United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted May 28, 2020*

Decided May 29, 2020 

Before 

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge 

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge 

AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge

No. 19-1859 

SHAFIA JONES, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

JON NOBLE and SARAH COOPER,

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

No. 17-CV-1253 

David E. Jones, 

Magistrate Judge. 

O R D E R 

Shafia Jones, an African-American inmate at a Wisconsin state prison, maintains 

that two prison officials violated her equal protection rights when they delayed her 

release from a restrictive housing unit after she was found not guilty of a disciplinary 

charge. The district court entered summary judgment for the defendants, concluding 

that there was no evidence that Jones had been treated differently from any similarly 

situated inmate or that the defendants had acted with discriminatory intent. We affirm. 

*

 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). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 19-1859 Page 2 

In mid-2017, Jones received a conduct report alleging that she had possessed 

contraband, disobeyed orders from an officer, and engaged in disruptive conduct while 

resisting a pat-down search. She was placed in “temporary lock up,” a nonpunitive 

status that separates inmates from the prison’s general population pending an 

administrative action. See WIS. ADMIN. CODE DOC § 303.02(40) (2017). Under the state’s 

administrative regulations, inmates can be held in temporary lock up for up to 21 days 

if prison staff believes that the inmate’s presence in the general population would 

“impede a pending investigation or disciplinary action” or “be disruptive to the 

operation of the prison.” Id. § 303.10. While a prisoner is in temporary lock up, the 

prison’s security director conducts a review every seven days to ensure that the 

placement continues to be appropriate. Id. 

At Jones’s disciplinary hearing the following week, a hearing officer found her 

“not guilty” based on a procedural error—she had not received a copy of the conduct 

report within two days of its processing by the prison’s security director. 

For eight more days the security director, Jon Noble, kept Jones in temporary 

lock up while he tried to process another conduct report against her over the same 

incident. He twice extended her detention, explaining that he needed to determine 

whether due process considerations prevented the prison from holding another hearing 

to reach the merits of the charges. During this time, Jones wrote to Warden Sarah 

Cooper that Noble was improperly detaining her because of her race (she asserted that 

a white inmate, Jodie Ott, had been timely released after a not-guilty finding) and that 

she had been issued another conduct report for the same incident, in violation of the 

state’s administrative regulations. 

Jones spent two weeks in temporary lock up before being transferred to a 

mental-health institute for a court-ordered competency evaluation. 

When she soon returned to the prison, she was placed in general population at 

the prison’s maximum-security housing unit. 

Jones sued Noble and Warden Cooper for violating her equal protection rights 

when they delayed her release from temporary lock up because of her race. 

See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. She pointed to the different treatment afforded the white inmate, 

Ott, whom Noble had released from temporary lock up immediately after she prevailed 

at her disciplinary hearing. 
No. 19-1859 Page 3 

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

granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The judge concluded that Jones 

had failed to identify a better treated, similarly situated individual: Ott was not an 

appropriate comparator, the judge explained, because she was a medium-security 

inmate (Jones was maximum-security) and she was deemed not guilty after a hearing 

revealed that she had been the victim of the misconduct alleged on her conduct report 

(Jones, on the other hand, was found not guilty as the result of procedural error rather 

than any merits determination). Further, Jones failed to put forth evidence that Noble 

extended her placement in temporary lock up because of racial animus. As for the 

warden, the court ruled that no reasonable juror could find that she knew about or was 

personally involved in Jones’s lock-up status. 

On appeal, Jones challenges the district court’s conclusion that Ott was not an 

appropriate comparator. She maintains that she and Ott both were found not guilty 

after a disciplinary hearing, and that the district court had seized upon immaterial 

distinctions when concluding that they were not similarly situated. 

The district court correctly found Jones and Ott not similarly situated. Two 

individuals are similarly situated, and thus require equal treatment under the 

Fourteenth Amendment, if they are “directly comparable in all material respects.” 

See Reed v. Freedom Mortg. Corp., 869 F.3d 543, 549 (7th Cir. 2017). As the court explained, 

Ott was a medium-security inmate who was found not guilty after a ruling on the 

merits, whereas Jones was a maximum-security inmate who was found not guilty 

because of a procedural error. These differences are not immaterial: The relevant 

regulations permit the security director to consider each inmate’s potential disruption 

to the general population when assessing an inmate’s suitability for release from 

temporary lock up. See WIS. ADMIN. CODE DOC § 303.10 (2017). 

Further, Jones presented no evidence that Noble acted with discriminatory intent 

when he delayed her release from temporary lock up—a showing she had to make in 

order to avoid summary judgment on her claim. See Lisle v. Welborn, 933 F.3d 705, 719 

(7th Cir. 2019). The record supports the district court’s conclusion that Noble continued 

to detain Jones because he believed, albeit mistakenly, that he could hold a second 

hearing on the allegations against her. Her speculation otherwise is not enough to 

survive summary judgment. See id. at 720. 

To the extent Jones also challenges the entry of summary judgment for Warden 

Cooper, we agree with the district court that no reasonable jury could find that Cooper 
No. 19-1859 Page 4 

participated in the decision to hold Jones on temporary lock-up status. A defendant is 

liable for damages under § 1983 only if she was personally responsible for the 

deprivation of a constitutional right, meaning that the deprivation occurred at the 

defendant’s behest or with her knowledge and consent. See Williams v. Shah, 927 F.3d 

476, 482 (7th Cir. 2019). Even if it were assumed that the warden received the letter 

Jones wrote to her, Cooper could not be held liable because Jones failed to prove any 

underlying constitutional violation. Id. 

We have considered Jones’s other arguments, and none has merit. 

AFFIRMED