In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 21-3332 

JOHN SABO, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

MEGAN ERICKSON, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

No. 20-CV-718 — William E. Duffin, Magistrate Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 8, 2022 — DECIDED APRIL 30, 2024 

____________________ 

Before WOOD, ST. EVE, and JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit 

Judges. 

JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge. John Sabo received a probation sentence that exceeded the Wisconsin statutory maximum for his offense. Months after his probation should have 

been over, he was imprisoned for violating the conditions of 

that probation. Sabo sued two sets of defendants under 

42 U.S.C. § 1983: Sheri Hicks and Debra Haley, the Wisconsin 

Department of Corrections officials who failed to correct his 
2 No. 21-3332 

unlawful term of probation; and Megan Erickson and Barb 

Hanson, the probation officers who enforced it. He alleged 

that all four defendants violated his right of due process and 

showed deliberate indifference to his unjustified imprisonment, and the two probation officers committed an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment by failing to release him after they became aware of the sentencing error. The 

district court dismissed all claims against Hicks and Haley, 

the corrections officials, and most against Erickson and Hanson, the probation officers, before entering summary judgment for Erickson and Hanson on the deliberate indifference 

and unreasonable seizure claims. But because Sabo’s complaint1 stated claims of deliberate indifference against Hicks 

and Haley, and because, assuming all facts and inferences in 

Sabo’s favor, the record as it stands does not compel a finding 

of qualified immunity, we vacate the district court’s dismissal 

of those claims. We affirm in all other respects.

I. Background

A. Sabo’s Conviction, Sentence, and Incarceration

We accept as true all well-pleaded facts and draw reasonable inferences in Sabo's favor with regard to his dismissed 

claims against Hicks and Haley. Peterson v. Wexford Health 

Sources, Inc., 986 F.3d 746, 751 (7th Cir. 2021). As to Sabo’s 

claims against Erickson and Hanson, we recount the facts in 

the light most favorable to Sabo, the nonmoving party. Figgs 

v. Dawson, 829 F.3d 895, 902 (7th Cir. 2016). 

1 We refer to Sabo’s operative complaint, which was his first amended

complaint, unless otherwise noted. 
No. 21-3332 3

In 2004, Sabo pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated 

and was sentenced to five years’ probation. The parties agree 

that this was an error, as the statutory maximum for Sabo’s 

offense was three years’ probation. At the time of Sabo’s sentencing, Hicks and Haley worked at the Department’s Central 

Records Unit, where they reviewed and corrected sentences 

that exceeded the statutory maximum. The judgments they 

corrected were filed in the Department with copies sent to 

probation officers and sentencing judges “as a courtesy.” 

Sabo’s sentence underwent this review, with no corrections to 

his sentence.

In 2005, the year after Sabo’s sentencing, Hicks and Haley 

discovered that they had been overstating maximum terms of 

probation since 2003. They apparently received a chart—from 

whom the record is unclear—listing the correct maximum 

probation sentences for various offenses. Despite their realization that some probation sentences they had reviewed were 

unlawfully long, neither Hicks nor Haley took any steps to 

investigate or remedy the errors. The defendants estimate that 

between 1,000 and 1,500 of the sentences reviewed by Hicks 

and Haley had errors in the probation terms and concede that 

no action was taken to correct this problem. 

Sabo began his probation in July 2014 (it was consecutive 

to other sentences), with Erickson as his probation officer. In 

December 2017—approximately five months after a threeyear term of probation would have ended—Sabo was arrested 

in the aftermath of a domestic dispute. Erickson believed Sabo 

violated the rules of his probation by resisting arrest and consuming alcohol, so she began proceedings to revoke his probation. Erickson also put a “hold” on Sabo requiring that he 

be jailed pending his revocation hearing. Erickson consulted 
4 No. 21-3332 

with Hanson, the assistant regional probation supervisor, before recommending the hold, though the parties disagree on 

the extent to which Hanson was involved in that decision.

While in jail—he does not say when—Sabo discovered 

that his term of probation was longer than the law allowed. 

Sabo was unable to contact Erickson about the error (probation officers do not accept collect calls, and Erickson refused 

his request for a jail visit and his fiancée’s calls about the matter), so Sabo’s attorney informed Erickson. On April 13, 2018, 

Erickson inquired at the Department about the legality of 

Sabo’s sentence, and was told by Janelle Nehring, a corrections official who specialized in sentencing, that Sabo’s attorney “appears to be correct on this one.” But Erickson was also 

informed that the Department’s legal counsel had advised 

that Department officials were “no longer commuting terms 

of probation per [section] 973.09(2m) [of the Wisconsin Statutes],” the statutory provision governing excessive terms of 

probation. Nehring offered to send the sentencing court a letter indicating Sabo’s probation term was excessive but 

warned that the Department could do nothing if the court 

took no action. Erickson forwarded Nehring’s email to Sabo’s 

attorney, and both the attorney and Nehring wrote letters to 

the sentencing court regarding the error. Sabo was finally released on May 3, 2018, the day the sentencing court amended 

his judgment with the correct term of probation. In total, he 

spent 291 days on probation beyond the statutory maximum 

for his conviction, 133 of those in jail.

B. District Court Proceedings

In May 2020, Sabo sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. His complaint identified two sets of defendants whose inaction, he believed, had violated his constitutional rights. First, Sabo 
No. 21-3332 5

asserted that Hicks and Haley were deliberately indifferent 

under the Eighth Amendment when they failed to investigate 

and correct his sentence after realizing their error. Hicks and 

Haley conceded that they failed to review any of the judgments to which they had applied the erroneous standards, but 

moved to dismiss, arguing that they had no duty to correct 

Sabo’s sentence and, alternatively, that they were entitled to 

qualified immunity for not doing so.

Second, Sabo argued that Erickson and Hanson were 

obliged to release him from jail once they became aware of his 

erroneous sentence. By failing to do so, Sabo asserted, they 

were deliberately indifferent to his unjustified imprisonment 

under the Eighth Amendment and subjected him to an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment. In moving to 

dismiss, Erickson and Hanson contended that, because they 

were merely enforcing a then-valid judgment and took 

prompt action to inform the sentencing court of the error, 

there was no constitutional violation, and they were also entitled to qualified immunity. 

