Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-19-01709/USCOURTS-ca7-19-01709-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued January 9, 2020

Decided January 24, 2020

Before

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge

AMY C. BARRETT, Circuit Judge

No. 19-1709

LEVAN GALLERIES LLC, et al.,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

CITY OF CHICAGO, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States 

District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division.

No. 18-cv-4580

Sara L. Ellis, Judge.

ORDER

In 2012, Jemal Hancock tried to retain Sotheby’s services to sell his art 

collection. He visited the Sotheby’s Chicago office twice in two years and 

provided nearly 2,000 photographs of the pieces that he wished to sell. The 

Chicago office employees told Hancock that they would send the photographs to 

New York, where Sotheby’s would assess whether the collection was worth 

selling. Four years later, Hancock still had not heard back. Frustrated, he began 

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writing emails to two Sotheby’s executives, inquiring about the company’s 

disparate treatment of African Americans. The executives informed the Chicago 

office that they were being harassed; in response, Sotheby’s hired two off-duty 

police officers for security. One afternoon, the security guards called the police 

station to report that Hancock had trespassed on Sotheby’s property. After 

investigating, the officers who responded to the call filed a police report in which 

they suggested that Sotheby’s seek a protective order—which it did, but a state 

court declined to issue one.

Hancock then filed multiple lawsuits against Sotheby’s, the officers, and 

the City of Chicago, all of which were dismissed by the district court. In the 

action that is the subject of this appeal, Hancock sued the security guards, the 

officers who responded to their call, and the City on the theory that the police 

report deprived him of his Fourteenth Amendment Due Process and Equal 

Protection rights. Hancock characterizes the police report as a de facto protective 

order and says that this “order” was entered because of his race and in violation 

of his due process rights. The district court dismissed Hancock’s suit for failure 

to state a claim, a judgment that he asks us to reverse.

I.

At the outset, it is worth noting that Hancock mistakes the pleading 

standard under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a). He states that the standard 

for dismissal for failure to state a claim is Conley v. Gibson’s “no set of facts” test.

355 U.S. 41, 45–46 (1957). But the modern standard is, of course, plausibility. 

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). And the district court was correct that 

Hancock’s claims are not remotely plausible on the facts alleged. 

Hancock’s equal protection claim has several problems, but it suffices to 

address one: Hancock fails to plausibly allege that the officers discriminated 

against him. To maintain an equal protection claim, “plaintiffs must prove that 

the defendants’ actions had a discriminatory effect and were motivated by a 

discriminatory purpose.” Chavez v. Ill. State Police, 251 F.3d 612, 635–36 (7th Cir. 

2001). Critically, it must be the government, not a private entity, that undertook 

the discriminatory action. Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U.S. 614, 619 

(1991) (“Racial discrimination, though invidious in all contexts, violates the 

Constitution only when it may be attributed to state action.”). Here, Hancock 

asserts that the two Sotheby’s executives acted on the basis of racial animus 

when they hired security guards to protect the Chicago office from him. But he

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No. 19-1709 Page 3

does not allege that the relevant state actors—the officers who filed the police 

report—did so “at least in part ‘because of’ ... its adverse effects upon an 

identifiable group.” Alston v. City of Madison, 853 F.3d 901, 907 (7th Cir. 2017) 

(citation omitted). Without an allegation that the police officers were motivated 

by his race, Hancock’s equal protection claim can’t get off the ground.

His due process claim fares no better. The Fourteenth Amendment 

requires the state to provide fair procedures when it deprives someone of life, 

liberty, or property. “[A] violation of the Fourteenth Amendment does not occur 

unless a person is ‘deprive[d] ... of life, liberty, or property, without due process 

of law.’” Whitlock v. Brueggemann, 682 F.3d 567, 582 (7th Cir. 2012) (alteration in 

original) (quoting U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1). Hancock maintains that the 

police report deprived him of liberty because it functions as a de facto no-contact 

order that prohibits him on pain of legal penalty from going near Sotheby’s. Yet 

unlike a formal protective order, which carries criminal penalties for its violation, 

see 740 ILCS 21/125, a police report has no legal effect whatsoever. And Hancock 

alleges no facts supporting an inference that this was anything other than an 

ordinary police report. (Indeed, if this report functioned as a no-contact order, 

it’s unclear why Sotheby’s would go through the trouble of seeking an actual 

protective order, as Hancock alleges it did.) Hancock assures us that the police 

would treat the report as a protective order if he ever went near Sotheby’s again. 

But that is pure speculation, not a plausible inference from the facts he alleges.

II.

Hancock argues in the alternative that the district court should have 

granted him leave to amend his complaint to cure its defects. When a district 

court grants a motion to dismiss the original complaint, a plaintiff “no longer 

ha[s] a right to amend h[is] complaint as a matter of course.” Runnion ex rel. 

Runnion v. Girl Scouts of Greater Chi. & Nw. Ind., 786 F.3d 510, 519 (7th Cir. 2015); 

see FED. R. CIV. P. 15(a)(1). A “court should freely give leave” to amend “when 

justice so requires,” FED. R. CIV. P. 15(a)(2), yet it has “broad discretion” to decide 

whether to allow amendment and may refuse “in cases of undue delay, bad faith 

or dilatory motives, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments 

previously allowed, undue prejudice or futility,” Garner v. Kinnear Mfg. Co., 37 

F.3d 263, 269 (7th Cir. 1994). 

Hancock referenced the possibility of amendment very briefly in his 

opposition to the defendants’ motion to dismiss. We recently addressed how 

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No. 19-1709 Page 4

courts should treat such a request. In Chaidez v. Ford Motor Co., the plaintiffs 

requested leave to amend in a single, short sentence in their brief opposing the 

defendant’s motion to dismiss. 937 F.3d 998, 1008 (7th Cir. 2019) (affirming in 

relevant part). The plaintiffs did not file an independent motion to amend either 

before or after the court entered judgment. We held that such a brief statement, 

standing alone, “provid[ed] no grounds for amendment or explanation of how 

an amended complaint would cure the defects of their original complaint.” Id.

Hancock’s request to amend is nearly identical to that of the plaintiffs in 

Chaidez. It consists of nothing more than two conclusory sentences—one in each 

of the two briefs he submitted opposing the defendants’ motions to dismiss. He 

“request[ed] [that] the Court grant leave to amend the complaint” if it decided to 

grant the motion to dismiss, without offering any explanation of how 

amendment would correct the errors in his complaint. As in Chaidez, the district 

court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to grant Hancock leave to amend.

AFFIRMED

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