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Nature of Suit Code: 560
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Civil Detainee - Conditions of Confinement
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted January 7, 2020*

Decided January 7, 2020 

Before 

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge 

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge 

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

No. 19-1006 

REGINALD SHANKLIN, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

ANDERSON FREEMAN, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Central District of Illinois. 

No. 16-CV-4010 

Harold A. Baker, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

Reginald Shanklin, an African-American civil detainee at an Illinois treatment 

facility, accuses staff of violating his equal-protection rights and the First Amendment 

when they assigned his tasks, decided his therapy, disciplined him, and housed him. 

See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court entered summary judgment for the defendants, 

correctly ruling that no reasonable juror could find that forbidden reasons motivated 

the staff’s decisions. Thus, we affirm. 

 

*

 We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and 

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not 

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

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

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No. 19-1006 Page 2 

Shanklin has resided since 2006 at the Treatment and Detention Facility in 

Rushville, Illinois, as a sexually violent person. See 725 ILCS 207/1–99. Rushville allows 

some residents to work at “tasks” that earn “points,” which function as currency. 

“Off-unit” tasks take a resident away from his residential unit; residents covet these 

tasks as they involve less supervision and earn more points. Because of the nature of the 

facility, Rushville also enforces rules of conduct. If a resident violates a rule, Rushville 

may revoke his permission to earn extra points with off-unit tasks. For major violations, 

it may also put the violator on “close status,” a period when the resident wears a yellow 

uniform, loses privileges, and is escorted in handcuffs by a guard. Before the events 

beginning in 2013 that Shanklin spotlights in this suit, he violated Rushville’s rules and 

“sexually acted out” at least four times. After each incident, Rushville removed 

Shanklin from his off-unit task. Beginning in 2013, Shanklin recounts several decisions 

that Rushville made that he believes reflect discrimination and retaliation. 

The first occurred when, in late 2013, Rushville removed Shanklin from one of 

his two off-unit tasks. He had not violated any rules in the five days since he started the 

task, but staff explained that Rushville had not cleared him to perform that task and 

had mistakenly assigned it to him. Staff offered to reassign him to an on-unit task 

instead and invited him to apply for off-unit tasks when Rushville posted them later. 

Dissatisfied, Shanklin filed grievances about this reassignment. 

Second, about a year later, Shanklin admitted in a group therapy session to 

having sex with another resident for five years. Rushville assessed him (and the other 

resident, who was white) with a rule violation. Following the violation, Shanklin 

stopped attending therapy and asked for a new treatment team. Rushville denied the 

request and assigned him to a new therapy program (run by the same treatment team) 

that staff said served his needs, but Shanklin viewed as a demotion. Around this time, 

staff also assessed that Shanklin was “in a bad place” and at “high risk” because he 

abused off-unit tasks to contact other residents and to “facilitate sexual acting out, 

trading, and trafficking, etc.” After this assessment, in 2015, Rushville removed 

Shanklin from all off-unit tasks and said that he was eligible for only on-unit tasks. 

When Shanklin showed up for an off-unit task the next day, he received a disciplinary 

warning. (The warning, which was not a violation, did not lead to any further loss of 

privileges.) 

Next, a video recording showed Shanklin and another resident showering 

together for a half hour. Based on his history, Rushville put Shanklin on 30 days of close 

status; the other resident, who was white, was assigned 30 days as well, but Rushville 

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No. 19-1006 Page 3 

ended his close status after 3 days. Shanklin ended up serving 31 days because of a 

recordkeeping error. Rushville has said that it will reduce any future close-status term 

by one day. 

Finally, Shanklin contests Rushville’s response to two housing requests. First, 

when Shanklin returned to his unit after his stint on close status, a resident threatened 

him. Shanklin requested a move, which Rushville granted. Rushville took two weeks to 

move him, a pace that Shanklin thought too slow. Shanklin requested another move 

later that year, stating that he was at risk of sexually acting out with the residents in his 

unit. Rushville denied this second request. It explained that the unit he wanted housed 

more residents with whom he had sexually misbehaved in the past, so that unit 

presented a higher risk than his current placement. 

 Shanklin brought this suit to charge that Rushville’s staff discriminated and 

retaliated against him in his task assignments, therapy, discipline, and housing. The 

district court entered summary judgment for the defendants, reasoning that Shanklin 

did not point to a better treated, similarly situated resident or otherwise show evidence 

of racial or retaliatory animus. 

On appeal, Shanklin first contends that the defendants violated his right to equal 

protection by giving him less favorable tasks, therapy, discipline, and housing as 

compared to his white counterparts. To avoid summary judgment on these claims, 

Shanklin “needed to come forward with evidence that would allow a reasonable jury to 

infer that the defendants intentionally treated him differently because of his race.” Lisle 

v. Welborn, 933 F.3d 705, 719 (7th Cir. 2019). We review the grant of summary judgment 

de novo, drawing all reasonable inferences for Shanklin. See de Lima Silva v. Dep’t of 

Corr., 917 F.3d 546, 558 (7th Cir. 2019). 

