Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01745/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01745-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 446
Nature of Suit: Americans with Disabilities Act - Other
Cause of Action: 

---

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-1745

LINDA REED,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

STATE OF ILLINOIS, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 12 C 7274 — Amy J. St. Eve, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 21, 2015— DECIDED OCTOBER 30, 2015

____________________

Before POSNER, WILLIAMS, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff was diagnosed with a 

rare neurological disorder called tardive dyskinesia in April 

2011. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 

Tardive dyskinesia (TD) is one of the most disturbing potential side effects of antipsychotic medications. Tardive (late) dyskinesia (bad movement) is a 

movement disorder that occurs over months, years 

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and even decades. TD is a principle [sic—should be 

principal] concern of first generation antipsychotic 

medication but has been reported in second generation antipsychotic medication and needs to be monitored for all people who take these medications. TD is 

one of a group of side effects called ‘extrapyramidal 

symptoms’ that includes akathesia (restlessness), dystonia (sudden and painful muscle stiffness) and Parkinsonism (tremors and slowing down of all body 

muscles). TD is perhaps the most severe of these side 

effects and does not occur until after many months or 

years of taking antipsychotic drugs. TD is primarily 

characterized by random movements of different 

muscles within the body and can occur in the tongue, 

lips or jaw (e.g., facial grimacing), or consist of purposeless movements of arms, legs, fingers and toes. In 

some severe cases, TD can include swaying movements of the trunk or hips or affect the muscles associated with breathing. TD can be quite embarrassing 

and—depending on its severity—can be disabling as 

well. National Alliance on Mental Illness, “Tardive 

Dyskinesia,” www2.nami.org/Content/Navigation

Menu/Inform_Yourself/About_Mental_Illness/By_

Illness/Tardive_Dyskinesia.htm (visited October 29, 

2015).

It is not a conventional speech impediment, such as stammering, or speaking hoarsely or with a lisp.

The plaintiff’s complaint confirms that she experiences 

the typical symptoms of tardive dyskinesia, and we take the 

allegations in her complaint to be true because she’s appealing from the district court’s grant of the defendants’ motion 

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No. 14-1745 3

to dismiss her suit. Her involuntary movements include

tongue thrusting, pursing of the lips, choking, and side-toside chewing of the jaw. She becomes mute, screams or 

makes non-verbal sounds, particularly under stress. She often cannot use a telephone without assistive technology. She 

has also been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder 

and bipolar disorder, which can cause her severe anxiety.

The impairments we’ve listed (all drawn from as yet unchallenged allegations) substantially limit her in the major life 

activities of concentrating, thinking, communicating, speaking, interacting with others, mobility, and work. The state

acknowledges in its brief that “with stress, Plaintiff’s condition worsens and she may become mute, scream, or make 

non-verbal sounds.” It notes that her “involuntary movements include tongue-thrusting, lip-pursing, choking, sideto-side chewing and (especially when under stress) head 

movements and finger-tapping.”

Shortly after the plaintiff was diagnosed with tardive 

dyskinesia, a personal injury suit that she had filed in the 

Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois—Reed v. Moore, No. 09 

M1 301249—went to trial. She had no lawyer. Before the trial 

began she asked the court’s disability coordinator for accommodations of her medical problems, and in response to 

her request she was permitted to have a friend and a family 

member take notes for her, was given a podium to stand at, 

and was allowed to take occasional recesses. But she was 

denied other help that she requested—a microphone (to enable her to project her voice so that it would be audible even 

when her ability to vocalize was impaired by her tardive 

dyskinesia), an interpreter (to articulate her thoughts when 

she could not express them clearly herself), and a jury instruction explaining her disorder, lest the jurors think she 

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was just acting up. Her difficulty in speaking was likely to 

be amplified by her having to speak to an entire courtroom. 

We don’t know the size of the courtroom, but even if it was 

small a person has to “speak up” when speaking to an entire 

room, rather than to another person face to face. Without the 

microphone and the interpreter, she sometimes had to resort 

to hand signals, grunts, and other non-verbal attempts at 

communication that were difficult to understand. The need 

for an interpreter, a “mouthpiece” in almost a literal sense, 

was related to the need for a microphone. She could have 

whispered inarticulately to an interpreter, who if experienced in helping persons with a speech disability to express 

themselves could articulate the plaintiff’s words in normal 

speech that the judge and jury would understand without 

strain.

