In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 15‐3482
MICHAEL HUGHES,
Plaintiff‐Appellant,
v.
GREGG SCOTT, et al.,
Defendants‐Appellees.
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Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Central District of Illinois.
3:15–cv‐03151‐SEM‐TSH — Sue E. Myerscough, Judge.
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SUBMITTED MARCH 10, 2016— DECIDED MARCH 23, 2016
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Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and ROVNER, Cir‐
cuit Judges.
POSNER, Circuit Judge. Rushville Treatment and Detention
Facility is an Illinois state facility for the diagnosis, treat‐
ment, and (pending successful treatment) incarceration of
persons believed prone to sexual violence. Usually these are
persons who have served prison sentences for sex crimes
and are considered too dangerous to be allowed to go free
after they complete their sentences.
2 No. 15‐3482
The plaintiff, Michael Hughes, is confined at Rushville
because he was found to be a sexually violent person within
the meaning of the state’s Sexually Violent Persons Com‐
mitment Act, 725 ILCS 207. He will remain there unless and
until he is found no longer to be such a person—more pre‐
cisely if it is no longer “substantially probable that [he] will
engage in acts of sexual violence.” Id. at 207/5(f).
This case, brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, grows out of
several written grievances that Hughes submitted at Rush‐
ville complaining of the dental care that he was receiving
there. He alleges that a program director named Scott, a
grievance examiner named Simpson, and a security therapy
aide named Hougas—the defendants in this case—infringed
his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by disregarding
his grievances and insulting him into the bargain. See Bab‐
cock v. White, 102 F.3d 267, 275 (7th Cir. 1996). The district
judge dismissed Hughes’ complaint for failure to state a
claim.
Hughes alleges that after he filed the grievances Simpson
summoned him to a meeting with herself and Hougas and at
the meeting yelled at him and told him that he was “igno‐
rant” and “stupid” and a “moron” and that his life at Rush‐
ville would go better if he stopped complaining (a statement
that could well be thought a threat). His grievances were
never answered, and whenever Hougas crosses paths with
Hughes she called him “ignorant.”
Grievances addressed to a government agency are, if in‐
telligible, nonfrivolous, and nonmalicious, petitions for the
redress of grievances within the meaning of the First
Amendment and are therefore prima facie protected by the
amendment. We are given no reason to doubt that Hughes’
No. 15‐3482 3
grievances fall within the protected scope; though repeti‐
tious, their repetition reflected the institution’s failure to re‐
spond to any of them. We are mindful that for retaliation for
filing petitions to be actionable, the means of retaliation
must be sufficiently clear and emphatic to deter a person of
“ordinary firmness” from submitting such petitions in the
future. See, e.g., Bridges v. Gilbert, 557 F.3d 541, 552 (7th Cir.
2009); cf. Santana v. Cook County Board of Review, 679 F.3d 614,
622–23 (7th Cir. 2012). DeWalt v. Carter, 224 F.3d 607, 612 (7th
Cir. 2000), suggests that “simple verbal harassment” of a
prisoner does not suffice, and Antoine v. Uchtman, 275 Fed.
App’x 539, 541 (7th Cir. 2008), that even threats may not suf‐
fice. But the abuse to which Hughes was subjected by the
defendants and the warning that his life would be better if
he stopped filing grievances went beyond simple verbal har‐
assment.
The district judge emphasized that the defendants’ ac‐
tions had not deterred Hughes from filing a lawsuit com‐
plaining about the inadequacy of the dental care that he was
receiving or from bringing the present lawsuit, which com‐
plains not about inadequate dental care but about the de‐
fendants’ treatment of him, which has been abusive, and of
his grievances, which they have ignored. The district judge
ignored features of this case that support Hughes’ claims.
Remember that he’s not a prison inmate but a civil detainee,
and the Supreme Court held in Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S.
307, 321–22 (1982), that “persons who have been involuntari‐
ly committed are entitled to more considerate treatment and
conditions of confinement than criminals whose conditions
of confinement are designed to punish.” For another thing,
it’s not obvious that Hughes is a person of “ordinary firm‐
ness,” as he is being held against his will in a detention facil‐
4 No. 15‐3482
ity for an undetermined length of time—indeed for years al‐
ready—because of a psychosexual disorder. Cf. Schultz v.
Pugh, 728 F.3d 619, 621–22 (7th Cir. 2013). He must be suffer‐
ing from some mental disorder; that’s a requirement for
commitment to Rushville. 725 ILCS 207/5(f). His particular
disorder may well be what is called paraphilia. See “Para‐
philia,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia
(visited March 22, 2016). In lay terminology he’s a sexual de‐
viant, confined in a facility that is supposed to treat his con‐
dition, as well as protect the public from him until he is suf‐
ficiently improved that he can be safely released.
Just as police when interrogating children are held to un‐
derstand the mental and psychological differences between
adults and children, see J.D.B. v. North Carolina, 564 U.S. 261
(2011), so staff of an institution that houses and treats per‐
sons suffering from mental disorders should be held to un‐
derstand that they are dealing with psychologically im‐
paired persons. The defendants should have known better
than to shout at a possibly quite vulnerable person, call him
“ignorant,” “stupid,” and a “moron,” ignore grievances filed
by him that may be both meritorious and quite serious (ne‐
glect of dental care of course can be dangerous), and threat‐
en him with retaliation for his audacity in complaining—all
with no suggestion that the complaint lacks merit. Their
conduct toward him could well be thought a significant step
beyond “simple verbal harassment.”
A further wrinkle is that the Illinois Department of Hu‐
man Services has established elaborate procedures for in‐
mates of Rushville to complain of the treatment they receive.
59 Ill. Admin. Code 299, subpart G; see Lehn v. Scott, 2015 Ill.
App. (4th) 140415‐U (Dec. 30, 2015); Schloss v. Jumper, 2014
No. 15‐3482 5
Ill. App (4th) 121086 (June 5, 2014). Hughes tried to invoke
those procedures, without success—the defendants flouted
them, in patent disregard of the passage we quoted from
Youngberg v. Romeo.
But perhaps the most remarkable feature of this case is
the defendants’ insistence in defiance of the Illinois Admin‐
istrative Code that Hughes has no need to invoke grievance
procedures because he can always sue, as he has done. What
makes this contention remarkable is the fact that the inter‐
ests of Rushville, of the Illinois Department of Human Ser‐
vices, and of the taxpayers of this almost bankrupt state, ob‐
viously are best served if grievances are handled at the facili‐
ty level rather than by the court system, which is far more
costly. Does Rushville have an unlimited budget, so that it
can pay lawyers to defend against lawsuits brought only be‐
cause the institution refuses to obey the Administrative
Code and respond to Hughes’ grievances, preferring instead
to ridicule him and drive him to sue Rushville staff?
We don’t get it. But we have said enough to require that
the judgment of dismissal be vacated and the case returned
to the district court to try to make sense of the conduct of the
defendants and their institution, and to determine whether
they are in fact improperly impeding the plaintiff’s constitu‐
tional right to petition government for redress of grievances.
REVERSED AND REMANDED
Michael Hughes v. Gregg Scott
Combined Opinion