As is permissible in discrimination cases, for each of Rushville’s decisions that 

Shanklin criticizes, Rushville supplied evidence of a non-discriminatory explanation.

See id. at 561. Regarding the off-unit tasks, Rushville removed Shanklin from some 

because it had not cleared him for the task and from others because of the “high risk” 

that he planned to use the tasks to contact residents for “sexual acting out, trading, and 

trafficking.” As for Shanklin’s therapy, staff notes show that Rushville reassigned 

Shanklin to new therapy because it was clinically tailored to his needs after he had 

stopped attending his regular therapy and confessed to a major rule violation (sex with 

a resident). Regarding the discipline of close status after the shower incident, Shanklin 

does not dispute that he violated the rule prohibiting sexual contact and that Rushville 

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No. 19-1006 Page 4 

also punished the white resident who showered with him. Finally, on the rooming 

assignments, Rushville assigned Shanklin to his residential unit based on its assessment 

of threat that he faced and his history of sexual misbehavior. 

Shanklin replies that these reasons are pretextual. A plaintiff presents a triable 

question of pretext with evidence that the defendant treated the plaintiff less favorably 

than similar comparators of a different race. See Lisle, 933 F.3d at 720. This means 

Shanklin must provide evidence that the staff who reassigned his tasks, changed his 

therapy, disciplined him, and housed him treated him less favorably than whites who 

were materially similar in behavioral and clinical history. He has not. Regarding his 

removal from off-unit tasks, he submitted affidavits from white residents. The white 

residents say that they admitted past sexual misconduct to Rushville, yet Rushville did 

not remove them from off-unit tasks. But those affiants do not describe or quantify their 

offense history. A jury would thus have to speculate whether they are comparable to 

Shanklin, who by 2013 had “sexually acted out” four times and then stopped attending 

therapy, sparking staff concern about his off-unit behavior. Regarding his discipline of 

close status, Shanklin points to the white resident who showered with him but received 

only 3 days of close status compared to Shanklin’s 31 days. But again, Shanklin 

provides no evidence of this resident’s behavioral, disciplinary, and treatment history, 

so once more a jury could only speculate whether he is comparable. 

Shanklin tries to show pretext another way, but it is unavailing. He argues that 

as of 2013 Rushville knew about his past sexual misconduct yet assigned him off-unit 

tasks anyway; therefore, when it removed him from those tasks, it did so because of his 

race. But Rushville had other, unrebutted reasons for removing Shanklin from off-unit 

tasks. In 2013, Rushville removed him from an off-unit task because he lacked clearance 

for it. Then in 2015 Rushville removed him from off-unit tasks because, in addition to 

Shanklin’s misconduct of quitting regular therapy and committing a new sex offense, 

staff assessed that he was abusing off-unit tasks for improper contact with residents. 

Thus, Rushville’s willingness to tolerate Shanklin’s earlier sexual misconduct did not 

disable it from deciding, based on new information, that off-unit tasks were now 

risky—unless it decided differently for white residents with comparable histories. But, 

again, no evidence suggests this.

That brings us to Shanklin’s First Amendment claims. He argues that Rushville 

retaliated against him unlawfully because months after he filed grievances challenging 

his removal in 2013 from his off-unit task, Rushville changed his therapy, disciplined 

him for “sexually acting out,” removed him permanently from off-unit tasks, and 

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No. 19-1006 Page 5 

refused his housing requests. To survive summary judgment on these claims, Shanklin 

“must show: (1) he engaged in protected activity; (2) he suffered a deprivation likely to 

deter future protected activity; and (3) his protected activity was a motivating factor in 

the defendants’ decision to retaliate.” Daugherty v. Page, 906 F.3d 606, 610 (7th Cir. 2018). 

We focus on the third element. 

We agree with the district court that Shanklin presented no evidence that his 

grievances motivated Rushville’s decisions. He relies entirely on the timing sequence: 

the adverse decisions came months after he filed grievances. But “[s]uspicious timing 

may be just that—suspicious—and a suspicion is not enough to get past a motion for 

summary judgment.” McGreal v. Village of Orland Park, 850 F.3d 308, 314 (7th Cir. 2017) 

(internal citations and quotation marks omitted). And as explained above, Rushville 

offered unrebutted, legitimate reasons for its actions. It changed Shanklin’s treatment 

program to serve his clinical needs, it removed him from off-unit tasks and disciplined 

him because of his rule violations, and it denied his rooming request to avoid the risk of 

contact with certain residents. Because Shanklin offers no evidence that Rushville 

treated more favorably any resident with a comparable history who had not filed 

grievances, he has not rebutted these explanations. The district court was thus correct to 

enter summary judgment in favor of the defendants. 

AFFIRMED 

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