Finally, Sabo alleged that Erickson and Hanson violated 

his constitutional rights by failing to discover and correct his 

sentencing error when he began probation and that all the defendants were negligent under state law and violated his 

Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. Because Sabo 

does not challenge the dismissal of these claims on appeal, we 

do not discuss them further.

The defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of 

Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The district court acknowledged that 

Sabo’s sentence was unlawful and that Hicks and Haley took 

no action after discovering their mistake, but granted the motion after concluding that they had not violated Sabo’s Eighth 
6 No. 21-3332 

Amendment rights. The district court understood Sabo to 

have alleged that “Haley and Hicks knew that it was essentially certain that, due to their misunderstanding of the law, 

many probationers were subject to unlawfully long sentences,” but not “that Haley or Hicks knew of any likely problem specific to Sabo.” Citing Perrault v. Wisconsin, No. 15-CV144-BBC, 2016 WL 126918 (W.D. Wis. Jan. 11, 2016), aff'd sub

nom. Perrault v. Wis. Dep't of Corr., 669 F. App'x 302 (7th Cir. 

2016), involving a similar § 1983 suit alleging an unlawfully 

long term of probation, the district court concluded that 

“simply alleging that defendants were aware of the general 

possibility that prisoners’ sentences may be inconsistent with 

Wisconsin law does not state a claim for deliberate indifference.”

The district court allowed the Fourth and Eighth Amendment claims against Erickson and Hanson to proceed, however, because Sabo had alleged that the Department allowed 

administrative employees like Hicks and Haley to amend sentences they found to exceed the statutory maximum, and the 

inference that probation officers like Erickson and Hanson 

could also do so was plausible. 

Sabo moved to reconsider the dismissal of the Eighth 

Amendment claim against Hicks and Haley. The district court 

denied the motion after concluding that the Department’s 

policy of reviewing sentences for error did not create a constitutional duty for Hicks and Haley to either identify or correct 

judges’ sentencing errors.

Erickson and Hanson then moved for summary judgment 

on the remaining Eighth and Fourth Amendment claims 

against them. The district court granted the motion, concluding that the primary error was that of the sentencing judge 
No. 21-3332 7

and Sabo had not presented evidence that Erickson or Hanson 

had the authority to unilaterally correct sentencing errors. Because of this, Erickson and Hanson “had no choice but to enforce the judgment” until it was corrected by the sentencing 

judge and, therefore, had not been deliberately indifferent to 

Sabo’s constitutional rights.

II. Discussion

A. Sabo’s complaint alleges a claim of deliberate indifference against Hicks and Haley 

We review de novo the district court’s decision granting a 

motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Peterson, 986 F.3d 

at 751. For the purpose of Sabo’s Eighth Amendment claim 

against the corrections officials, Hicks and Haley, we accept 

the facts in his complaint as true and review them in the light 

most favorable to him. Id. Sabo need only allege enough facts 

to state a claim for relief that is plausible on its face. Id. 

As a plaintiff seeking to hold public officials personally liable under § 1983, Sabo must plead that (1) Hicks and Haley 

acted “‘under color of state law’” to (2) deprive him of a constitutional right.2 DiDonato v. Panatera, 24 F.4th 1156, 1159 

2 The dissenting opinion’s focus on what Sabo alleged with respect to 

duty is misplaced because Sabo was not required to plead duty. Duty is 

not a pleading requirement for § 1983 claims in general or deliberate indifference claims specifically. None of the dissent’s cited cases say it is either: Rodriguez and Jones relied on the plaintiffs’ failures to prove—not 

plead—duty. 189 F.App’x 522, 527 (7th Cir. 2006); 869 F.2d 1023, 1031 

(7th Cir. 1989). And Farmer and Thomas both discuss duty as arising from 

the Eighth Amendment itself. See 511 U.S. 825, 832–33 (1994); 2 F.4th 716, 

719 (7th Cir. 2021). True, Sabo cannot prevail on an Eighth Amendment 

claim unless the defendants owed him a duty, but he did not need to plead

duty. The question of duty is secondary to—and determined by—the 
8 No. 21-3332 

(7th Cir. 2022) (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 1983). Defendants act under color of state law when they abuse the positions given to 

them by the state. Id. at 1159–60. When determining whether 

a defendant acted under color of state law, courts consider the 

defendant’s specific acts in relation to her performance of 

state functions. See, e.g., West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42, 54–56 

(1988) (private physician acted under color of state law while 

treating state prisoner); DiDonato, 24 F.4th at 1162 (no § 1983 

liability for negligent treatment and sexual assault by city paramedic acting in personal capacity).

Here, Sabo’s allegations raise a question of material fact 

regarding whether Hicks and Haley acted under color of state 

law. See Valentine v. City of Chicago, 452 F.3d 670, 683 (7th Cir. 

2006) (defendant’s responsibilities on behalf of state may raise 

question of material fact as to whether defendant acted under 

color of state law). Hicks and Haley were responsible for reviewing and correcting sentences that exceeded the statutory 

maximum. That fact, though directly applicable only to their 

initial review of Sabo’s sentence, gives rise to the reasonable 

inference that they were similarly responsible for some part 

of correcting past sentencing errors once they were aware of 

those errors. See id.

Sabo must additionally plead that Hicks and Haley deprived him (or caused him to be deprived) of a constitutional 

right. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983; Didonato, 24 F.4th at 1159. Custody

question of constitutional deprivation: If what the plaintiff alleges 

amounts to deprivation of a constitutional right, then persons acting under color of state law of course have a duty to not occasion such a deprivation. The proper focus is on whether Sabo alleged a constitutional deprivation perpetrated or caused by Hicks and Haley, acting under color of 

state law. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 
No. 21-3332 9

beyond the date a person is entitled to release violates the 

Eighth Amendment if it is the product of deliberate indifference. Figgs, 829 F.3d at 902, and probation is a form of custody,

Drollinger v. Milligan, 552 F.2d 1220, 1224 (7th Cir. 1977); see

also Hankins v. Lowe, 786 F.3d 603, 605 (7th Cir. 2015) (listing

cases in similar parole context). “Deliberate indifference occurs when a defendant realizes that a substantial risk of serious harm to a prisoner exists, but then disregards that risk.” 

Perez v. Fenoglio, 792 F.3d 768, 776 (7th Cir. 2015). It requires

“more than negligence or even gross negligence”: the defendant must have been “essentially criminally reckless, that is, ignored a known risk.” Figgs, 829 F.3d at 903. 

