Episode Summary

In this episode of Seventh Circuit Roundup, hosts Kian Hudson and Mark Crandley break down two recent and consequential Seventh Circuit decisions addressing Fair Housing Act pleading standards and constitutional limits on prosecutorial immunity. The discussion highlights practical litigation takeaways for practitioners navigating motions to dismiss, discrimination claims, and public-employment disputes.

This episode covers three important decisions that the Seventh Circuit issued in November 2025: Chicago Teachers Union v. Educators for Excellence (a case addressing whether there is a private cause of action to enforce the federal ban on employer advocacy of candidates for union offices), Schoeps v. Sompo Holdings (a case brought by heirs of a German Jewish art collector to recover a Van Gogh painting now owned by a Japanese insurance company), and Bostic v. Murray (a Section 1983 case arising from a probation officer’s assault of a female probationer).

Kian kicks off the episode with Chicago Teachers Union, which involves a union’s attempt to enforce a provision of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) that prohibits unions and employers from spending money to promote candidates in union elections. The Seventh Circuit panel held that the union lacked an implied cause of action, explaining that this provision has an alternative method of enforcement (submitting complaints to the Department of Labor) and that a different LMRDA provision does have an express private cause of action.

Next, Lara brings her considerable art-history expertise to bear in discussing Schoeps, a case about a German family’s attempt to recover a painting (one of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers) that was misappropriated during the Holocaust and that was purchased many years later by a Japanese insurance company (which now displays the painting in Tokyo). The family sued in Illinois federal court, because an affiliate of the Japanese company sells insurance in Illinois and because the painting was briefly displayed at a Chicago art museum in 2001. In doing so, the family invoked the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, which preempts state-law statutes of limitations—but which does not create its own cause of action. The Seventh Circuit held that neither federal common law nor federal equitable principles gave the family a federal cause of action. And the Seventh Circuit rejected the family’s state-law claims on personal-jurisdiction grounds, holding that the insurance company’s contacts with Illinois were insufficient to establish “purposeful availment.”

Mark wraps up the episode with Bostic, a case that raises an important question under Section 1983—if a supervisor is personally involved in a constitutional violation committed by one of their subordinates, what state of mind must the supervisor have to be liable? The Seventh Circuit held that the answer depends upon the constitutional provision at issue, including the state of mind required to establish the underlying constitutional violation. Because the plaintiff in Bostic pursued a substantive due process theory, the Court held that the applicable standard was deliberate indifference—and it held that the plaintiff failed to meet that standard at summary judgment because the information the defendants possessed was insufficient to put them “on actual notice of the risk that [the probation officer] would eventually grope and assault [the plaintiff].”

Your hosts Kian, Mark, and Lara return from their summer breaks to discuss three significant Seventh Circuit decisions from August, September, and October: Schoenthal v. Raoul (a Second Amendment case that, in addition to the merits, raised a difficult standing issue), Neita v. City of Chicago (a Section 1983 case arising from an Illinois animal-neglect prosecution), and Hadley v. City of South Bend (a Takings Clause case involving the destructive search of an innocent woman’s house).

The episode kicks off with Schoenthal, a challenge to an Illinois law that bars carrying loaded guns on public transportation. After overviewing the Court’s merits decision (the panel unanimously upheld the law), Kian explains how Judge Kolar (writing for the majority) addressed the defendants’ argument that the plaintiffs lacked standing because they would not be able to carry on trains even if they invalidated the Illinois law (because the train operator separately bans carrying guns). Judge Kolar concluded that the plaintiffs’ sought-for relief would redress their injury (and thus they had standing) because their injury was facing prosecution under the Illinois statute; enjoining enforcement of that statute would redress that injury. Kian also discusses Judge St. Eve’s concurrence which likewise addressed the standing issue and highlighted the difficult questions that arise where a plaintiff defines her injury as the inability to engage in protected activity, rather than the threat of prosecution under the challenged law.

From there, Mark takes the lead in discussing Neita, a case brought by a man who claimed that Chicago police officers lacked even arguable probable cause to arrest him for neglecting his pet dog. The panel’s majority opinion (written by Judge Jackson-Akiwumi) agreed with the man, rejecting the officers’ qualified-immunity defense because a jury could conclude that the officers lacked a sufficient basis to believe the man had violated Illinois’s animal-neglect statute.

Lara concludes the episode with a discussion of Hadley, where the plaintiff asked the Seventh Circuit to reconsider an earlier decision holding that the Takings Clause does not require the government to compensate for property damage resulting from the lawful execution of a search warrant. The panel (in an opinion authored by Judge Kolar) declined to do so, explaining that other circuits have adopted similar rules and that the plaintiff’s proposed rule (that innocent property owners can bring Takings claims) would raise difficult questions regarding how courts would determine innocence.