuits he filed challenging his confinement), he filed this lawsuit against the State of Illinois and its Department of Corrections on October 28, 2018, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Represented by Loevy & Loevy, the MacArthur Justice Center, and private counsel, he brought claims under 42 U.S.C. §1983, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Rehabilitation Act. Under §1983 he alleged that the Department had violated his rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and he claimed that the Department discriminated against him by its failure to provide treatment or reasonable accommodations in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. He sought compensatory, punitive, and nominal damages and attorneys’ fees and costs.

Specifically, the complaint outlined the conditions he faced while in solitary confinement. The plaintiff alleged the Department did not provide him with any way to challenge his placement in solitary confinement. He spent twenty years in a cell the size of half a parking space with no sensory stimulation or human contact. Throughout the twenty years, the prison recorded dozens of instances of the plaintiff engaging in serious self-mutilation and increasingly aggressive behavior; he alleged that he was never given the acute psychiatric care he needed for his declining mental health.

Initially assigned to Judge Sara L. Ellis, the case was transferred on March 27, 2019 to the Central District of Illinois, where it was assigned to Judge Colin Stirling Bruce. He disqualified and recused himself on September 18, 2019, and the case was reassigned to Judge Harold A. Baker.

Two days prior to his recusal, Judge Bruce denied the Department’s motion to dismiss; however, he dismissed the State of Illinois as a defendant, even though no such dismissal had been sought. He stated that because Illinois accepts federal funding, it does not enjoy Eleventh Amendment immunity from suits brought under the Rehabilitation Act. However, because the Director of the Department of Corrections was sued in his official capacity (which is equivalent to a suit against the state itself), the state’s participation in the lawsuit would be unnecessary.

The plaintiff filed an amended complaint on March 7, 2020. As of July 8, 2020, two motions to dismiss are pending.

Sarah Reasoner - 02/28/2019
Gregory Marsh - 07/08/2020


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