In Hankins v. Lowe, we ruled that a parole officer was deliberately indifferent for “refus[ing] to do anything however 

trivial” to mitigate the known risk that his parolee would be 

subjected to parole conditions beyond the expiration of her 

parole. 786 F.3d at 605–06. Similarly here, Sabo alleges that 

Hicks and Haley “failed to take any steps to correct his patently illegally long term of probation[,]” despite “realiz[ing] 

that there were judgments of convictions that they had analyzed . . . that contained unlawfully long terms of probation.” 

See id. That sufficiently alleges a constitutional deprivation

under our caselaw.3

3 The dissenting opinion would apparently characterize Hicks’s and 

Haley’s conduct as a violation of state law rather than the Constitution, an 

argument that relies upon Wells v. Caudill, 967 F.3d 598 (7th Cir. 2020). But 

that case is easily distinguishable because it involved a dispute over an

unsettled question of state law. See id. at 600 (whether Illinois law permitted multiple pretrial-detention credits to be applied to defendant detained 

on multiple charges). Here, there is neither an unsettled question of state 

law nor even a dispute over Sabo’s proper sentence: Everyone agrees that 

Sabo’s probation term exceeded the statutory maximum. And as we 
10 No. 21-3332 

Sabo alleges that Hicks and Haley failed to take any steps

in response to their known error. Sabo is not alleging, as the 

dissenting opinion’s duty analysis implies, that corrections 

officials are, as a general matter, deliberately indifferent for 

failing to correct excessive probation terms. This distinction 

draws Sabo’s case even closer to Hankins, where the parole 

officer’s liability was based on his failure to do anything to 

ensure he was enforcing the correct probation term, not on his 

failure to adjust the date the term expired—something he had 

no power to do. See id. Likewise, Hicks and Haley cannot be 

liable for failing to do something that they had no power to 

do (for example, enter a court order), but the fact that their 

responsibilities included correcting sentencing errors gives 

rise to the inference that they could have done something to

prompt the correction of Sabo’s sentence once they realized 

their mistake. See id. Further supporting that inference, Erickson was told that the Department of Corrections was “no 

longer commuting” excessive probation terms in 2018, implying that there had been an opportunity to commute Sabo’s 

sentence at some time prior. And if, as Sabo alleges, Hicks and 

Haley failed to take any action within their power to correct 

the error that they knew they had made, his unlawfully long 

probation was a reasonably foreseeable result of that failure. 

The defendants argue that even if Hicks and Haley knew 

“as a statistical matter” that some number of “unidentified individuals” were “likely issued some unlawful terms of probation,” this could not constitute deliberate indifference because it was merely “knowledge of a general likelihood of 

explained in Wells, “keeping a person in [custody] beyond the end of his 

term violates the Eighth Amendment . . . when the proper length is uncontested.” Id. at 602 (emphasis added). 
No. 21-3332 11

errors” and not specific knowledge that Sabo’s sentence was 

incorrect.

In Perrault, the case relied on by the defendants, the district court concluded that the plaintiff, also serving an unlawfully long Wisconsin probation term, had merely alleged that 

the defendants (who included Hicks and Haley) “were aware 

of a risk of unlawful sentences generally; not that they were 

aware of a specific risk that [the plaintiff’s] sentence was unlawful.” 2016 WL 126918, at *3. But Sabo’s complaint alleges 

that Hicks and Haley had more than a knowledge of a “risk 

of unlawful sentences generally.” Rather, Sabo alleges that 

they had actual knowledge that a specific group of people—

probationers whose sentences they had reviewed under the 

wrong standard between 2003 and 2005—were at a substantial risk of serving unlawfully long probation terms. Their failure to identify the specific individuals in this group who were 

affected does not, Sabo argues, immunize them from liability. 

We agree. We have previously rejected the argument that 

deliberate indifference requires knowledge of risk to a specific

person. In Brown v. Budz, involving a claim that prison officials had been deliberately indifferent by failing to protect a 

white prisoner from another prisoner known to be violent towards whites, we held that “a deliberate indifference claim 

may be predicated on custodial officers’ knowledge that a 

specific individual poses a heightened risk of assault to even a 

large class of detainees—notwithstanding the officials’ failure or 

inability to comprehend in advance the particular identity of 

this individual’s ultimate victim.” 398 F.3d 904, 915 (7th Cir. 

2005) (emphasis added). That decision followed Farmer, see id.

at 913, where the Supreme Court explained that a prison official may not escape liability “by showing that, while he was 
12 No. 21-3332 

aware of an obvious, substantial risk[,] he did not know that 

the complainant was especially likely to [suffer the consequences of that risk,]” Farmer, 511 U.S. at 843. As the Court 

elaborated, “it does not matter” whether the risk exists for 

“reasons personal to [the prisoner] or because all prisoners in 

his situation face such a risk.” Id.

Like the prisoners in Brown and Farmer, Sabo was part of 

“an identifiable group” facing a known, heightened risk of 

cruel and unusual punishment—in this case, an unlawfully 

long probation term. See 398 F.3d at 914–15; 511 U.S. at 843. 

As alleged, Hicks and Haley knew of the heightened risk to 

that class and did nothing after they realized their error. As in 

Brown and Farmer, the defendants’ failure to identify the specific probationers who might be harmed by that error does not 

prevent constitutional liability.

Sabo has therefore stated a claim of deliberate indifference 

against Hicks and Haley.

B. Hicks and Haley are not entitled to qualified immunity at this juncture

Hicks and Haley argue that even if Sabo has stated a claim 

of deliberate indifference they should be entitled to qualified 

immunity. “The doctrine of qualified immunity protects government officials from liability for civil damages insofar as 

their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or 

constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would 

have known.” Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009) 

(cleaned). To be clearly established, “a right must be specific 

to the relevant factual context of a cited case,” but “the very 

action in question need not have previously been held unlawful for a public official to have reasonable notice of the 
No. 21-3332 13

illegality of some action.” Figgs, 829 F.3d at 906 (cleaned). 

While the case need not be “directly on point for a right to be

clearly established,” it “must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Kisela v. Hughes, 584 U.S. 

100, 104 (2018). We have said that is a “high bar.” Lopez v. Sheriff of Cook Cnty., 993 F.3d 981, 988 (7th Cir. 2021). 

