Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-10-02746/USCOURTS-ca7-10-02746-0/pdf.json

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

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 10-2746 

JIMMY DOE, et al., on behalf of a class of detainees, 

Plaintiffs-Appellees, 

v.

COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS, and SUPERINTENDENT, COOK COUNTY 

JUVENILE TEMPORARY DETENTION CENTER, 

Defendants-Appellees. 

Appeal of: 

TEAMSTERS LOCAL UNION NO. 700, 

Intervenor. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

No. 99 C 3945 — James F. Holderman, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED FEBRUARY 17, 2011 — DECIDED AUGUST 17, 2015 

____________________ 

Before EASTERBROOK, RIPPLE, and TINDER, Circuit Judges. 

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. This suit began in 1999, when 

a group of detainees at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary 

Detention Center, which houses juvenile suspects awaiting 

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trial, contended that some personnel at the Center violated 

the federal Constitution by abusing their charges. (Plaintiffs’ 

status as juveniles justifies the anonymity in the case title.) 

Eight years into the suit, which has been certified as a class 

action (so the fact that the representative plaintiffs are no 

longer at the Center does not make the case moot), the district court appointed Earl Dunlap as the Center’s “Transitional Administrator.” We call Dunlap “the Administrator.” 

The court authorized the Administrator to run the Center 

in compliance with all state and federal requirements. The 

word “Transitional” in the Administrator’s title comes from 

the fact that Illinois amended its law in 2007 to move management of the Center from the domain of the County’s political branches to the domain of the Circuit Court of Cook 

County, in whose Chief Judge state law now vests authority. 

55 ILCS 75/3(b) (allowing the Chief Judge to appoint and 

remove an administrator to run the Center), 75/3(c) (giving 

the Chief Judge direct control over the Center’s budget). The 

Administrator was supposed to produce an orderly transition from the old regime to the new one. 

That took a good deal longer than expected. Section 

75/3(b) became effective on January 1, 2008, and required the 

Chief Judge to appoint a new head of the Center within 180 

days, yet when this case was argued in 2011 the appointment 

had yet to be made. We thought that the transition would 

happen soon, and we deferred action in the belief that the 

dispute might soon become moot. It turned out that the 

Chief Judge waited until May 2015 to replace Dunlap: Leonard Dixon was named as the Center’s new Superintendent 

effective May 20, 2015, and Dunlap left his post as Administrator. But this has not resolved the controversy that led to 

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No. 10-2746 3 

this appeal. So it is time for us to act—past time, really, and 

the litigants have our apologies for the delay. 

One reason why we thought it appropriate to set this appeal aside for a while is that the original parties were and 

remained content with the Administrator’s appointment and 

actions. The plaintiffs are satisfied, Cook County is satisfied, 

and the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court, though not a formal party, indicated (through a supplemental submission 

filed at our request) that he too is satisfied. But employees at 

the Center are not satisfied. Their Union (Teamsters Local 

700), which represents “direct-care employees” (called “Juvenile Detention Counselors” and “Recreation Workers”), 

intervened in the district court and is the appellant. 

We postpone a recitation of this litigation’s origination, 

settlement, reactivation, re-settlement, and further protests 

by the class, which led the district judge to appoint the Administrator as part of a third settlement. For now it is best to 

explain what led the Union to intervene and appeal, and 

how the district court dealt with the Union’s arguments. 

Following a study of the Center’s operations, the Administrator proposed in October 2009 to reorganize it into five 

divisions, each staffed by personnel who in one position 

serve the functions of guards, psychologists, and teachers, 

and who would have training and educational credentials 

superior to the staff then on hand. The Administrator proposed to terminate the employment of the Center’s approximately 225 direct-care employees and require any of them 

who wanted to fill the new positions to apply on the same 

basis as any outsider would do. The Administrator estimated that 180 of these 225 would be disqualified at the outset 

by the requirement that the workers have bachelor’s degrees, 

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and more would be ruled out by a test that all applicants 

would be required to pass. 

