In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 13-3307

DEVON FRIEND f/k/a DEVON HODGES,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

VALLEY VIEW COMMUNITY UNIT

SCHOOL DISTRICT 365U, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 11 C 8418 — Ronald A. Guzmán, Judge.

ARGUED JANUARY 21, 2015 — DECIDED JUNE 12, 2015

Before BAUER, FLAUM, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

BAUER, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff-appellant, Devon Friend,

formerly known as Devon Hodges, once a standout Illinois

high school basketball player, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983

against Valley View Community School District 365U and

various administrators, teachers, and coaches employed by the
2 No. 13-3307

School District,1 as well as the Illinois High School Association

(“IHSA”) and its Executive Director Martin Hickman. Friend’s

third amended complaint raised six claims: First Amendment

retaliation, equal protection (class of one), substantive due

process, unconstitutional policy or custom (Monell), § 1983

conspiracy to violate his constitutional rights, and indemnification under the Illinois Tort Immunity Act, 745 ILCS 10/9-102.

At the close of discovery, both the School District and IHSA

defendants moved for summary judgment. In his summary

judgment order, the district court judge determined that Friend

failed to comply with Northern District of Illinois Rule 56.1.

Because of this failure, the court deemed admitted all of the

defendants’ properly supported facts and disregarded Friend’s

additional facts that lacked evidentiary support. The district

court judge then entered summary judgment in favor of both

the School District and IHSA defendants, disposing of all of

Friend’s claims.

Friend challenges this decision on appeal, and he challenges

the district court judge’s determination that he failed to comply

with Local Rule 56.1. For the following reasons, we affirm.

At the outset, we note that a lengthy recitation of the facts

is not necessary to our resolution of Friend’s appeal. For the

record, in both the district court and on appeal, makes our

discussion of the merits of the district court judge’s summary

judgment decision of necessity quite limited. That being said,

1

 The individual School District defendants are James Mitchem, Jr., James

Boudoris, Jeffery Bambule, Robert Brost, Alec Anderson, Paul Gammichia,

and Art Pahl. 
No. 13-3307 3

we dive right into Friend’s procedural challenge to the district

court’s enforcement of Rule 56.1.

I. The District Court’s Rule 56.1 Determination

Northern District of Illinois Rule 56.1(a)(3) requires a party

moving for summary judgment to include with that motion “a

statement of material facts as to which the moving party

contends there is no genuine issue and that entitle the moving

party to a judgment as a matter of law[.]” This statement must

be organized by numbered paragraphs and refer to the

“affidavits, parts of the record, and other supporting materials” that substantiate the asserted facts. Id. Both the School

District and IHSA defendants, as movants for summary

judgment, complied with Rule 56.1. Friend, the party opposing

summary judgment, was required to respond to each numbered paragraph and, in the case of any disagreement, provide

“specific references to the affidavits, parts of the record, and

other supporting materials relied upon[.]” Id. 56.1(b)(3)(B). As

a penalty for noncompliance, the Rule provides that “[a]ll

material facts set forth in the statement required of the moving

party will be deemed to be admitted unless controverted by

the statement of the opposing party.” Id. 56.1(b)(3)(C).

The district court found that both Friend’s response to the

defendants’ statements of material facts and Friend’s statement

of additional facts failed to comply with Rule 56.1. Because of

this failure, the court deemed Friend to have “admitted all of

the properly supported facts asserted by defendants and disregard[ed] any fact he asserted for which he did not provide

evidentiary support.” Friend contends that this decision was in

error. We review the district court’s enforcement of the local
4 No. 13-3307

rules for an abuse of discretion. F.T.C. v. Bay Area Bus. Council,

Inc., 423 F.3d 627, 633 (7th Cir. 2005). Because “local rule[s] of

a federal district court [are] written by and for district judges

to deal with the special problems of their court,” we are

inclined to “give a district court’s interpretation of his [or her]

local rules ... considerable weight.” Cichon v. Exelon Generation

Co., L.L.C., 401 F.3d 803, 810 (7th Cir. 2005) (citation omitted).

