United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted November 10, 2020*

Decided November 12, 2020 

Before 

DIANE S. SYKES, Chief Judge 

MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge 

No. 19-2219 

JOSE ANTONIO COSSIO, JR., 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

PATRICK BLANCHARD, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees. 

No. 19-3000 

JOSE ANTONIO COSSIO, JR., 

 Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 19 C 265 

Thomas M. Durkin, 

Judge. 

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 15 C 7746 

*

 We have agreed to decide these cases without oral argument because the briefs 

and records adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument 

would not significantly aid the court. Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2)(C). Also, because of a 

recusal, this appeal is resolved by a quorum of the panel pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 46(d). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
Nos. 19-2219 and 19-3000 Page 2 

JOHN D. TOURTELOT, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees. 

Edmond E. Chang, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

Jose Cossio, a former employee of Cook County, Illinois, has filed several suits 

about his discharge. He believes that the County, its inspector general, and a state judge 

wrongly had him fired. After a state court rejected Cossio’s claims against the inspector 

general and the County, the district court dismissed a similar federal suit against them 

as blocked by claim preclusion. It later entered summary judgment for the judge, 

concluding that he committed no torts. Those rationales are correct, so we affirm. 

Cossio began working for Cook County as a fleet manager in 2013. Trouble for 

him began when a co-worker sought an order of protection against him. The presiding 

judge, John Tourtelot, ruled for Cossio on the protective order. Afterward, Tourtelot 

received a suspicious phone call from someone he believed sounded like Cossio. 

Concerned that a former litigant had acquired his personal phone number, Tourtelot 

reported the call to the County, prompting an investigation into whether Cossio had 

obtained Tourtelot’s number by misusing his access as a County employee. 

Cook County’s Office of the Independent Inspector General investigated, leading 

to Cossio’s discharge. The office did not find any evidence that Cossio improperly 

viewed personnel files, but it did unearth a conviction and unfavorable military 

discharge from 2004 that Cossio omitted from his employment application, despite his 

obligation to report them. Cossio had been convicted of larceny, communicating a 

threat, identity theft, and misuse of a government computer. The County accepted the 

office’s recommendation to fire Cossio for failing to report his conviction and discharge, 

and for failing to cooperate with the investigator. Cossio contested his firing before an 

administrative board. After Cossio stipulated to the board that its proceedings complied 

with due process, the board upheld the discharge, reasoning that Cossio violated the 

County’s ordinance requiring truthful statements in his employment application. 

These two federal lawsuits came next. The first is against the inspector general 

and Cook County, both of whom Cossio also sued in state court. In the state and federal 

suits, he challenged his stipulation about due process and sought back wages. In both 

suits, Cossio contended that the defendants denied him due process because, during the 

administrative proceedings, they withheld from him a County email reflecting how its 
Nos. 19-2219 and 19-3000 Page 3 

investigation started. The email describes that Tourtelot reported a suspicious call, that 

it was “not threatening,” that the caller asked for Tourtelot, and that Tourtelot felt the 

caller was Cossio, who may have improperly accessed his phone number as a County 

worker. The state court rejected Cossio’s claims, and the district court dismissed the 

pending, similar federal suit on the ground of claim preclusion. The second federal suit 

is against Tourtelot. Cossio accuses Tourtelot of having him fired without due process. 

The judge did so, Cossio contends, by stigmatizing him with the false charge that he 

phoned the judge, prompting the investigation that led to his firing. The district court 

entered summary judgment against Cossio, finding no violation of due process. 

We first address the suit against the inspector general and Cook County. The 

defendants ask us to affirm under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Rooker v. Fid. Tr. Co., 

263 U.S. 413 (1923); D.C. Ct. of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983). Rooker-Feldman

precludes a district court from adjudicating a case only when the federal suit starts after 

a state court has ruled against the federal plaintiff. Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic 

Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005). This federal suit started before the state court ruled 

against Cossio, so the relevant doctrine is claim preclusion (also known as res judicata). 

See Nesses v. Shepard, 68 F.3d 1003, 1004 (7th Cir. 1995). 

We review dismissals based on res judicata de novo. Bell v. Taylor, 827 F.3d 699, 

706 (7th Cir. 2016). Because an Illinois court resolved the state suit, we apply Illinois’s 

res judicata principles to decide whether the district court properly dismissed this suit. 