Relying on Sample v. Diecks, 885 F.2d 1099 (3d Cir. 1989), 

and Haygood v. Younger, 769 F.2d 1350 (9th Cir. 1985), Sabo 

argues that he had a clearly established right to avoid an unlawfully long sentence due to the failure of corrections officials to correct—or at the very least, investigate—known sentencing errors. In Sample, a corrections official whose job was, 

in part, reviewing the computation of sentences was informed 

by the plaintiff that his sentence had been vacated and he 

“should be out of jail.” 885 F.2d at 1104. Despite this, the official did nothing, nor did he refer the problem to anyone else. 

Id. at 1105. The Third Circuit found this was enough to support a claim of deliberate indifference. Id. at 1118–19. 

Similarly, the plaintiff in Haygood wrote a letter to his warden questioning his sentence and demanding his release, 

which was forwarded to two “Records Officers” at the California Department of Corrections. 769 F.2d at 1353. The Ninth 

Circuit affirmed liability for the record office defendants because “after being put on notice, [they] simply refused to investigate a computational error,” which was enough to find 

deliberate indifference. Id. at 1355 (quoting Haygood v. 

Younger, 527 F. Supp. 808, 823 (E.D. Cal. 1981)). 

The defendants contend that both Sample and Haygood are 

factually distinguished: they note that, in both cases, the 

plaintiff himself informed corrections officials of the sentencing error, but Hicks and Haley became aware of the probation 
14 No. 21-3332 

term issue on their own. As the defendants see it, Sabo cannot 

point to any sufficiently “particularized decisions” that could 

have put Hicks and Haley “on notice that corrections officers, 

who review state court sentences, act with deliberate indifference if they determine that they had misunderstood a sentencing statute but do not re-review the state court’s prior 

judgments in order to detect and notify the state courts of its 

errors.” 

We disagree. We previously recognized in Figgs v. Dawson

that Sample and Haygood clearly established that failure to investigate a complaint that an inmate is being held longer than 

the lawful term of his sentence can constitute deliberate indifference under the Eighth Amendment. 829 F.3d at 906. In 

Figgs, a recordkeeper with the Illinois Department of Corrections was informed by a prisoner that his sentence had been 

miscalculated but the recordkeeper took no action to investigate or correct the error. Id. at 900–01. We held that the recordkeeper was not entitled to qualified immunity because 

“closely analogous” cases, including Sample and Haygood, had 

clearly established the obligation of corrections officials—and 

recordkeepers in particular—to investigate unlawful sentences. Id. at 906. 

While it is true that Sabo did not himself make Hicks and 

Haley aware of his unlawfully long probation term, we must 

accept at this phase that they were aware of at least some sentencing errors in the identifiable class of probationers to 

which Sabo belonged, and therefore had knowledge of some

“prisoner’s problem, and thus of the risk that unwarranted 

punishment was being, or would be, inflicted.” Sample, 885 

F.2d at 1110. We can see no reason why the source of the 

knowledge of a constitutional risk is relevant when there is a 
No. 21-3332 15

clearly established constitutional duty to address that known 

risk. To be sure, unlike the officials in Sample and Haygood, the 

defendants here did not know the “identity of . . . [the] ultimate victim[s]” of that known risk of unlawfully long probation sentences. Brown, 398 F.3d. at 915. But their failure to ascertain the identities of those affected by their mistake does 

not put their obligation to investigate the risk up for debate. 

See Kisela, 584 U.S. at 104. 

The dissenting opinion distinguishes Sabo’s case from 

Sample and Haygood on the additional ground that the risk to 

the plaintiffs in those cases was unlawful terms of incarceration, rather than probation. But as our caselaw makes clear, 

that is a distinction without a difference: Probationers have an 

Eighth Amendment right against excessive probation terms. 

See Hankins, 786 F.3d at 605 (“Parole is a form of custody. . . . 

A lawless extension of custody is certainly unusual, and it is 

cruel in the sense of being imposed without any legal authority.”). 

As a final note, we have observed that in some “rare” 

cases, the law can be “clearly established” even without an 

analogous case if “a defendant’s conduct was so egregious 

and unreasonable that . . . no reasonable [official] could have 

thought he was acting lawfully.” Reed v. Palmer, 906 F.3d 540, 

547 (7th Cir. 2018) (cleaned). The Supreme Court has explained that “the salient question . . . is whether the state of 

the law . . . gave [defendants] fair warning that their [conduct] was unconstitutional.” Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 

(2002); see also Taylor v. Riojas, 592 U.S. 7, 8–9 (2020). As alleged, Hicks’s and Haley’s jobs involved reviewing and correcting unlawfully long probation terms. Yet when they discovered their error—one that might affect more than a 
16 No. 21-3332 

thousand sentences—they did nothing, not even tell someone

else of the problem. Given their responsibilities and 

knowledge, their decision to do nothing at all was both egregious and unreasonable.

In sum, assuming all facts and inferences in Sabo’s favor, 

Hicks and Haley are not entitled to qualified immunity on the 

record before us. See Hanson v. LeVan, 967 F.3d 584, 597 

(7th Cir. 2020). 

C. Summary judgment was appropriate for Erickson 

and Hanson on the Eighth Amendment claim

Sabo also challenges the grant of summary judgment to 

the probation officers, Erickson and Hanson. We review 

de novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment, considering all facts and making all reasonable inferences in the 

light most favorable to Sabo. Figgs, 829 F.3d at 902. Sabo maintains that Erickson and Hanson were deliberately indifferent 

to his rights under the Eighth Amendment when they failed 

to release him from his probation hold after being informed 

that his sentence was unlawfully long. Sabo relies on section 

973.09(2m) of the Wisconsin Statutes, which reads, in full: “If 

a court imposes a term of probation in excess of the maximum 

authorized by statute, the excess is void and the term of probation is valid only to the extent of the maximum term authorized by statute. The term is commuted without further 

proceedings.” Because his term of probation was to be “commuted without further proceedings,” Sabo contends, Erickson and Hanson were required to free him without waiting 

for the sentencing judge to amend Sabo’s judgment.