Friend argues that the facts the district court deemed

admitted “were amply contested” and “supported by references to the record, specifically to depositions submitted by

[d]efendants.” This is simply not the case. The district court

deemed Friend to have admitted the facts asserted in twentyone paragraphs from the defendants’ statements of material

facts. For eighteen of these paragraphs, Friend did not provide

any citation to appropriate record evidence in support of his

denial. See, e.g., Ammons v. Aramark Uniform Servs., Inc., 368

F.3d 809, 817 (7th Cir. 2004) (“[W]here a non-moving party

denies a factual allegation by the party moving for summary

judgment, that denial must include a specific reference to the

affidavit or other part of the record that supports such a

denial.”). As for the other three paragraphs, Friend provided

a citation to the record, but none of these citations support the

denials. Plainly stated, the district court did not abuse its

discretion in deeming these facts admitted.

Friend’s statement of additional facts is also deficient. As

the district court found, Friend failed to cite or submit evidence

in support of nearly all of the additional facts he asserted. At

times, Friend’s statement of additional facts goes on for pages

without providing a single citation to the record (for example,

paragraph 28 spans two pages, or more, and does not provide
No. 13-3307 5

a citation in support of any of the numerous factual statements

made therein). At other times, Friend provides citations, but

the citations provided are wholly inadequate. Throughout his

statement of additional facts, Friend cites to depositions

without identifying the corresponding deponent or the specific

page number(s) on which the asserted fact can be found. See

Ammons, 368 F.3d at 818 (“A court should not be expected to

review a lengthy record for facts that a party could have easily

identified with greater particularity.”). All in all, Friend’s

efforts cannot be considered compliant, let alone strictly

compliant, with the requirements of Rule 56.1. See Bordelon v.

Chicago Sch. Reform Bd. of Trustees, 233 F.3d 524, 527 (7th Cir.

2000) (“[W]e have consistently and repeatedly upheld a district

court’s discretion to require strict compliance with its local

rules governing summary judgment.”). Accordingly, the

district court did not abuse its discretion in disregarding the

facts contained in Friend’s statement of additional facts that

were not supported by proper citations to the record.

Having determined that the district court did not err in

finding that Friend violated Rule 56.1, we turn to the record on

appeal and the district court’s summary judgment determination.

II. The District Court’s Summary 

Judgment Determination

The district court entered summary judgment in favor of

the School District and IHSA defendants on each of Friend’s six

claims: First Amendment retaliation, equal protection (class of

one), substantive due process, unconstitutional policy or

custom (Monell), § 1983 conspiracy to violate his constitutional
6 No. 13-3307

rights, and indemnification under the Illinois Tort Immunity

Act, 745 ILCS 10/9-102. We review a district court’s grant of

summary judgment de novo, construing all facts and reasonable

inferences in the light most favorable to Friend, the nonmoving

party. Summary judgment is appropriate when there is “no

genuine issue as to any material fact and the movant is entitled

to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).

Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(a)(8)(A) states that

the argument section of a brief must contain “citations to the

authorities and parts of the record on which the appellant

relies[.]” But Friend’s brief, over the course of eighteen pages,

provides precisely six citations for factual assertions. These

citations, which principally refer to deposition testimony, do

not designate the specific page number(s) from the record or

cited deposition transcript where the asserted facts may be

found. Nor does Friend provide citations on a fact-by-fact

basis. Instead, he affixes citations to the end of paragraphs,

each of which contain numerous factual assertions. Further

complicating things, all but one of Friend’s six citations

reference multiple depositions, preceded by the introductory

signal “See” (the other citation in Friend’s brief is to a fifty-six

page deposition). For example, page fifteen of Friend’s brief

contains a citation that reads “See Dkt. 133-1, 137-1, 138-1, 139-

1”—the four documents referred to in this citation are depositions, which range from 101 to 169 pages long. We are not

required to scour through hundreds of pages of deposition

transcript in order to verify an assortment of facts, each of

which could be located anywhere within the multiple depositions cited. As we have cautioned time and again, “[j]udges are

not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in [the record].” United
No. 13-3307 7

Sates v. Dunkel, 927 F.2d 955, 956 (7th Cir. 1991); see also Corely

v. Rosewood Care Ctr., Inc. of Peoria, 388 F.3d 990, 1001 (7th Cir.