Chi. Title Land Tr. Co. v. Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Sales Ltd., 664 F.3d 1075, 1079 

(7th Cir. 2011). In Illinois, res judicata bars a claim if a court of competent jurisdiction 

has entered judgment on the merits of the same claim in an earlier suit against identical 

parties or privies. Hudson v. City of Chicago, 889 N.E.2d 210, 213 (Ill. 2008). 

Cossio’s claims in federal court against Cook County and the inspector general 

are the same as the ones he lost against them in state court. First, he argued in both suits 

that, by withholding the email describing Tourtelot’s request, the defendants deprived 

him of the opportunity to argue at the administrative hearing about a conspiracy to 

have him investigated and fired. Though it acknowledged Cossio’s frustration at having 

not received this email earlier, the state court rejected his view that the email was 

material. The court ruled that no matter how Cook County began the investigation that 

uncovered Cossio’s omissions from his employment application, Cossio had in fact lied 

on his application, justifying his discharge. Second, in both suits he claimed, and the 

state court rejected, that by withholding the email, the defendants wrongly obtained his 

stipulation about due process. The stipulation was valid because, as just explained, the 
Nos. 19-2219 and 19-3000 Page 4 

withheld email was immaterial. Finally, his claim for back pay, also raised in both suits, 

was meritless because the County did not wrongly delay his hearing. Thus, dismissal of 

these claims in federal court on res judicata grounds was proper. 

That brings us to the second federal suit. Cossio appeals the entry of summary 

judgment for Tourtelot on his claim that Tourtelot deprived him of his job without due 

process by stigmatizing him with the false accusation that he improperly called the 

judge. We review this ruling de novo. Scheidler v. Indiana, 914 F.3d 535, 540 (7th Cir. 

2019). The district court analyzed Cossio’s argument that Tourtelot violated his dueprocess rights under the so-called stigma-plus theory of relief. A stigma-plus claim 

arises when a state actor sullies “a person's good name, reputation, honor, or integrity” 

without first giving that person “notice and an opportunity to be heard.” Wisconsin v. 

Constantineau, 400 U.S. 433, 437 (1971). To prevail, a plaintiff must show both that the 

actor stigmatized the plaintiff plus the plaintiff’s legal status was altered (here, the loss 

of a job) without due process. See Doe v. Purdue Univ., 928 F.3d 652, 661 (7th Cir. 2019). 

Mere reputational harm is not enough. Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 701 (1976). 

Cossio’s claim has two fatal flaws. First, stigma is missing. Cossio contends that 

Tourtelot defamed him by accusing him of calling the judge uninvited. The evidence 

that Cossio relies on is the email describing a “non-threatening,” unsolicited call to a 

judge’s personal number. A claim that someone made an unpermitted but 

unthreatening phone call is not comparable to the defamation that supports a stigmaplus claim. See Davis, 424 U.S. at 697 (labelling someone a criminal is inherently 

defamatory); see also Constantineau, 400 U.S. at 436 (accusing someone of substance 

abuse is defamatory). Even were Tourtelot’s accusation stigmatizing, Cossio received 

due process before he lost his job. A full investigation into the charge that he made an 

improper phone call cleared him of that charge, and it was not the basis of his firing. 

Moreover, when the investigation uncovered his conviction, unfavorable military 

discharge, and false job application, he received a full hearing to contest the propriety of 

his firing. Finally, even if we assume that Cossio was entitled to the email in order to 

contest his discharge, Cossio had it in state court, where he used the email to challenge 

his firing and lost anyway. Because a reasonable jury could not find that Cossio lost his 

reputation plus job without due process, summary judgment was proper. 

Cossio responds unpersuasively that the district court’s discovery rulings 

impeded his ability to prove his case in federal court. He sought discovery (and 

sanctions) about a conversation that occurred when he appeared before Tourtelot on the 

protective order. He believes that his state-court opponent and her attorney told a Cook 
Nos. 19-2219 and 19-3000 Page 5 

County officer and Tourtelot about Cossio’s military record in order to get him fired. 

We review the district court’s denial of these requests for abuse of discretion. James v. 

Hyatt Regency Chicago, 707 F.3d 775, 784–85 (7th Cir. 2013); Hunt v. DaVita, Inc., 680 F.3d 

775, 780 (7th Cir. 2012). The district court reasonably denied discovery about the County 

officer because it could not affect the outcome of the due-process claim against 

Tourtelot. The district court also reasonably declined the requests for sanctions, as 

nothing in the record compels a finding of improper conduct. 

We have considered Cossio’s remaining arguments, but none has merit. 

AFFIRMED