Apart from being denied these aids, she was hectored by 

the judge, who may not have understood the gravity of her 

disorder. The judge told the jury that the plaintiff has a 

“speech impediment,” but that made it sound as if she 

stammers or has a lisp, and thus understated the gravity of 

her disability. The judge knew or should have known that it 

was her condition, rather than willful defiance of courtroom 

proprieties, that was responsible for the long, involuntary

pauses in her statements; yet he kept telling her to “hurry 

up,” to move on to the “next question,” and to wrap up her 

examination of witnesses. He permitted her only 10 minutes 

to examine a particular witness. At one point during the 

plaintiff’s cross-examination by the defendant’s lawyer the 

judge said “I have been waiting ten seconds for you to answer and am moving on to the next thing.” He also at times 

yelled at her, glared at her, smacked his bench, leaned forCase: 14-1745 Document: 33 Filed: 10/30/2015 Pages: 21
No. 14-1745 5

ward, and otherwise expressed annoyance with her—all in 

front of the jury.

She suffered other embarrassments in front of the jury. 

For example, a piece of gum that she was chewing to control 

her involuntary movements fell out of her mouth, an accident for which the judge scolded her, precipitating a convulsive state in her.

The judge’s treatment of her at the trial is surprising in 

light of his statement made after the trial in denying her motion for a new trial that “almost immediately before the actual trial, the plaintiff began to experience a rapid and noticeable diminishment [sic—he meant ‘diminution’] of 

speech ability so that her speaking was interrupted by uncontrollable pauses on account of an apparent nervous disorder that forced her into involuntary contortions of the 

mouth and unintended utterances, most of which consisted 

of unintelligible sounds. However, she at all times presented 

as having been fully mentally capable and alert, physically 

able except for the speech condition, and clearly frustrated 

whenever she experienced such interruptions” (emphasis 

added). We’ve italicized the most puzzling phrase in the 

quoted passage. Ability to speak was the critical physical 

ability that the plaintiff needed in order to litigate a jury 

case; without that ability, being “fully mentally capable and 

alert” couldn’t do much for her.

The jury returned a verdict for the defendant. The plaintiff filed a post-trial motion, asking for a new trial on the 

ground (among other grounds) that she was disabled within 

the meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act yet had 

been denied reasonable accommodations for her disability.

The judge denied the motion, on grounds suggestive of a 

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failure to understand the plaintiff’s problems in communicating. True, he said he was denying oral argument on her 

post-trial motion “because the plaintiff has developed a severe speech impediment that prevents her from communicating in any vocal fashion.” Yet inconsistently he said in 

reference to the trial, held just a few months earlier, that the 

plaintiff’s “readily observable speech impediment concern 

was accommodated, and that she was thus fully afforded a 

fair and adequate opportunity to present her case.” If she 

was incapable of “communicating in any vocal fashion” with 

regard to her post-trial motion, how can she not have needed a microphone and interpreter at the trial to help her overcome her “readily observable speech impediment?”

In denying the post-trial motion the judge also remarked 

that “there were occasions [during the trial] when her pauses 

were so lengthy that the court [that is, he, the judge] concluded that she was being indecisive rather than laboring 

under the impediment, and she was asked to move on, as 

would any other individual.” He failed to note that there is 

no contradiction between being indecisive and suffering 

from tardive dyskinesia—indeed it would be difficult for 

someone suffering from that disorder to speak consistently 

in a decisive fashion. Furthermore, she was not “any other 

individual.” An unimpaired person could indeed be asked 

to “move on,” and be expected to obey, but the plaintiff 

could not be expected to be consistently responsive to such a 

command, based as it was on the unlikely assumption that 

her pausing was voluntary. It would have been prudent for 

the judge, having no reason to think himself qualified to distinguish between pauses attributable to normal and therefore censurable indecisiveness and pauses attributable to a 

serious neurological disorder, to have invited a medical exCase: 14-1745 Document: 33 Filed: 10/30/2015 Pages: 21
No. 14-1745 7

pert or at least the court’s disability coordinator to advise 

him on the effect of the plaintiff’s condition on her ability to 

litigate her case.

The plaintiff appealed to the Illinois appellate court, 

which affirmed the jury’s verdict in a nonprecedential order. 

Reed v. Moore, 2012 IL App (1st) 113442-U (Ill. App. 2012). 