2004) (“[W]e will not root through the hundreds of documents

and thousands of pages that make up the record here to make

his case for him.”).

The situation would not be so bleak if we could refer back

to Friend’s statement of facts in order to verify the factual

assertions that he makes in his argument. See Fed. R. App. P.

28(a)(6) (requiring appellant’s opening brief contain “a concise

statement of the case; setting out the facts relevant to the issues

submitted for review ... with appropriate references to the

record”). But Friend does not provide a statement of facts

compliant with Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(a)(6).

Instead, he merely directs our attention, “for the ease of

analysis,” to his Rule 56.1 statement—the same statement of

facts that the district court found, and we confirmed, to suffer

from want of citation to evidentiary support. See Gross v. Town

of Cicero, Ill., 619 F.3d 697, 702 (7th Cir. 2010) (“the [Federal

Rules of Appellate Procedure] require litigants to cite directly

to the record, as opposed to something like a Rule 56.1

statement”).

Appellate briefs must contain an argument consisting of

more than a generalized assertion of error. Fed. R. App. P.

28(a); Correa v. White, 518 F.3d 516, 517 (7th Cir. 2008) (stating

the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure require that an

appellant “explain adequately why [he or] she believes the

district court erred in granting summary judgment”); Jones v.

InfoCure Corp., 310 F.3d 529, 534 (7th Cir. 2002); Anderson v.

Handman, 241 F.3d 544, 545 (7th Cir. 2001). But, excepting his

First Amendment retaliation claim, Friend does not inform us
8 No. 13-3307

why the district court erred in granting summary judgment.In

fact, the sections of Friend’s brief dedicated to his equal

protection, substantive due process, Monell, and § 1983

conspiracy claims all fail to reference the district court judgment whatsoever.2

 Nor could these sections respond to the

district court’s decision, since each section is directly copied

and pasted, essentially word for word from Friend’s response

to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.

Because Friend violated Rule 28, we strike all portions of

his argument section that rely on unsupported facts or fail to

identify a specific error in the district court’s decision. As a

result, the only issue remaining for our review concerns

Friend’s First Amendment retaliation claim.

Friend’s First Amendment retaliation claim can be briefly

summarized as follows: the School District and IHSA defendants singled Friend out for residency investigations, which

rendered him ineligible to participate in high school basketball

for approximately ten days, because his mother lodged

complaints with the School District. The district court granted

summary judgment to the defendants, holding that Friend’s

First Amendment retaliation claim failed because: (1) the

speech underlying his claim was not his own, but that of his

mother, and (2) the defendants’ allegedly retaliatory actions,

investigating Friend’s residency, were prompted by third-party

complaints that he was violating the School District’s residency

rules.

2

 Friend’s appellate brief does not mention his Illinois Tort Immunity Act

claim whatsoever. As a result, this point is forfeited. Milligan v. Bd. of Trs.

of S. Ill. Univ., 686 F.3d 378 (7th Cir. 2012). 
No. 13-3307 9

Friend challenges the first ground on which the district

court entered summary judgment against him; he does not

contest the second. This is fatal to his appeal, since each

ground constitutes an adequate and independent basis for

entering summary judgment against him on his First

Amendment retaliation claim. See Springer v. Durflinger, 518

F.3d 479, 483 (7th Cir. 2008) (“To prevail on their § 1983

retaliation claim, the parents need to prove (1) that they were

engaged in constitutionally protected speech; (2) that public

officials took adverse actions against them; and (3) that the

adverse actions were motivated at least in part as a response to

the plaintiffs’ protected speech”). Indeed, Friend does not

direct our attention to any facts tending to show that the School

District’s residency investigation was instigated by his

mother’s complaints, as opposed to those of third parties. And,

as far as we can tell from our own review of the record, the

undisputed facts support the district court’s determination.

Therefore, the district court did not err in granting summary

judgment to the defendants on Friend’s First Amendment

retaliation claim.

III. CONCLUSION

For all of the aforementioned reasons, the district court’s

grant of summary judgment in favor of the School District and

IHSA defendants is AFFIRMED.