The statute is silent on both the process for determining 

whether a term of probation is excessive and who has the 
No. 21-3332 17

power to effect a release. Sabo does not explain why, under 

§ 973.09(2m), Nehring’s email was sufficient to establish the 

invalidity of his probation term or why the probation 

officers—rather than, for example, jail officials—were obliged 

to release him. But even assuming that Erickson and Hanson 

had both the authority to release Sabo from the revocation 

hold before the court issued an amended judgment and some 

obligation to do so under § 973.09(2m), they could not have 

been deliberately indifferent to Sabo’s Eighth Amendment 

rights. 

A government official is deliberately indifferent when she 

does nothing or takes action so ineffectual under the circumstances that deliberate indifference can be inferred. Figgs, 

829 F.3d at 903. Erickson’s actions were far from ineffectual. 

Upon learning from Sabo’s attorney that his probation term 

was unlawfully long, Erickson immediately asked the Department’s Central Records Office to review Sabo’s judgment of 

conviction. After confirming the error, Erickson forwarded an 

email that advised Sabo’s attorney to contact the sentencing 

court. Because of Erickson’s actions, both Sabo’s attorney and 

the Department contacted the sentencing court, Sabo’s judgment was amended, and he was released from custody three 

weeks later. Erickson’s actions (at least once Sabo succeeded 

in contacting her, which was not easy) were prompt and effective, not indifferent. And Sabo does not attempt to explain 

what additional actions Hanson—the supervisor—could or 

should have taken.

Accordingly, Erickson and Hanson were not deliberately 

indifferent to Sabo’s right to be free from cruel and unusual 

punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
18 No. 21-3332 

D. Summary judgment was appropriate for Erickson 

and Hanson on the Fourth Amendment claim

Sabo lastly contends that once Erickson and Hanson were 

informed that Sabo’s probation was invalid, his continued detention became unreasonable and, therefore, the probation officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights by failing to immediately release him. The only authority Sabo provides for 

his contention that the Fourth Amendment required his immediate release is the factually distinct Rodriguez v. United

States, involving a police dog search of a car conducted after 

the completion of a traffic stop. 575 U.S. 348, 350 (2015). 

We have held that state officials are not liable for holding 

people in custody pursuant to a facially valid court order unless the custodian knows that judge refuses to make an independent decision or there is doubt about the identity of the 

detainee. See Hoffman v. Knoebel, 894 F.3d 836, 844 (7th Cir. 

2018). But the state-court judge here corrected Sabo’s sentence 

and there was no question of mistaken identity. Sabo does not 

otherwise explain why his lawyer’s assertion that his sentence 

was overly long—or the agreement of a non-attorney Department employee—made Sabo’s continued detention unreasonable in the face of a still-valid judgment. Erickson and Hanson 

therefore cannot be liable under § 1983 for continuing to enforce that judgment prior to its amendment. See Hernandez 

v. Sheahan, 455 F.3d 772, 778 (7th Cir. 2006) (“There is no basis 

for an award of damages against executive officials whose 

policy is to carry out [a] judge’s orders.”).

III.Conclusion

For the reasons above we VACATE and REMAND the district court’s dismissal of Sabo’s deliberate indifference claims 
No. 21-3332 19

against Hicks and Haley for proceedings consistent with this 

opinion, and we AFFIRM in all other respects.
20 No. 21-3332 

ST. EVE, Circuit Judge, dissenting in part. Everyone agrees 

that John Sabo’s probation term exceeded the applicable 

maximum under Wisconsin law. The state court judge who 

imposed Sabo’s sentence has absolute immunity, so the 

question is whether employees in the Wisconsin Department 

of Corrections Central Records Unit can be held personally 

liable for failing to catch the error earlier. I agree with the 

majority that the district court properly granted summary 

judgment in favor of Megan Erickson and Barb Hanson. But 

unlike the majority, I believe Sabo also failed to state an 

Eighth Amendment claim against Sheri Hicks and Debra 

Haley, and even if he had, qualified immunity would apply.

The majority’s qualified immunity analysis applies an 

impermissibly high level of generality in direct conflict with 

the Supreme Court’s directive. I respectfully dissent. 

I 

The district court dismissed Sabo’s claims against Hicks 

and Haley for failure to state a claim. In reversing that decision, the majority devotes the bulk of its analysis to the argument that a plaintiff can state an Eighth Amendment claim by 

alleging deliberate indifference toward a large class: tens of 

thousands of persons whose probation sentences Hicks and 

Haley reviewed under an incorrect understanding of Wisconsin law, approximately 1,000–1,500 of which contained unlawfully long probation terms. It notes that we accept the 

well-pleaded facts in Sabo’s complaint as true and draw all 

reasonable inferences in his favor, see Peterson v. Wexford 

Health Sources, Inc., 986 F.3d 746, 751 (7th Cir. 2021), but not

that “we need not accept as true statements of law or unsupported conclusory factual allegations,” Bilek v. Fed. Ins. Co., 8 
No. 21-3332 21

F.4th 581, 586 (7th Cir. 2021) (internal quotation marks omitted). That is the first place Sabo’s complaint falters.

We read § 1983 against the “background of tort liability.” 

Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 187 (1961); see also City of Monterey 

v. Del Monte Dunes at Monterey, Ltd., 526 U.S. 687, 709 (1999). 

“[T]he plaintiff in a civil rights tort action [under § 1983] bears 

the burden of establishing that the defendant owed plaintiff a 

duty, that the defendant breached his duties to the plaintiff, 

and that his breach caused the plaintiff actual damages.” Rodriguez v. Woodall, 189 F. App’x 522, 527 (7th Cir. 2006) (quoting Jones v. Hamelman, 869 F.2d 1023, 1031 (7th Cir. 1989)).

Herein lies Sabo’s first problem. As the majority concedes, 

Sabo cannot prevail on an Eighth Amendment claim brought 

under § 1983 unless the defendants owe him a duty. See, e.g., 

Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 832–33 (1994) (duty to provide 

humane conditions of confinement); Thomas v. Blackard, 2 

F.4th 716, 719 (7th Cir. 2021) (same). But Sabo’s only allegations regarding duty are conclusions of law: Hicks and Haley 

“owed a duty of care to all those persons whose sentences 

they reviewed, including John Sabo, to note any terms of probation that exceeded the maximum period permitted by law 

and to correct those illegalities,” and “[o]nce they realized 

that ... they had been analyzing judgments of conviction incorrectly, they owed a duty of care to take steps to review” 

those judgments. We need not, and should not, take these legal conclusions as true. Bilek, 8 F.4th at 586. Simply alleging 

that Hicks and Haley’s job responsibilities included reviewing probation terms does not establish that they owed a duty 

under the Eighth Amendment to inmates like Sabo, as opposed to simply a duty under state law. See Wells v. Caudill, 

967 F.3d 598, 602 (7th Cir. 2020) (“[A]n error of state law is not 
22 No. 21-3332 

properly rectified by deeming that error a constitutional 

tort.”). 