The district court allowed the Union to intervene to oppose the Administrator’s plan. (The Union acts as agent of its 

members, who are vitally interested, and has standing in a 

representative capacity.) The Union argued that implementation of the plan would violate several Illinois statutes. Illinois 

requires public employers to engage in collective bargaining 

with unions, 5 ILCS 315/7, and it requires arbitration if an 

employer of “security employees” cannot reach agreement 

with their union, 5 ILCS 315/14. The Union contended that 

the Administrator was proposing to violate state law by 

overriding the bargaining and arbitration statutes, and to 

violate the Due Process Clause by overriding the current collective bargaining agreement. For simplicity we put this latter argument to one side; it is unnecessary to add a constitutional gloss to state-law rights. 

The district court rejected the Union’s position and authorized the Administrator to implement his plan. 2010 U.S. 

Dist. LEXIS 63153 (N.D. Ill. June 23, 2010). Citing 5 ILCS 

315/4, the judge wrote that collective-bargaining rights must 

give way, as a matter of Illinois law, when necessary to effective management. See Central City Education Association v. Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, 149 Ill. 2d 496 (1992). 

The judge did not, however, find that overriding the right to 

bargain was essential to solve any constitutional problem at 

the Center. To the contrary, the judge conceded that “there 

has been no judicial finding that ‘purging the [Center of incumbent workers] is necessary to correct’” any ongoing constitutional violation. 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63153 at *19. Indeed, the judge conceded that there has not been a finding 

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No. 10-2746 5 

that any resident of the Center “currently face[s] an ‘ongoing 

danger to health and safety [due to] unqualified staff 

stay[ing] in their current positions’” (ibid.; emphasis and 

brackets in original). Nonetheless, the judge wrote, the Administrator had been appointed to clean up a mess, and “the 

court finds that the [Administrator’s] need for speed and 

flexibility” (id. at *20) trumps other considerations. 

Addressing the Union’s argument that the Administrator’s hiring plan is blocked by 18 U.S.C. §3626, a part of the 

Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), given the absence of a 

finding that the new plan is necessary to cure an ongoing 

violation of federal law, the district court had two responses: 

first, that Illinois law has not been violated, and second that 

§3626 applies only to district judges and not to courtappointed administrators. 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63153 at *27–

28. What the Administrator proposed to do, the court wrote, 

is not the kind of “prospective relief” forbidden to a judge. 

The district court denied a motion for a stay, 2010 U.S. 

Dist. LEXIS 117086 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 3, 2010), as did a motions 

panel of this court, so by the time we heard oral argument 

the new system was in place. The judge certified his order as 

final under Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b), see 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS

86192 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 23, 2010), a step that everyone has applauded given the difficulty of determining whether an order such as that approving the Administrator’s plan is one 

entering (or declining to modify) an “injunction” for the 

purpose of an appeal under 28 U.S.C. §1292(a). 

The Union’s appeal rests largely on the PLRA. Here are 

the pertinent parts of §3626: 

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(a) REQUIREMENTS FOR RELIEF.— 

(1) PROSPECTIVE RELIEF.— 

(A) Prospective relief in any civil action with respect to 

prison conditions shall extend no further than necessary to correct the violation of the Federal right of a 

particular plaintiff or plaintiffs. The court shall not 

grant or approve any prospective relief unless the 

court finds that such relief is narrowly drawn, extends 

no further than necessary to correct the violation of the 

Federal right, and is the least intrusive means necessary to correct the violation of the Federal right. The 

court shall give substantial weight to any adverse impact on public safety or the operation of a criminal justice system caused by the relief. 

(B) The court shall not order any prospective relief that 

requires or permits a government official to exceed his 

or her authority under State or local law or otherwise 

violates State or local law, unless— 

(i) Federal law requires such relief to be ordered in 

violation of State or local law; 

(ii) the relief is necessary to correct the violation of 

a Federal right; and 

(iii) no other relief will correct the violation of the 

Federal right. 

... 

