United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted November 2, 2020*

Decided November 5, 2020 

Before 

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge 

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge

No. 18-3736 

MARLON L. WATFORD, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

ROB JEFFREYS, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Southern District of 

Illinois. 

No. 15-567-SCW 

Stephen C. Williams, 

Magistrate Judge. 

O R D E R 

Marlon Watford, a Muslim prisoner at Menard Correctional Center, believes that 

prison officials violated his Eighth Amendment rights when they raised photocopying 

*

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

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

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). Additionally, Rob Jeffreys, who 

became acting director of the Illinois Department of Corrections after this appeal was 

filed, has been substituted for John Baldwin as the named appellee. See FED. R. APP. P. 

43(c)(2). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 18-3736 Page 2 

charges at the prison’s law library and banned the sale of petroleum jelly and baby 

powder at the commissary. The ban on petroleum jelly, he adds, also violated his First 

Amendment rights and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. 42 

U.S.C. § 2000cc (RLUIPA). The district court entered summary judgment against him on 

all but one claim and later deemed that remaining claim moot. We affirm. 

In 2013, Menard implemented changes that Watford says have affected his wellbeing. In September, the warden raised photocopying charges in the law library from 

five to ten cents per page—a fee hike that Watford says ruined him financially, 

especially because the prison has not raised his stipend. Watford, who describes himself 

as an active practitioner of Al-Islam, says that the higher fee violates his faith’s 

requirement that he be free from “financial oppression.” 

Around the same time, prison officials decided that the commissary no longer 

would stock petroleum jelly and baby powder—items Watford had relied on for 

personal hygiene (to moisturize his skin and control itching and sweating) and to 

cleanse his body in preparation for prayer. Prison officials maintained that these toiletry 

items posed security risks: Petroleum jelly could be used as an accelerant for a fire hot 

enough to melt plastic into weapons, and baby-powder containers could be used to 

stash contraband. In 2014, however, officials reversed course and returned petroleum 

jelly to the commissary. Watford testified that the stress from these prison policies 

exacerbated his H. pylori scar tissue and triggered both stomach inflammation and 

irritable-bowel syndrome. 

Watford brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and RLUIPA seeking damages 

and injunctive relief against 13 prison officials, including the director of the Illinois 

Department of Corrections, Menard’s warden, and numerous correctional 

officers. Early in the proceedings, the district court recruited counsel to help Watford 

amend his complaint. At screening, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, the court allowed Watford to 

proceed on his claims under the Eighth Amendment—that the photocopy-fee increase 

was financially oppressive, and that the ban on the toiletry items prevented him from 

maintaining his hygiene, causing great stress and gastrointestinal issues. The court also 

allowed him to pursue claims under the First Amendment and RLUIPA with regard to 

the ban on petroleum jelly—a ban that, he said, burdened his religious rights by 

interfering with skin-care practices he followed to prepare for prayer. 

A magistrate judge presiding with the parties’ consent, see 28 U.S.C. § 636(c), 

eventually entered summary judgment against Watford on most of his claims. 
No. 18-3736 Page 3 

Watford’s Eighth Amendment claims failed, the judge ruled, because no evidence 

showed that his grievances over photocopy fees or the unavailable toiletry items 

deprived him of the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities, let alone subjected 

him to a substantial risk of harm. As for his First Amendment claim, the judge 

continued, the record demonstrated that legitimate penological reasons—security 

concerns—justified the temporary ban on petroleum jelly. After a bench trial, the judge 

ruled that Watford’s remaining RLUIPA claim (seeking injunctive relief) was moot. 

Watford filed a post-judgment motion to alter or vacate the judgment, which the court 

denied. 

On appeal Watford challenges the entry of summary judgment on his Eighth 

Amendment claims, arguing that the district court overlooked two fact questions. He 

points, first, to the question whether the increased photocopying fees deprived him of 

basic life necessities. But we recently addressed and rejected this same argument in 

another of Watford’s appeals. See Watford v. Pfister, 811 F. App’x 374, 376 (7th Cir. 2020) 

(citing Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347 (1981)). To the extent Watford suggests that 

the fee hike violates the state administrative code’s requirement that photocopy costs 

reflect the facility’s actual costs, 20 ILL. ADMIN. CODE § 430.40(a), he is making a point 

that is neither here nor there for our purposes. The federal constitution is not offended 

simply because a state statute has been violated. See, e.g., Wells v. Caudill, 967 F.3d 598, 

602 (7th Cir. 2020) (citing cases). 

The second fact question proposed by Watford concerns the degree of harm he 

suffered as a result of not being able to obtain petroleum jelly or baby powder from the 

commissary. As evidence that these items were essential to life’s necessities, he 

highlights the stress and digestive tract issues he says he suffered because of their 

unavailability. But Watford is bound by his lawyer’s concession in responding to the 

defendants’ motion for summary judgment that Watford had no verifiable medical 

evidence of being physically harmed by the facility’s policies. See Milwaukee Ctr. for 

Indep., Inc. v. Milwaukee Health Care, LLC, 929 F.3d 489, 493 (7th Cir. 2019). Even if 

Watford could prove that his health issues presented a substantial risk of serious harm, 

nothing in the record reflects that defendants were aware of that risk and disregarded 

it. See Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837 (1994). 

Watford next contends that summary judgment was improper on his First 

Amendment claim because a material fact dispute exists over the legitimacy of the 

prison’s security justifications for removing petroleum jelly from the commissary. He 

points to a correctional officer’s deposition testimony that hair grease presented the 
No. 18-3736 Page 4 

same risks as petroleum jelly yet never was removed from the commissary. But on this 

matter, too, Watford’s counsel made another binding admission in his response to the 

summary judgment motion—agreeing that petroleum jelly had been removed for 

security purposes. In any event, Watford identifies no evidence to support an inference 

that the prison’s reasons for removing petroleum jelly were illegitimate. See O’Lone v. 

Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 349 (1987); Kaufman v. Pugh, 733 F.3d 692, 696 (7th Cir. 2013). 

Finally, Watford argues that recruited counsel provided deficient performance 

that effectively deprived him of due process. But he forfeited this argument by not 

raising it first before the district court. See Soo Line R.R. Co. v. Consol. Rail Corp., 965 F.3d 

596, 601 (7th Cir. 2020). During discovery, the court told Watford on separate occasions 

that he could move to dismiss counsel if he was dissatisfied with counsel’s 

performance, but Watford stood pat. Regardless, civil litigants have “neither a statutory 

nor a constitutional right to counsel,” and so due process is not at issue. Walker v. Price, 

900 F.3d 933, 935 (7th Cir. 2018). 

We have considered Watford’s remaining arguments, and none has merit. We 

assess Watford one strike for this frivolous suit and a second one for pursuing this 

appeal. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g); Flynn v. Thatcher, 819 F.3d 990, 992 (7th Cir. 2016). 

AFFIRMED