Contrary to the majority’s assertion, I do not take issue 

solely with Sabo’s failure to plead facts with respect to a duty. 

The bigger problem is that no legal authority imposes a duty 

on administrative state employees under the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution to check tens of thousands of sentences just in case a state court handed down an inaccurate 

one. Even if this was part of the defendants’ job description, 

failure to fully perform the duties of one’s job does not, on its 

own, create a constitutional violation. See Hunter v. Mueske, 73 

F.4th 561, 567 n.1 (7th Cir. 2023). Indeed, we have recognized 

on essentially identical allegations against these same defendants that “even if Wisconsin law imposed a duty on any of 

these defendants to question the judgment” of a sentencing 

court, failure to recognize a sentencing error in such an instance is merely negligent, and “negligent conduct does not 

violate the Constitution.” Perrault v. Wis. Dep’t of Corr., 669 F. 

App’x 302, 303 (7th Cir. 2016). 

Even assuming Hicks and Haley owed Sabo a duty when 

they initially reviewed his file, he must also show that they 

were not just negligent, but deliberately indifferent to a serious risk that his probation term was excessive. See Huber v. 

Anderson, 909 F.3d 201, 208 (7th Cir. 2018) (deliberate indifference “requires more than negligence or even gross negligence; a plaintiff must show that the defendant was essentially criminally reckless, that is, ignored a known risk”). Sabo 

does not allege that Hicks and Haley knew their interpretation of state law was wrong when they reviewed his sentence. 

Indeed, Sabo concedes that their original error “was probably 

just negligence, not deliberate indifference to a known risk.” 
No. 21-3332 23

Thus, Sabo’s claim can only be based on the failure to revisit 

his file after the fact.

Did Hicks and Haley have an affirmative duty to doublecheck sentences already calculated and imposed by a state 

court, without some knowledge of a risk of an inaccurate calculation for a particular person? Sabo’s only allegation in support of this proposition is that Hicks and Haley had a duty to 

retroactively correct mistaken probation terms. Again, we 

should not accept this legal conclusion. Bilek, 8 F.4th at 584. 

Sabo cites no Seventh Circuit case in support of this duty, 

without which “it is hard to see why we should read federal 

law to expose state officials to damages if a federal court, in 

retrospect, concludes that [those officials] have made errors of 

state law.” Wells, 967 F.3d at 601. In fact, neither we nor any 

other court has ever said that an administrative corrections 

employee tasked with reviewing sentences owes a duty to 

every person under sentence such that a failure to correct a 

miscalculation, without any notice of a specific mistake in a 

particular person’s record, amounts to a constitutional violation. 

To be sure, deliberate indifference to the risk that an inmate is serving an “unlawfully prolonged” period of imprisonment as a result of a probation violation that occurs after 

the probation term should have ended violates the Eighth 

Amendment. See Huber, 909 F.3d at 206–08. But that does not 

mean officials always violate the Constitution if they miscalculate the length of a probation term under state law or fail to 

go back and look for earlier errors. Cf. Wells, 967 F.3d at 602 

(“[K]eeping a person in prison beyond the end of his term violates the Eighth Amendment ... when the proper length is 
24 No. 21-3332 

uncontested.” (emphasis added)).* Only when such an administrative official is alerted to a specific error—rather than a potential error somewhere in tens of thousands of sentences—

have we or any other court found that the Eighth Amendment 

imposes a duty to investigate. See Figgs v. Dawson, 829 F.3d 

895, 906 (7th Cir. 2016); Sample v. Diecks, 885 F.2d 1099, 1118–

19 (3d Cir. 1989); Haygood v. Younger, 769 F.2d 1350, 1355 (9th 

Cir. 1985) (en banc). The majority’s contrary conclusion recognizes an Eighth Amendment claim for failing to pull the 

needle from a haystack.

The out-of-circuit cases Sabo attempts to use to establish a 

duty reveal another problem with his claims against Hicks 

and Haley: causation. In Sample v. Diecks, a former inmate 

sued a senior records officer who miscalculated the time he 

had already served on another conviction, causing the plaintiff to spend an additional nine months in prison. 885 F.2d at 

1102–03. Critically, the officer proximately caused the prolonged period of incarceration: after the plaintiff was granted 

bail pending a new trial, he personally spoke with the defendant about his situation, and the defendant informed the prison

that the inmate was not eligible for release. The Third Circuit 

* The majority asserts that Sabo alleges it was the defendants’ 

“fail[ure] to take any steps in response to their known error” that gives rise 

to the constitutional violation. But in fact, Sabo alleges that their only duty, 

even after discovering their misunderstanding, was “to take steps to review the unlawful judgments of conviction and correct the illegalities.” 

Even after Hicks and Haley discovered their misunderstanding, it was the 

court’s judgment, not their own mistakes, that they had a responsibility to 

correct, according to Sabo. Nevertheless, these distinctions do not matter

because Sabo’s allegations of duty owed are legal conclusions, not factual 

assertions, and we need not presume them to be true at the pleading stage.
No. 21-3332 25

held that the defendant was liable under the Eighth Amendment because he “had the responsibility to review inmates’ 

sentencing status and the authority to direct the release of inmates whose time had been served.” Id. at 1110. The court emphasized that to succeed on such a claim, “the plaintiff must 

demonstrate a causal connection between the official’s response 

to the problem and the infliction of the unjustified detention.” 

Id. (emphasis added). 