(c) SETTLEMENTS.— 

(1) CONSENT DECREES.—In any civil action with respect 

to prison conditions, the court shall not enter or approve a 

consent decree unless it complies with the limitations on relief set forth in subsection (a). 

(2) PRIVATE SETTLEMENT AGREEMENTS.— 

(A) Nothing in this section shall preclude parties from 

entering into a private settlement agreement that does 

not comply with the limitations on relief set forth in 

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No. 10-2746 7 

subsection (a), if the terms of that agreement are not 

subject to court enforcement other than the reinstatement of the civil proceeding that the agreement settled. 

... 

(g) DEFINITIONS.—As used in this section— 

(1) the term “consent decree” means any relief entered by 

the court that is based in whole or in part upon the consent 

or acquiescence of the parties but does not include private 

settlements; ... 

(6) the term “private settlement agreement” means an 

agreement entered into among the parties that is not subject 

to judicial enforcement other than the reinstatement of the 

civil proceeding that the agreement settled; ... 

The Union’s argument is simple. Section 3626(a)(1)(A) and 

(B) forbids relief that violates state law and is not “necessary” to solve a violation of federal law—and even then state 

law may be overridden only if “no other relief will correct” 

that violation. A private settlement agreement may do more, 

see §3626(c)(2), but if an agreement is judicially enforceable—that is, if a violation means anything other than restarting the litigation on the merits—the agreement must be 

treated as a “consent decree,” and what a court cannot do by 

final order in a contested case it also cannot do by the parties’ consent (that’s the effect of combining §3626(c)(1) and 

(2) with §3626(g)(1) and (6)). 

The district judge was unimpressed by this argument because, he said, it does not invariably violate Illinois law to 

allow management to proceed without collective bargaining. 

We grant the point but don’t see how state law authorizes 

cutting this Union out of decisions about the Center’s staffing. 

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The district court thought that bypassing bargaining (and 

eliminating the arbitration that state law requires if the parties can’t agree) would allow the Administrator to reorganize 

the Center faster and more effectively. Yet every public employer could make that kind of argument, all of the time. 

There has to be something more to bypass bargaining as a 

matter of Illinois law; the delays and frustrations that normally accompany collective bargaining do not permit an 

employer to dispense with the process, irksome as many 

employers find it. Illinois courts, and its Labor Relations 

Board, regularly reject arguments that a public employer’s 

desire to change conditions of employment with dispatch 

justifies disregard of bargaining and arbitration requirements. See, e.g., Chicago Park District v. Illinois Labor Relations 

Board, 354 Ill. App. 3d 595 (2004); Village of Bensenville, 14 

PERI ¶2042, 1998 IL LRB LEXIS 43 (I.L.R.B. 1998); Cook County 

(Cermak Health Services), 3 PERI ¶3030, 1987 IL LRB LEXIS 78 

(I.L.R.B. 1987). 

The “something more” required by Illinois law could in 

principle be an ongoing violation of federal law, but the district judge was commendably candid: he was not finding any 

ongoing violation that the Administrator’s plan would fix 

and, indeed, had never found any violation of federal law 

(statutory or constitutional). (We’ll come back to the “never” 

observation.) The judge found that giving speed and flexibility to the Administrator would be beneficial, but not that 

federal law requires this, and not that every employer’s desire for flexibility trumps bargaining requirements in Illinois. 

It follows that Illinois law required collective bargaining and 

held out the possibility of interest arbitration. 

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Even if we were to treat the parties’ agreement as giving 

the Administrator the power to do what he did, employers 

cannot “consent” to dispensing with employees’ rights. See 

Kasper v. Board of Election Commissioners, 814 F.2d 332, rehearing denied, 814 F.2d 345 (7th Cir. 1987) (parties can’t accomplish through a consent decree something they lack ability to 

do by contract). And under §3626(a)(1)(B) the parties, like 

the court, must respect state law unless federal law leaves no 

other option. 

The district court’s second way around the PLRA was its 

conclusion that the judge had not himself required any 

change in the Center’s employment practices; all the court 

had done was to approve the Administrator’s proposals. 