The order does not mention her disability, apparently because, still proceeding pro se, she pitched her appeal entirely 

on grounds relating to jurisdiction, discovery, and other 

matters all unrelated to her disability, although her opening 

brief had remarked that she was “disabled” and had been 

“denied reasonable accommodations” by the trial judge.

Shortly before the appellate court handed down its decision, she filed the present suit in the federal district court in 

Chicago. In it she complained that the Cook County Circuit 

Court had failed to accommodate her tardive dyskinesia, in 

violation of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 

U.S.C. § 12131 et seq., and section 504 of the Rehabilitation 

Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794, both of which create federal remedies 

for disability discrimination by state and local government 

agencies, such as the Illinois courts. Of particular relevance 

to this case, a regulation under the Americans with Disabilities Act provides that “a public entity shall take appropriate 

steps to ensure that communications [with disabled persons] 

... are as effective as communications with others,” and “a 

public entity [which of course a court is] shall furnish appropriate auxiliary aids and services where necessary to afford individuals with disabilities ... an equal opportunity to 

participate in, and enjoy the benefits of, a service, program 

or activity of a public entity.” 28 C.F.R. §§ 35.160(a)(1), (b)(1)

(emphasis added).

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8 No. 14-1745

The response of the defendants (which include the State 

of Illinois, the Cook County Circuit Court, the trial judge, 

and other officials) to the federal suit was that Illinois’s doctrine of collateral estoppel, which (the parties agree) is applicable to the suit, bars the discrimination claim because it had 

been presented and rejected by the Illinois circuit court in a 

decision affirmed by the Illinois appellate court. The district 

court agreed and so dismissed the suit for failure to state a 

claim.

“The minimum threshold requirements for the application of [Illinois] collateral estoppel ... are: (1) the issue decided in the prior adjudication is identical with the one presented in the suit in question, (2) there was a final judgment on 

the merits in the prior adjudication, and (3) the party against 

whom estoppel is asserted was a party or in privity with a 

party to the prior adjudication. ... [Also,] a decision on the 

issue must have been necessary for the judgment in the first 

litigation, and the person to be bound must have actually 

litigated the issue in the first suit. [But] even where the 

threshold elements of the doctrine are satisfied and an identical common issue is found to exist between a former and 

current lawsuit, collateral estoppel must not be applied to

preclude parties from presenting their claims or defenses unless it is clear that no unfairness results to the party being 

estopped.” Talarico v. Dunlap, 685 N.E.2d 325, 328 (Ill. 1997).

In other words “collateral estoppel is a flexible doctrine 

which defies rigid or mechanical application. The question 

of whether a party has had a full and fair opportunity to 

contest a prior determination cannot be reduced to a simple 

formula.” Id. at 329–30. To the same effect see Nowak v. St. 

Rita High School, 757 N.E.2d 471, 478 (Ill. 2001); American 

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No. 14-1745 9

Family Mutual Ins. Co. v. Savickas, 739 N.E.2d 445, 451 (Ill.

2000).

The threshold requirements of collateral estoppel under 

Illinois law have been met: the plaintiff’s challenge to the 

adequacy of the accommodation that the circuit court made 

to her disability and the challenge in the district court to that 

adequacy are essentially the same, and the plaintiff had an 

opportunity to obtain appellate review of the circuit court’s 

ruling on the adequacy of the accommodations she had received at the trial. But remember that even when these essential conditions of collateral estoppel are satisfied, the doctrine, as understood in Illinois, is not to be applied “unless it 

is clear that no unfairness results to the party being estopped.” Talarico v. Dunlap, supra, 685 N.E.2d at 328.

Admittedly terms like “fair” and “unfair,” if left undefined, as so often they are, lack precision, yet they cannot be 

ignored when, as in the Illinois law of collateral estoppel,

they are elements of legal doctrine. What is unfair in the present context is to deny, without a good reason, a party’s 

right to press a potentially winning argument. A “desire not 

to deprive a litigant of an adequate day in court” is a proper 

consideration in deciding whether to invoke collateral estoppel, Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 27, comment c 

(1982), and one reason a litigant may not have had an adequate day in court is that he or she was “laboring under a 

mental or physical disability that impeded effective litigation.” Id., § 28, comment j. The circuit court judge had ruled 

that the plaintiff was incapable of advocating her post-trial 

motion orally and, as we said earlier, this suggests that she 

probably was incapable of conducting her trial as well.