Sabo repeatedly asserts that Haley and Hicks proximately 

caused his prolonged probation, but his allegations do not 

support that conclusion. Twelve years passed between the 

time Haley and Hicks discovered their mistaken interpretation of state law and the time Sabo’s probation should have 

ended. Hicks and Haley may have been a but-for cause of the 

excessive probation term appearing in prison records (although the blame ultimately rests with the sentencing judge), 

but in the intervening years, Sabo or his attorney could have 

asked the state court to correct his sentence. See Hunter, 73 

F.4th at 567–68 (noting that a superseding cause may ”sever 

the defendant’s liability”). Unlike in Sample, where the defendant had reason to believe the plaintiff’s sentence was excessive, Sabo alleges only a generalized duty to review inmates’ files, not any facts suggesting Hicks and Haley had 

reason to revisit his file in particular. See also Haygood, 769 F.2d 

at 1352, 1355 (finding deliberate indifference where the plaintiff put the defendants on notice about an error in his sentence). These allegations do not support the conclusion that 

Hicks and Haley’s failure to notice and correct the error in 

Sabo’s probation sentence proximately caused his unlawful 

incarceration.
26 No. 21-3332 

The majority attempts to align this case with Hankins v. 

Lowe on the grounds that an allegation that the defendant 

“fail[ed] to do anything to ensure that he was enforcing the 

correct term” was sufficient to state a claim for deliberate indifference under the Eighth Amendment. But Hankins is 

clearly distinguishable because Hankins specifically asked 

her parole officer when her parole would expire, and he refused to tell her. 786 F.3d 603, 604 (7th Cir. 2015). In fact, not 

only would he not tell her when her parole expired, he told 

her, “Arkansas would determine when it expired and would 

revoke her parole if she asked the Arkansas authorities for the 

date.” Id. Under those facts, we found that the parole officer 

“must have realized that he had to find out when his parolee’s 

parole would expire, since she didn’t know and he had forbidden 

her to inquire of the Arkansas authorities.” Id. at 605–06 (emphasis added). In that case, the parole officer had specific 

knowledge of a particular risk to Hankins and even affirmatively denied her any information, prohibited her from seeking it out, and then refused to learn the date himself. This is a 

far cry from Hicks and Haley, who were not the only source 

of information for probation information, who did not deny 

Sabo access to any information, and who received no specific 

inquiry into Sabo’s probationary period.

By looking past the flaws in Sabo’s complaint, the majority 

fails to grapple with serious issues of duty, causation, and deliberate indifference. More concerning, it expands Eighth 

Amendment liability to anyone that “could have done something to prompt the correction of” a mistake that led to a constitutional violation. 
No. 21-3332 27

II

Assuming for the sake of argument that Sabo pleaded a 

viable Eighth Amendment claim, he cannot overcome qualified immunity. Qualified immunity shields government officials from damages liability unless they violated clearly established law. See Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009); 

Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). A right is clearly 

established if it is “dictated by ‘controlling authority’ or ‘a robust consensus of cases of persuasive authority.’” District of 

Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 63 (2018) (quoting Ashcroft v. 

al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741–42 (2011)). “The precedent must be 

clear enough that every reasonable official would interpret it 

to establish the particular rule the plaintiff seeks to apply.” Id.

The Supreme Court has “repeatedly told courts not to define 

clearly established law at too high a level of generality,” City 

of Tahlequah v. Bond, 595 U.S. 9, 12 (2021) (per curiam), “since 

doing so avoids the crucial question whether the official acted 

reasonably in the particular circumstances that he or she 

faced,” Wesby, 583 U.S. at 63–64. 

The majority holds that factual issues preclude resolving 

whether Hicks and Haley are entitled to qualified immunity 

at this stage. To be sure, “the motion-to-dismiss stage is rarely 

the most suitable procedural setting to determine whether an 

official is qualifiedly immune,” Roldan v. Stroud, 52 F.4th 335, 

339 (7th Cir. 2022) (internal quotation marks omitted), and 

defendants may raise the defense at later stages even if 

immunity is denied on the pleadings. Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 

U.S. 299, 305–07 (1996). But qualified immunity shields 

government officials from the burdens of litigation as well as 

liability, id. at 306, so we may deny qualified immunity at the 

motion-to-dismiss stage only if “the facts, taken in the light 
28 No. 21-3332 

most favorable to the plaintiff, show that the defendants 

violated a constitutional right” that “was clearly established 

at the time of the alleged violation,” Campbell v. Kallas, 936 

F.3d 536, 545 (7th Cir. 2019) (cleaned up).

The rule of law the majority claims Hicks and Haley may 

have violated comes from Figgs, which held that out-of-circuit 

decisions including Sample and Haygood “clearly established 

... that the failure to investigate a claim that an inmate is being 

held longer than the lawful term of his sentence violates the 

Eighth Amendment if it is the result of indifference.” 829 F.3d 

at 906. Maybe so, viewed at that level of generality. But when 

we consider the particular facts of this case, crucial distinctions emerge. In all three of the earlier cases, the defendants 

were on notice that there was a problem with the particular 

plaintiff’s sentence. Id. at 899–900 (plaintiff submitted complaints about sentence miscalculation); Sample, 885 F.2d at 

1104 (plaintiff told defendant he should be “out of jail”); 

Haygood, 769 F.2d at 1353 (plaintiff sent defendant a letter). 

Here Hicks and Haley had no notice about Sabo’s unlawful 

probation term. Additionally, in the previous cases, the risk 

to which the defendants were deliberately indifferent was that 

the plaintiff was unlawfully incarcerated based on a sentencing 

error, while the risk here is a level removed. Hicks and Haley 

were aware that perhaps 1,000–1,500 of the tens of thousands 

of sentences they reviewed may have contained unlawfully 

long probation terms, creating a risk that defendants might 

serve excessive probation sentences. That risk would only result in unlawful imprisonment if such a defendant violated a 

term of his probation and the state pursued that violation, as 

happened to Sabo. 
No. 21-3332 29

The majority reasons that Hicks and Haley’s undisputed

lack of notice that Sabo’s probation term was excessive does 

not undermine the possibility that Hicks and Haley violated

clearly established law. This conclusion flows from the majority’s reading of Figgsto clearly establish “the obligation of corrections officials—and recordkeepers in particular—to investigate unlawful sentences.” That rule, however, is nowhere to 

be found in Figgs. There, we held that a prison official violates 

the Eighth Amendment if she “fail[s] to investigate the substance of [an inmate’s] complaints” and that “the failure to investigate a claim that an inmate is being held longer than the 

lawful term of his sentence” was a clearly established Eighth 

Amendment violation. 829 F.3d at 906 (emphases added). 