There are several problems with that approach. First, the 

Administrator was exercising the court’s authority. Without 

the court’s imprimatur, the Administrator has no authority at 

all. The court cannot give its appointee any greater power 

than the judge himself possesses. If the judge is constrained 

by §3626, so is the Administrator. Second, §3626(a) says exactly this. It provides that a “court shall not grant or approve

any prospective relief unless the court finds that such relief 

is narrowly drawn, extends no further than necessary to correct the violation of the Federal right, and is the least intrusive means necessary to correct the violation of the Federal 

right.” (Emphasis added.) The court approved the Administrator’s directives, without making the statutory findings. 

Simple enforcement of a consent decree does not require 

a new round of findings under §3626. See Jones-El v. Berge, 

374 F.3d 541, 545 (7th Cir. 2004). But the Administrator’s decision to fire all of the Center’s direct-care workers, and displace state law, cannot be understood as simple enforcement 

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of the order appointing the Administrator. That order, entered in 2007, did not displace state labor law or authorize 

any particular management practice. Not until 2010, when 

the district court approved the Administrator’s proposal, 

was state law superseded. (As we explain below, there was a 

brief supersession in 2008, but the district court quickly revoked it.) The 2010 order therefore cannot be defended as 

nothing but implementation of the 2007 order appointing the 

Administrator. 

The dispute in Jones-El concerned an order to install air 

conditioning to enforce an earlier decree that had directed 

the prison to reduce the temperature in prisoners’ cells. The 

prison objected to the new order, even though it also conceded that air conditioning was the only way to comply with 

an earlier order whose validity was unquestioned. In our 

case, by contrast, firing all of the direct-care workers and hiring replacements, all without regard to state law, was not the 

only way to comply. The district judge did not find that the 

Administrator’s proposed approach was necessary either to 

respect the class’s rights or to manage the Center (as the 2007 

order authorized the Administrator to do); the judge found 

only that it was efficient. The difference between a step necessarily entailed in implementing an earlier judicial order, 

and a selection from among many potential ways of proceeding, was important to Jones-El and to our decision today. 

But if we accept the premise that in 2010 the district court 

just enforced an older consent order, that moves things one 

step backward, to the 2007 order appointing the Administrator and setting out his tasks. And the district court did not 

say that that order was compelled by any federal law. The 

most one can say for the 2007 order is that the district judge 

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No. 10-2746 11 

recited that it complied with the PLRA. The judge did not, 

however, make any of the findings that §3626 requires. A 

bald declaration of compliance, without the findings required by statute, is ineffectual under §3626. 

In defending the judgment, the original parties have argued that the district judge didn’t need to make any findings 

in 2010 because he had made them earlier. As we have observed, the judge himself was not of that view. He stated expressly that he was not finding that there was any ongoing 

violation of federal law that needed correction and was not 

finding that the Administrator’s new employment proposal 

was necessary to correct any earlier violation. 2010 U.S. Dist. 

LEXIS 63153 at *19. But for the sake of completeness we take a 

brief look at this litigation’s history, to see whether the 

judge’s memory might have been deficient. 

 The suit was filed in 1999, and the parties started negotiating. The district court did not take any action on the merits 

(though it did certify a class). Settlement was reached in 

2002, and in December of that year the district court dismissed the suit, reserving jurisdiction to enforce the settlement’s terms. (This reservation made the settlement a “consent decree” as defined in §3626(g)(1), as opposed to a “private settlement agreement” under §3626(g)(6).) In dismissing 

the suit, the judge did not make any finding that the Center 

had violated any detainee’s rights or that any of the settlement’s terms was necessary to remedy a violation. 

Nor could either of these findings be inferred from the 

act of approving (and promising to enforce) the settlement, 

because the settlement papers themselves state that the 

agreement is “the result of a compromise and settlement and 

is not a determination of liability.” The settlement contained 

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standard language denying liability. (For example: “Defendants have denied and continue to deny the allegations contained in Plaintiffs’ Complaint”.) In other words, the defendants did not confess liability, and there was no finding of liability (or of the need for any given remedy) that the court 

could adopt. What is more, the court could not have found 

that a new employment arrangement at the Center was necessary to resolve any violation, because the possibility of a 

new arrangement was not raised until 2009. 