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10 No. 14-1745

A good reason for according finality to the ruling in a 

previous case is that the party made the same argument in 

that case and it was rejected on a sound ground. That is not 

this case. In the plaintiff’s personal-injury suit, she was in no 

position, being pro se and seriously disabled, to establish the 

applicability to her case of the federal laws against disability 

discrimination. She knew she needed help to litigate her personal-injury suit, especially having no lawyer. And so she 

asked for help. Many of her requests were ignored or denied

by the judge, who was at times impatient with and even

rude to her; and his conclusion that her disability had been 

adequately accommodated was untenable. There was nothing “fair” in his bestowal of inadequate accommodations, or 

in his conclusion, in the very ruling on her post-trial motion 

in which he adjudged her incompetent to make an oral 

presentation, that the accommodations provided for her at 

trial had been adequate. She was denied a full and impartial

opportunity to litigate the accommodations issue when the 

judge refused to grant her oral argument, on account of her 

disability, and she had no lawyer to argue in her place. Apt 

is the observation of the Supreme Court in Tennessee v. Lane, 

541 U.S. 509, 531 (2004), that Title II of the ADA was passed 

in part to provide equal access to courts for the disabled: 

“The unequal treatment of disabled persons in the administration of judicial services has a long history, and has persisted despite several legislative efforts to remedy the problem of disability discrimination.”

There is a further objection to the invocation of collateral 

estoppel in this case. At her trial in state court the plaintiff 

knew that she needed accommodations to her disability in 

order to be able to litigate her case. And she knew there was 

a disability coordinator to whom she could appeal. But she 

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No. 14-1745 11

asserted no federal statutory entitlement to accommodation

before or during her trial, and while she did invoke the 

Americans with Disabilities Act in her post-trial motions she 

mentioned neither the Rehabilitation Act nor the highly pertinent (“equal opportunity”) regulation under the ADA that 

we quoted earlier in this opinion. Furthermore, although 

federal law forbids discrimination against disabled persons,

the trial judge did not consider whether the plaintiff had 

been discriminated against, that is, had been treated worse 

in the litigation than a nondisabled person would have been. 

He considered only the adequacy of the accommodations

made for her disability at the state-court trial. The post-trial 

proceeding conducted by the state-court trial judge thus limited the plaintiff to a truncated version of her disability claim

(a version that ignored her right to an opportunity equal to 

that of a nondisabled person to litigate her claim), while the 

present, federal litigation encompasses the full range of issues concerning the scope and application of federal disability law to her plight.

And to top it all, it appears on the basis of an inquiry of 

the state court by staff of the Clerk of our court that there is 

no transcript of the state-court trial because there was neither a court reporter nor a recording device in the courtroom—an absence that prevents verification of the state 

judge’s assertions that the limited accommodations that he 

had given Reed had been adequate to enable her to litigate

effectively—assertions such as that she was “always allowed 

wide latitude in the presentation of her case” and that he 

had “overruled many procedural objections by the defense 

in order to accommodate her condition.”

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12 No. 14-1745

“[O]nce a person has been afforded a full and fair opportunity to litigate a particular issue, that person may not be 

permitted to do so again,” Gramatan Home Investors Corp. v. 

Lopez, 386 N.E.2d 1328, 1331 (N.Y. 1979), and thus a “court 

determining whether estoppel should apply must balance 

the need to limit litigation against the right to an adversarial 

proceeding in which a party is accorded a full and fair opportunity to present his case.” American Family Mutual Ins. 

Co. v. Savickas, supra, 739 N.E.2d at 451. For one court (the 

state court) to deny accommodations without which a disabled plaintiff has no chance of prevailing in her trial, and for 

another court (the federal district court) on the basis of that 

rejection to refuse to provide a remedy for the discrimination 

that she experienced in the first trial, is to deny the plaintiff a 

full and fair opportunity to vindicate her claims.

Finally, citing Stanek v. St. Charles Community Unit School 

District No. 303, 783 F.3d 634, 644 (7th Cir. 2015), the defendants argue on appeal that the state appellate court and its 

chief judge are the only proper defendants. The district court 

had no opportunity to consider this argument, so it remains 

for consideration on remand.

REVERSED AND REMANDED

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No. 14-1745 13

SYKES, Circuit Judge, dissenting. My colleagues have concluded that although the threshold elements of collateral 

estoppel are satisfied here, the state judge’s ruling on the 

accommodation issue cannot be given preclusive effect 

because it was unfair. I respectfully disagree.

