United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted November 21, 2018*

Decided November 21, 2018 

Before 

JOEL M. FLAUM, Circuit Judge 

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge

No. 18-2101 

HYE-YOUNG PARK, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE 

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Central District of Illinois 

No. 2:18-cv-02090-CSB-EIL 

Colin S. Bruce, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

Hye-Young “Lisa” Park, a former postdoctoral researcher at the University of 

Illinois at Chicago, complained to school officials that two men sexually harassed her. 

She sued the Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois, among others, for race and 

sex discrimination, retaliation, and the denial of due process. The district court 

 

*

 The defendants have not been served with process and are not participating in 

this appeal. We have agreed to decide this case without oral argument because the brief 

and record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would 

not significantly aid the court. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

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

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 18-2101 Page 2 

dismissed her complaint on res judicata grounds because she had raised identical or 

nearly identical claims in a prior suit. We affirm on alternative grounds. 

Park first brought a federal suit in June 2015 against the Board of Trustees of the 

University of Illinois and two officials in the university’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and 

Access (ODEA) who had investigated her accusations that two men sexually harassed 

her. Park asserted that the Board of Trustees discriminated against her based on her sex, 

see Title IX, 20 U.S.C. § 1681, when university officials wrote a report stating that they 

could not help her and then did nothing; endorsed officials who retaliated against her 

based on her sex and race when they encouraged a professor to stop sponsoring Park 

for immigration purposes, see id.; 42 U.S.C. § 1981; and denied her due process by 

promoting policies under which officials could refuse to take action after someone 

complained about harassment, see 42 U.S.C. § 1983. As for the two ODEA officials, Park 

asserted a similar § 1981 claim of retaliation for their role in encouraging the professor 

to end her immigration sponsorship, and a similar due-process claim for their role in 

writing the report in which they said they had no power to stop the harassment and for 

their decision to take no action. 

The district court ruled against her. On the basis of Eleventh Amendment 

immunity, the court initially granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss her § 1983 and 

§ 1981 claims against the Board and her § 1981 retaliation claim against the ODEA 

officials. Later, in January 2018, the court entered summary judgment on the remaining 

claims against these defendants: the court found no evidence, first, that any defendant 

denied Park due process or discriminated against her after she notified the officials of 

harassment (because she could not point to any instance of harassment after she first 

complained to the ODEA) and, second, that any defendant had retaliated against her 

(because there was no evidence of any causal link between her notice to the ODEA and 

the professor stopping her immigration sponsorship). 

 Three months later, Park filed this suit against almost the same defendants (she 

replaced the two ODEA officials with two other university officials who reviewed the 

ODEA’s report). She again alleged that the Board discriminated and retaliated against 

her based on race and sex when it allowed officials to encourage the professor to stop 

sponsoring her immigration application, and denied her substantive due process when 

it endorsed policies that authorized the ODEA to refuse to stop the harassment. This 

time she added that the Board also violated Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act 

of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000d–2000d-7, 2000e–2000e-17, when, because of her sex and 

national origin, the officials who reviewed the ODEA report failed to amend the 
No. 18-2101 Page 3 

report’s conclusion or otherwise help her. As for the university officials, she alleged that 

they denied her substantive due process by turning a blind eye to the misconduct; 

retaliated against her based on race when they encouraged the professor to stop 

sponsoring her; and discriminated against her based on sex and national origin by not 

taking action to remedy the harassment. 

The district court dismissed this suit under the doctrine of res judicata. The court 

determined that the claims in both suits were identical or nearly identical; they were 

based on the same core of operative facts; and the judgment in the first suit was final. 

The court acknowledged that two different individuals had been named as defendants 

in this suit but concluded that the allegations against them were identical to those made 

against the individual university employees in the prior suit. 

On appeal, Park first contends that the district court erroneously applied res 

judicata to bar this suit because the prerequisites under that doctrine have not been met. 

Res judicata blocks a second lawsuit if there is (1) an identity of parties or privies in the 

two suits; (2) a final judgment on the merits in the first; and (3) an identity of claims. 

Barr v. Bd. of Trs. of W. Ill. Univ., 796 F.3d 837, 840 (7th Cir. 2015). Highlighting the first 

requirement, Park contends that the parties here are not identical because she has 

added as defendants the two university officials who reviewed the ODEA report. 

We agree with Park that the addition of the two new defendants defeats res 

judicata, see Taylor v. Sturgell, 553 U.S. 880, 893–96 (2008), but her claims are blocked for 

another reason—the doctrine of collateral estoppel. “Issue preclusion [collateral 

estoppel] bars successive litigation of an issue of fact or law actually litigated and 

resolved in a valid determination essential to the prior judgment, even if the issue 

recurs in the context of a different claim.” Dexia Credit Local v. Rogan, 629 F.3d 612, 628 

(7th Cir. 2010); see also Grede v. FCStone, LLC, 867 F.3d 767, 776 (7th Cir. 2017). Although 

collateral estoppel is an affirmative defense, a court may raise it sua sponte, as we do 

here, if it is plainly apparent from the face of the complaint. Arizona v. California, 530 

U.S. 392, 412 (2000); Walker v. Thompson, 288 F.3d 1005, 1009 (7th Cir. 2002). 

Here, there are precise issues of fact and law that were actually litigated and 

necessarily decided in the underlying case. Park’s Title VI and Title VII claims against 

the Board are based on the “same, or nearly the same, factual allegations” as 

undergirded her due-process claim in the first suit. Barr, 796 F.3d at 840 (internal 

quotation marks omitted). Specifically, the Title VI, Title VII, and due process claims are 

all based on her allegation that the Board was responsible for the university officials’ 

failure to stop the harassment. The district court concluded in the first suit that the 
No. 18-2101 Page 4 

Board was not responsible for the harassment she suffered because Park could not point 

to any instance of harassment after she complained to the ODEA. Similarly, regarding 

her allegations here of discrimination based on sex and national origin, the district court 

determined in the first suit that Park could not identify a single instance of harassment 

after she complained to the ODEA, so no university defendant could be liable for failing 

to correct a situation that did not require remedying. Finally, regarding Park’s 

allegations here of retaliation based on race, sex, and national origin, the district court 

determined in the first suit that there was no causal link between her complaint to the 

ODEA and her professor ending her immigration sponsorship. 

AFFIRMED