By late 2005 plaintiffs had grown dissatisfied with the 

Center’s performance. They moved to reopen the case and 

enforce the settlement. Before the court could act, the parties 

reached an amended settlement and an implementation 

plan. The two new agreements, like the original, lack a confession of liability. Unlike the 2002 settlement, the 2006 

agreements dealt with employment and training by providing that the Center must reassign any employee found to 

have physically abused any detainee, until the employee receives additional training. The Administrator’s eventual 

proposal is substantially different from this clause, because it 

extends to all employees, whether or not any given employee 

ever abused any detainee, and whether or not that employee 

has received additional training. 

In May 2007 the plaintiffs returned to court, asking the 

judge to put the Center into receivership and appoint someone to run it. By then the state legislature was considering 

the bill that would move the Center’s management to the 

Circuit Court of Cook County. This led to the idea for a 

“Transitional Administrator” to bridge the gap, and with the 

parties’ consent (a third settlement) the district court appointed Dunlap to that position—but without making any 

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No. 10-2746 13 

finding that in 2007 the Center was violating anyone’s federal rights. Instead the judge found that the Center was violating the terms of the 2002 and 2006 settlements—which were 

based on compromise rather than a finding by the court that 

anyone’s federal rights had been or were being violated. The 

order appointing the Administrator provides that he is “an 

agent of this Court” (which is one of the reasons why we 

concluded above that the Administrator’s acts are attributed 

to the court for the purpose of §3626). 

In mid-2008 the Administrator reported that the Center 

was understaffed and needed more than 175 additional employees quickly in order to improve detainees’ care. The district court made a factual finding to that effect—which so far 

as we can see is the only factual finding in the case—but did 

not conclude that federal law requires additional employees. 

The Administrator proposed to hire the new workers by contracts that bypassed the Union and its collective bargaining 

agreement. The district judge authorized this, entering an 

order “suspend[ing] any and all laws ... that require compliance with any provision of the current Collective Bargaining 

Agreement”. The judge did not find, however, that superseding state law was the least restrictive way to rectify a violation of federal law; the order did not reference §3626. The 

Union protested, and the judge soon revoked the suspension 

clause of his order. That put state labor laws back into effect. 

The Union effectively promised not to complain about the 

new hires, however, if the Administrator respected its members’ rights. 

This brings us to October 2009, when the Administrator 

proposed to abrogate all of the Union’s rights by firing its 

members and hiring a wholly new staff without regard to 

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state labor laws or the existing collective bargaining agreement, a process that everyone understood would mean unemployment for at least 180 of the Union’s members. And, as 

we’ve explained, when approving this proposal in June 2010 

the judge stated that he was not finding any existing violation of federal law and was not finding that the restaffing 

plan was necessary to correct any violation. The judge denied that the PLRA applied at all to the Administrator’s acts, 

but he did not find in 2010 that it has been satisfied if it does 

apply. 

The lack of factual findings in this case—both the lack of 

findings about the existence of a violation and the absence of 

findings about the necessity for a particular remedy to cure 

any violation—contrasts with the elaborate findings the district court made in Brown v. Plata, 131 S. Ct. 1910 (2011), the 

Supreme Court’s only extended consideration of §3626(a) 

and (b). The Justices divided five to four about whether even 

184 pages of findings and analysis by a district court satisfied the statutory burden; the difference from this case could 

not be more stark. 

It follows that the order approving the new staffing plan 

must be reversed. The plan has been in effect for years, and 

restoring the Union’s members to their old positions would 

not be possible, because those positions are gone. But other 

forms of relief, including financial compensation and preferential hiring for future openings, may be appropriate, and 

we leave that subject to the district court on remand. 

Nothing in this opinion should be read to undermine the 

original settlement in 2002 or the follow-up settlements in 

2006. The Union has not questioned them (and would lack 

standing to do so), and the original litigants remain satisfied. 