In April 2011 plaintiff Linda Reed was diagnosed with 

tardive dyskinesia, a disabling movement disorder described 

at length in the majority opinion. At the time of her diagnosis, Reed had a personal-injury case pending in Cook County 

Circuit Court. She was representing herself. Because her 

disability affects oral communication and sometimes manifests startling symptoms, she asked for six specific accommodations to assist her in presenting her case to the jury: 

(1) a note taker; (2) a podium; (3) recesses as needed; (4) an 

interpreter; (5) a microphone; and (6) an instruction explaining her disability to the jurors so they would understand her 

symptoms.

The judge granted the first three requests. Reed was 

permitted to have a friend and a family member at counsel 

table to help her organize her presentation; she was provided a podium; and the judge allowed recesses when she 

needed a break. Although the judge did not instruct the jury 

about the specifics of her disability, he didn’t entirely ignore

her request for a jury instruction. Rather, during jury selection, he informed the prospective jurors that Reed had a 

speech impediment (that’s how she herself had described it),

and he questioned them about their ability to disregard the

impairment and fairly decide the case. Also, at several points 

during the course of the trial, the judge reminded the jurors 

not to hold Reed’s condition against her. So only two of

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14 No. 14-1745

Reed’s six accommodation requests were denied outright:

the court did not provide a microphone or an interpreter.

After the jury returned a defense verdict, Reed moved for 

a new trial arguing (among other things) that she was a 

person with a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act and that the court had failed to adequately accommodate her disability. Before the motion could be heard, 

however, Reed’s condition deteriorated. She could not travel 

to Chicago for a hearing on the motion (she lives in Milwaukee), and she was unable to participate over the phone, as 

she had done for pretrial conferences. Accordingly, the judge

decided the motion on the papers, explaining in his written 

order that he opted to proceed without oral argument 

because Reed’s “severe speech impediment ... prevents her 

from communicating in any vocal fashion.” Importantly, 

Reed’s inability to orally communicate arose after trial, not 

before or during trial.

The judge denied Reed’s motion for a new trial. Addressing her failure-to-accommodate claim, the judge wrote as 

follows (and I include his entire analysis because my colleagues have attacked it as unfair):

The plaintiff finally contends that she was 

not afforded an accommodation of a physical 

disability. The plaintiff has been a resident of 

Milwaukee, Wisconsin during all phases of this 

litigation. In order to allow for her full and 

meaningful participation, she was allowed to 

participate by telephone in almost all of the 

pre-trial hearings. This process worked well, 

and the parties were always able to fully engage in argument on their pre-trial issues. DurCase: 14-1745 Document: 33 Filed: 10/30/2015 Pages: 21
No. 14-1745 15

ing each of these sessions, the plaintiff always 

argued her positions thoughtfully and with 

appropriate levels of forcefulness. Even in spite 

of sometimes sharp exchanges, she was always 

cordial to both counsel and the court. Almost 

immediately before the actual trial, the plaintiff 

began to experience a rapid and noticeable diminishment of speech ability so that her speaking was interrupted by uncontrollable pauses 

on account of an apparent nervous disorder 

that forced her into involuntary contortions of 

the mouth and unintended utterances, most of 

which consisted of unintelligible sounds. 

However, she at all times presented as having 

been fully mentally capable and alert, physically able except for the speech condition, and 

clearly frustrated whenever she experienced 

such interruptions. It was necessary to take 

several steps to accommodate her obvious 

speech challenge. To begin with, she was allowed to have an additional person at counsel 

table to assist her in organizing her voluminous materials during the trial. The prospective jurors were asked whether the plaintiff’s 

impediment would prevent them from giving 

the parties a fair trial, and the sworn jury was 

reminded several times not to hold her condition against her or the defendant. There were 

frequent recesses so that the plaintiff could 

drink water and otherwise comfort herself, and 

the court was always mindful of her physical 

challenge to simply speak as she intended. 

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16 No. 14-1745

There were occasions when her pauses were so 

lengthy that the court concluded that she was 

being indecisive rather than laboring under the 

impediment, and she was asked to move on, as 

would any other individual. At those times, 

she appeared able to fully respond and proceed in a most functional manner. This court 

was never of the view that the plaintiff ever labored under any court-induced feeling of being intimidated. She was always allowed wide 

latitude in the presentation of her case. The 

court overruled many procedural objections by 

the defense in order to accommodate her condition, and sustained certain substantive defense objections when appropriate to do so. 