Figgs was about a prison official’s obligation to respond to an 

issue with a particular inmate’s sentence. Accord Sample, 885 

F.2d at 1110 (finding an Eighth Amendment violation when 

prison official with knowledge of the plaintiff’s problem and 

the power and duty to fix it fails to take action); Haygood, 769 

F.2d at 1355 (holding that Eighth Amendment liability is appropriate where the defendant is on notice of an erroneous 

sentence). Figgs, in other words, was about notice. 

The majority’s leap from the facts of Figgs is not its only 

logical flaw. Its analysis also elides an important factual distinction between those cases and this one. In Figgs, Sample, 

and Haygood, the plaintiff was imprisoned beyond his lawful 

term of incarceration. But this case concerns an unlawfully 

long term of probation, which turns into incarceration only if 

the defendant at some future time violates the terms of his 

probation, as Sabo did here. I do not mean to suggest that sentencing a defendant to an excessive term of probation is not 

serious, but the qualified immunity doctrine requires us to 
30 No. 21-3332 

mind distinctions like these when considering whether the 

law is clearly established.

The majority is correct that our caselaw treats probation as 

a form of custody. But that does not collapse the factual differences between Sample and Haygood and the case before us 

for purposes of qualified immunity. The Supreme Court has 

repeatedly warned that to deny qualified immunity, a case 

must be factually similar so as to put a reasonable person on 

notice of a constitutional violation. See, e.g., Kisela v. Hughes, 

584 U.S. 100, 106–08 (2018) (per curiam). 

The majority ignores that warning and concludes it is impossible to resolve the qualified immunity question at this 

stage because it “can see no reason why the source of the 

knowledge of a constitutional risk is relevant when there is a 

clearly established constitutional duty to address that known 

risk.” But that analysis comes at an impermissibly high level 

of generality. As a result, three cases holding that officials 

must respond to a specific inmate’s complaint that he is being

wrongfully imprisoned have enlarged into a rule that state 

administrative employees must review tens of thousands of

sentences or face personal liability if a judge imposed an excessive probation term. That is not how the Supreme Court 

has instructed us to apply qualified immunity—the cases the 

majority relies on do not put the unconstitutionality of Hicks 

and Haley’s conduct “beyond debate.” Id. at 104–05 (internal 

quotation marks omitted). By extending these cases to require 

prison officials to investigate all sentences regardless of any 

specific notice, the majority does exactly what the Supreme 

Court has directed us not to do—it casts the law at too high a 

level of generality to give officials proper notice of an obligation to investigate even without a specific complaint. 
No. 21-3332 31

Indeed, Perrault makes clear that the legality of Hicks and 

Haley’s conduct is, at the very least, debatable. 669 F. App’x 

at 302–03. In Perrault, we deemed an inmate’s appeal frivolous 

when he alleged that employees at the Wisconsin Department 

of Corrections—including Hicks and Haley—were deliberately indifferent for failing “to check the accuracy of the sentence pronounced by the state judge” because those allegations suggested at most negligence. Id. at 303. The majority’s

attempt to distinguish Perrault on the ground that Sabo 

pleaded his claim better than Perrault fails because there is no 

meaningful difference between the factual allegations in the 

two cases.

In Perrault, as here, Hicks and Haley were named defendants. Specifically, Perrault, who was proceeding pro se, alleged that Hicks and Haley were deliberately indifferent:

• Haley “attended a training session ... where 

she learned” that three years was the maximum term of probation, and she was “required to share this information with ... 

Hicks ....” ¶¶ 450–51. 

• “Haley and Hicks realized apparently that 

they were not checking judgments ... with 

this limitation in mind.” ¶ 452. 

• “Haley was aware that ... [if] an unlawfully 

longer [probation] period” was not “corrected by her, there would assuredly be a 

risk that the offender would be serving a 

longer sentence than permitted by law ....” 

¶ 454; accord ¶ 455 (Hicks). 
32 No. 21-3332 

Liberally construed, Perrault alleged Hicks and Haley had 

actual knowledge of a substantial risk that sentences they had 

reviewed under their incorrect reading of state law contained 

unlawfully long probation terms. But despite the generous 

standard of review, we concluded not only that Perrault had

failed to allege a plausible constitutional violation, but that his 

claim was frivolous because it indicated at most negligence on 

Hicks and Haley’s part. Perrault, 669 F. App’x at 303. The majority fails to address why Sabo’s substantially similar factual 

allegations preclude Hicks and Haley from qualified immunity.

The majority’s alternative holding on qualified immunity—that Hicks and Haley’s “conduct was so egregious and 

unreasonable that ... no reasonable [official] could have 

thought [s]he was acting lawfully,” Reed v. Palmer, 906 F.3d 

540, 547 (7th Cir. 2018) (internal quotation marks omitted)—

is likewise flawed. The “obviousness” doctrine applies in 

cases involving conduct far more extreme than what Sabo alleges Hicks and Haley did here. See, e.g., Taylor v. Riojas, 141 

S. Ct. 52, 53–54 (2020) (per curiam) (finding an obvious violation where prison officials intentionally confined an inmate to 

frigid cells covered in feces for six days); Hope v. Pelzer, 536 

U.S. 730, 741–42 (2002) (finding an obvious violation where

prison guards handcuffed an inmate to a hitching post outside for seven hours); Stockton v. Milwaukee Cnty., 44 F.4th 605, 

620–21 (7th Cir. 2022) (finding an obvious violation where a 

prison guard deliberately caused an inmate in “debilitating 

medical distress” to fall and hit his head). It is even more difficult to apply the obviousness doctrine where we have found 

similar allegations to fall short of stating a claim. Perrault, 669 

F. App’x at 303. 
No. 21-3332 33

In the end, the majority fails to explain how Hicks and Haley are not at the very least entitled to qualified immunity 

when Perrault, the most factually similar case, found no constitutional violation. In light of Perrault, it is hard to see how 

the alleged violation here was clearly established in law when 

we found an appeal involving similar allegations against the 

same defendants “frivolous.” 

* * * 

The district court’s rulings should be affirmed in all respects. Sabo did not plead a plausible Eighth Amendment 

claim against Hicks and Haley, and even if he had, the defendants would be entitled to qualified immunity because 

there is no clearly established right to have correctional employees unilaterally review judgments of conviction for errors 

in probation sentences. I respectfully dissent.