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As we mentioned earlier, the Chief Judge also is satisfied 

with the provisions of the 2002 and 2006 settlements (which 

the PLRA treats as consent decrees). And the Chief Judge’s 

appointment of a new Superintendent for the Center moots 

any prospective contest to the Administrator’s 2007 appointment. The only question we resolve is whether the 2010 

order permitting the Administrator to bypass state employment law (a power not conferred in 2007) complied with 

§3626, and we have held that it did not. 

The decision is reversed, and the case is remanded for 

proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

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RIPPLE, Circuit Judge, dissenting. This is an important case 

both to the parties and to the development of the law in this 

circuit. Given the disposition reached by my colleagues, it is 

also imperative that the matter be returned quickly to the 

district court. That court issued a final order on May 15, 

2015. Under its terms, the Transitional Administrator is 

scheduled to report to the parties on the status of the 

transition and on the compliance of the parties by August 17, 

and the reservation of jurisdiction to enforce the consent 

decree will terminate on September 16. The account of the 

Office of the Transitional Administrator is scheduled for 

closure on September 30, 2015. While I respectfully disagree 

with my colleagues’ resolution of the matter, the need to get 

this case back to the district court is an imperative that must 

be paramount. I therefore am constrained to abbreviate my 

own writing in order to ensure that the district court and the 

parties are advised of this court’s decision immediately. 

A. 

In my view, this case does not implicate directly the 

content of the consent decree. As the district court noted 

explicitly, the order before us is a simple direction enforcing 

or implementing that consent decree and therefore is not 

governed by the provisions of the PLRA ex proprio vigore.1 In 

the course of enforcing or implementing a consent decree, 

district courts must issue a variety of orders to address 

particular situations that inevitably arise. In the consent 

decree, the parties had recognized and agreed that the 

personnel situation in the Center had to undergo significant 

 

1 See R.589 at 17. 

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change in order to ensure that the previous treatment of the 

children came to a permanent end. The decree gives the 

Transitional Administrator the responsibility, set out in 

some detail in the decree, to achieve a cessation of the 

current situation through the implementation of personnel 

policy changes. The order appointing the Transitional 

Administrator, which the district court quite properly 

considered an integral part of the decree, specifically gives 

the Transitional Administrator the authority “to establish 

personnel policies; to create, abolish, or transfer positions; 

and to hire, terminate, promote, transfer, and evaluate 

management and staff of the JTDC.”2 

In the course of his work under the consent decree, the 

Administrator determined that certain academic 

qualifications were necessary for those employees in direct 

and constant contact with the residents. The Union 

challenged his authority to make these changes. The district 

court had allowed the Union to intervene in the case for a

specific and limited purpose, which included objecting to the 

Transitional Administrator’s plan.3

 After hearing from the 

 

2 R.330 at 7, § 6(c). 

3 The motion to intervene by the Union that ultimately was granted 

concerned a prior emergency motion by the Transitional Administrator 

to dispense with particular paragraphs in the bargaining agreement in 

order to hire an outside contractor to handle certain discrete tasks in the 

JTDC, which would require reassignment of current staff. The court 

approved the emergency motion over the Union’s objection, later 

amending it to the Union’s satisfaction. In its order granting the 

emergency motion, the court required a report by the Transitional 

Administrator “on the conditions and status of the issues raised” in the 

emergency motion. R.415 at 4. In the second of such reports, the 

Transitional Administrator included his proposed staffing plan. The 

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parties and the Union, the district court held that the 

Transitional Administrator’s solution was within his 

authority and not in violation of state law. The court 

pointedly noted that the court was not ordering the 

implementation of the Transitional Administrator’s plan but 

simply declaring that his action was within his authority 

under the consent decree. 

The Supreme Court noted in Brown v. Plata, 131 S. Ct. 