She was entirely engaging during the jury selection process and never seemed to confuse or 

irritate the jurors during the evidentiary phase 

of the trial or during the final arguments. Indeed, it was this court’s observation throughout the trial that the jurors liked her. This court 

has no doubt but that her readily observable 

speech impediment concern was accommodated, and that she was thus fully afforded a fair 

and adequate opportunity to present her case, 

which she accomplished at a level that far exceeded that of most pro-se litigants in jury trials in spite of her condition.

Reed appealed but did not develop her ADA accommodation argument before the appellate court. Instead, while 

the appeal was still pending, she sued the state judge in 

federal court (along with other court officials, the Cook 

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No. 14-1745 17

County Circuit Court, and the State of Illinois). Her new 

lawsuit alleged that the defendants failed to accommodate 

her disability during the trial of her personal-injury action 

and thus violated the ADA, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131 et seq., and 

section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794. In the 

meantime, the state appellate court affirmed the judgment, 

and the Illinois Supreme Court denied review.

The district court dismissed Reed’s suit based on collateral estoppel (also known as issue preclusion), which “bars 

relitigation of an issue already decided in a prior case.” In re 

A.W., 896 N.E.2d 316, 321 (Ill. 2008). My colleagues agree 

that the basic elements of issue preclusion are satisfied here; 

the accommodation issue was raised and decided in the 

state-court litigation, which proceeded to final judgment on 

the merits, and no one disputes the identity of the parties.1

See id. (explaining the elements of collateral estoppel).

Still, my colleagues refuse to give the state court’s ruling 

preclusive effect. Here is the key passage in their analysis:

 

1 The majority hints that Reed’s suit raises issues beyond the adequacy of 

the state court’s accommodation of her disability. Majority Op. at 11

(“[T]he present, federal litigation encompasses the full range of issues 

concerning the scope and application of federal disability law to her 

plight.”). That’s not correct. Reed has alleged a single failure-toaccommodate claim under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act. Both 

statutes prohibit disability discrimination, see 42 U.S.C. § 12132 (the 

ADA); 29 U.S.C. § 794 (the Rehabilitation Act), and failing to accommodate a disabled person is one form of disability discrimination. Reed

alleges that the defendants violated the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act 

(i.e., they committed an act of disability discrimination) by inadequately

accommodating her disability during her state-court trial. She neither 

alleges nor argues that the defendants committed any other acts of 

disability discrimination.

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18 No. 14-1745

[The plaintiff] knew she needed help to litigate 

her personal-injury suit, especially having no 

lawyer. And so she asked for help. Many of her 

requests were ignored or denied by the judge, 

who was at times impatient with and even 

rude to her; and his conclusion that her disability had been adequately accommodated was 

untenable. There was nothing “fair” in his bestowal of inadequate accommodations, or in 

his conclusion, in the very ruling on her posttrial motion in which he adjudged her incompetent to make an oral presentation, that the 

accommodations provided for her at trial had 

been adequate.

Majority Op. at 10.

It is of course true that collateral estoppel is an equitable 

doctrine and as such will be applied only when “no unfairness results to the party being estopped.” Nowak v. St. Rita 

High Sch., 757 N.E.2d 471, 478 (Ill. 2001). Under Illinois law, 

“[i]n determining whether a party has had a full and fair 

opportunity to litigate an issue in a prior action, those 

elements which comprise the practical realities of litigation 

must be examined.” Id.

Weighing the fairness question in light of the practical 

realities of assessing the adequacy of accommodations for 

disabled pro se litigants, I have several points of departure 

with my colleagues. First and most obviously, the state judge 

did not ignore or deny “many” of Reed’s requests, as the 

majority asserts. To the contrary, as I’ve explained, the judge

granted most of the accommodations she requested and

denied only two—a microphone and an interpreter. RegardCase: 14-1745 Document: 33 Filed: 10/30/2015 Pages: 21
No. 14-1745 19

ing the former, Reed has not claimed that the jury or the 

witnesses could not hear her. She tells us nothing about the 

size of the courtroom or her proximity to the jury or witness 

boxes during trial. If in fact her voice was too faint to be 

heard without amplification, it’s inconceivable to me that 

some participant in the trial—the defense attorney, a witness, 

a juror—would not have spoken up and asked the judge to 

fix the problem. On this record, it’s hard to see why the 

failure to provide a microphone could be deemed unreasonable, much less unfair.