1910 (2011), that, once properly invoked, “the scope of a 

district court’s equitable powers ... is broad, for breadth and 

flexibility are inherent in equitable remedies.” Id. at 1944 

(alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Our court has long recognized, moreover, a basic distinction 

between the terms of a consent decree and the periodic 

orders that interpret, enforce and implement its terms. See 

Jones-El v. Berge, 374 F.3d 541, 545 (7th Cir. 2004). The 

distinction is, to put it mildly, not a novel one, and certainly 

one that we must assume that Congress understood in 

crafting the present provisions of the PLRA. In the PLRA, 

Congress mandated, as Supreme Court decisions already 

had done, that the terms of a federal court judgment be 

aimed at a “condition that offends the Constitution.”4

 The 

statute’s concern is with whether the court’s judgment or 

decree is aimed at a federal constitutional violation and 

whether the court has chosen a means tailored to rectify that 

 

court approved the report over the Union’s objection, resulting in the 

present appeal.

4 Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 738 (1974) (internal quotation marks 

omitted); Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ., 402 U.S. 1, 16 

(1971). 

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violation once these parameters are set, as they were in this 

case. Here, the Union brought no challenge against the 

consent decree but merely challenged whether a certain 

action fell within its scope and was otherwise permissible 

under state and federal law. 

No doubt, the PLRA does require that a court give 

substantial weight to public safety and adopt a remedial 

device that is “narrowly drawn, extends no further than 

necessary to correct the violation of the Federal right, and is 

the least intrusive means necessary to correct the violation of 

the Federal right,” see 18 U.S.C. § 3626(a)(1), but this 

statutory admonition, a codification of well-established 

principles of federal equitable jurisprudence in 

constitutional cases, must 

not be interpreted to place undue restrictions 

on the authority of federal courts to fashion 

practical remedies when confronted with 

complex and intractable constitutional 

violations ... . 

Courts should presume that Congress was 

sensitive to the real-world problems ... [that] 

would remedy constitutional violations in the 

prisons and that Congress did not leave 

prisoners without a remedy for violations of 

their constitutional rights. 

Brown, 131 S. Ct. at 1937. 

Here, the district court explicitly noted that the question 

before it was a limited one: whether the Transitional 

Administrator was authorized to take action under the 

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consent decree and under state and federal laws.5 The court 

answered these questions in the affirmative. Indeed, it did 

not undertake to alter in any way the consent decree or to 

vest additional authority in the Transitional Administrator. 

It did not tell him that he had to implement his personnel 

plan; it simply told him that he was empowered to do it. 

The district court in no way violated the PLRA in its 

handling of the Union’s limited objection. 

B. 

My colleagues conclude their opinion by stating that it 

should not be read to undermine the validity of the various 

 

5 My colleagues find fault with the district court’s resolution of the 

question of the Union’s right to bargain as a matter of state law. The 

district court’s decision was based on its assessment of the limited 

arguments put before it. That is, it had determined that state law 

required application of a fact-specific balancing inquiry and stated that 

the Union had “fail[ed] to address in practical terms the anticipated 

benefits of bargaining.” R.589 at 11. The Transitional Administrator, on 

the other hand, “ha[d] gone through great efforts to explain the 

particular reasons for and policies underlying his decision ... and how 

these standards relate to his court-mandated mission.” Id. at 12. The 

court noted that “it is undisputed that approximately half of the JTDC’s 

current residents are housed in units structured on the old JTDC 

‘system’—a system that was to be ‘restructured’ by court order.” Id.

(citation omitted). Only then, after stating that the Union had not shown 

specific benefits of bargaining and that the countervailing interests were 

great, did it conclude that “the benefits of bargaining do not outweigh 

the burdens” and thus there was no state law right. Id. In my view, this 

conclusion is not about the need for speed and flexibility as an 

overriding justification, but about a failure of the Union to present the 

court with sufficient alternate considerations to be balanced. 

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No. 10-2746 21

settlement documents entered in this case. On this point, we 

are in agreement, and I write separately to emphasize that 

the court’s searching review of the district court record 

should not give the impression that we had undertaken to 

examine earlier decrees, not the subject of this appeal, for 

their separate compliance with the PLRA.6

 There are 

multiple reasons, including those mentioned by the majority, 

that these questions were not presented in the present 

appeal. First, the statute contains a specific way to challenge 

 

6 Whether a consent decree involving prisons always requires, as a 

prerequisite to the entry of a remedy, a judicial finding of an actual

constitutional violation even when the parties do not request such a finding is 

a very difficult question, one that we ought to approach only in a case 

where resolution is absolutely necessary and where the matter has been 

briefed fully by the parties to the litigation. While a case can be made 

that the PLRA requires such a judicial finding, see Deborah Decker,

Consent Decrees and the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Usurping 

Judicial Power or Quelling Judicial Micro-Management?, 1997 Wisc. L. Rev. 

1275, 1278; see also, e.g., Plyler v. Moore, 100 F.3d 365, 370 (4th Cir. 1996) 

(deciding the question sub silentio in the context of a proceeding under 18 

U.S.C. § 3626(b)(2)), the question becomes a great deal more difficult 

when we remember that such a requirement would, as a practical matter, 

make the whole idea of a consent decree superfluous. Consent decrees 

are sought by defendants, especially state and local defendants, to permit 

the implementation of a remedy without an admission or judicial finding 

of liability, an admission or finding with dire collateral consequences for 

state and municipal defendants. If, as the Supreme Court has 

admonished in Brown v. Plata, 131 S. Ct. 1910 (2011), we ought to be 

hesitant in interpreting the PLRA to attribute to Congress a motivation in 

the PLRA to leave prisoners without a remedy for violations of rights 

protected by the Constitution, we ought to be equally careful not to 

attribute to that body the motivation to make illusory the one 

mechanism by which both incarcerated individuals and local 

governments can resolve such litigation relatively expeditiously and 

inexpensively while maintaining a good deal of control in local hands. 

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22 No. 10-2746 

a non-conforming decree, 18 U.S.C. § 3626(b), but the parties 

have never invoked that section and, to this day, see no 

reason to challenge the district court’s determination that the 

consent decree is in conformity with the statute. The Union, 

whose intervention was limited to the question of whether 

the Temporary Administrator’s personnel action was 

consistent with the consent decree, has given the question 

wide berth. Some of its filings in the district court raise the 

matter, at least obliquely, but it never asked the court to hold 

a hearing to consider squarely this question.7

 

Further, in any event, the district court explicitly said 

that, with respect to the consent decree, the requirements of 

the PLRA were met.8 Portions of my colleagues’ opinion 

could be read as suggesting that the district court never 

made findings sufficiently detailed to satisfy the statute. 

However, the plain language of the statute does not require 

any particular degree of detail and, here, no party has ever 

disputed the objectives of the consent decree. Nor does any 

party contend that the terms of the consent decree are not 

designed precisely to deal with the problem. No doubt, if 

there is a dispute on whether a condition offends the 

 

7 The district court was clear on this point: 

Although the Union hints that the consent decrees ... 

may no longer be necessary to correct any underlying 

constitutional violations, the Union does not go so far as 

to request an evidentiary hearing on this question, nor 

does the Union actually ask the court to terminate these 

orders pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3626(b). 

R.589 at 17 (citations omitted). 

8 See id. 

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No. 10-2746 23

Constitution or whether the means to address it are 

narrowly tailored, more specific findings would be required. 

See Cason v. Seckinger, 231 F.3d 777, 784 (11th Cir. 2000). This 

situation often arises on a motion to terminate or modify a 

consent decree, a motion the Union never made. See 18 

U.S.C. § 3626(b). Indeed, if termination is deemed proper

and the decree is continued, the district court must make 

particularized findings. See 18 U.S.C. § 3626(b)(3); Ruiz v. 

United States, 243 F.3d 941, 950–51 (5th Cir. 2001). 

With great respect for the contrary view of my 

colleagues, I would affirm the judgment of the district court 

and allow this litigation to come to a peaceful and successful 

end. 

Case: 10-2746 Document: 90 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 23