Reed does allege that without an interpreter her communications were less effective than her opponent’s. But the 

judge carefully explained in his post-trial ruling his conclusion that Reed’s disability had been adequately accommodated. In addition to the accommodations mentioned above

(a helper at counsel table, recesses as needed, etc.), he noted 

that Reed was given “wide latitude in the presentation of her 

case” and he “overruled many procedural objections by the 

defense in order to accommodate her condition.” He also 

explained that the jury did not seem confused or irritated by 

her impairment. “Indeed,” he wrote, “it was this court’s 

observation throughout the trial that the jurors liked her.”

Finally, the judge observed that Reed presented her case “at 

a level that far exceeded that of most pro-se litigants in jury 

trials in spite of her condition.” For these reasons (and others 

reflected in the full text of the decision), the judge concluded 

that Reed’s disability was appropriately accommodated and

she was “fully afforded a fair and adequate opportunity to 

present her case.”

This thorough ruling, reproduced in full above, cannot 

reasonably be characterized as “untenable,” as my colCase: 14-1745 Document: 33 Filed: 10/30/2015 Pages: 21
20 No. 14-1745

leagues assert. Majority Op. at 10. As the case comes to us,

we have no objective basis upon which to find the judge’s

ruling unfair and thus refuse to give it preclusive effect.2 The 

majority wrongly implies that because Reed was unable to 

orally argue her post-trial motion, she must have been 

unable to orally present her case to the jury. Majority Op. at 6

(“If she was incapable of ‘communicating in any vocal 

fashion’ with regard to her post-trial motion, how can she 

not have needed a microphone and interpreter at the trial to 

help her overcome her ‘readily observable speech impediment?’”). This overlooks that Reed’s condition worsened 

after trial; only then did oral communication become impossible. Indeed, she has never alleged that she was unable to 

orally communicate during trial. Rather, she alleges that her

communications were periodically interrupted by the distressing symptoms of tardive dyskinesia.

My colleagues conclude with the following observation: 

 

2 It’s worth mentioning that Reed has never argued that applying 

collateral estoppel is unfair for the reasons adopted by my colleagues. 

Instead, she argued that applying collateral estoppel places her in an 

unfair catch-22: If she had not requested accommodations in state court, 

the ADA would not be implicated, but by asking the state judge for an 

accommodation, she is estopped from litigating the issue in federal 

court. Reed raised this argument for the first time in a Rule 59(e) motion 

in the district court, see FED. R. CIV. P. 59(e), and the district court correctly rejected it as an improper basis for relief under Rule 59(e), see Bordelon 

v. Chi. Sch. Reform Bd. of Trs., 233 F.3d 524, 529 (7th Cir. 2000) (explaining 

that Rule 59(e) is not a vehicle to raise new arguments not presented to 

the district court prior to judgment). Regardless, because the state courts 

are equally competent to resolve disability accommodation issues, I see 

no inherent unfairness here.

Case: 14-1745 Document: 33 Filed: 10/30/2015 Pages: 21
No. 14-1745 21

For one court (the state court) to deny accommodations without which a disabled plaintiff 

has no chance of prevailing in her trial, and for 

another court (the federal district court) on the 

basis of that rejection to refuse to provide a 

remedy for the discrimination that she experienced in the first trial, is to deny the plaintiff a 

full and fair opportunity to vindicate her 

claims. 

Majority Op. at 12. This assumes that the two rejected accommodations (a microphone and an interpreter) were in 

fact necessary for Reed to present her case—indeed, were so

essential that the state judge’s resolution of the accommodation issue cannot be trusted and was downright unfair. For 

the reasons already explained, I cannot agree.

Clearly my colleagues believe that the state judge 

botched Reed’s request for accommodation. But mere disagreement with a final ruling in a prior case isn’t a proper 

basis for a later court to deny its normal preclusive effect. If 

it were, then few decisions would be final; judges disagree

all the time, especially on highly contextual and discretionary judgments (such as how to accommodate a litigant’s 

disability). The majority’s approach to collateral estoppel

allows repetitive litigation whenever the second-in-line court 

disagrees strongly enough with the first. That approach 

unsettles preclusion doctrine.

Because the elements of collateral estoppel are satisfied 

and it’s not unfair to preclude Reed from relitigating the 

accommodation issue, I would affirm the judgment of the 

district court dismissing this suit.

Case: 14-1745 Document: 33 Filed: 10/30/2015 Pages: 21