In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 20-1875 

SHANE A. KITTERMAN,

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

CITY OF BELLEVILLE, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Illinois.

No. 3:19-cv-00051-GCS — Gilbert C. Sison, Magistrate Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED OCTOBER 27, 2022 — DECIDED MAY 4, 2023 

____________________ 

Before EASTERBROOK, RIPPLE, and WOOD, Circuit Judges. 

WOOD, Circuit Judge. Shane Kitterman has been a frequent 

filer in both the federal and state courts of Illinois. His litigation campaign is in response to the insistence by Illinois authorities that he is required to register as a sex offender. Kitterman believes that this obligation has expired. He filed the

present lawsuit in federal court, relying on 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 

against several defendants from the Belleville (Illinois) Police 

Department (BPD), the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department, 
2 No. 20-1875 

and the Illinois State Police (ISP). In it, he alleged that the authorities’ continued enforcement of registration duties violated his constitutional rights. 

The district court dismissed Kitterman’s complaint for 

failure to state a claim. See FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(6). Because we 

find nothing in federal law that calls into question Kitterman’s 

obligation to register as a sex offender under Illinois law, we 

agree with the district court that Kitterman’s case is without 

merit. And Kitterman’s federal lawsuit was doomed from the 

start, insofar as he thought he could prove federal constitutional violations by showing only that the state officials misapplied state law. We therefore affirm. 

I 

In 2011 the Illinois General Assembly amended its Sex Offender Registration Act of 1996. Under the 2011 amendments,1 anyone convicted of a felony after July 1, 2011, must 

register as a sex offender if that person was previously convicted of a sex offense or previously required to register as a 

sex offender. See 730 ILCS 150/3(c)(2.1). The post-2011 felony 

need not be a sex offense. Furthermore, the newly triggered 

registration requirements can be for life if the previous sex offense was serious enough. These amendments apply to people who were never required to register in the past, as well as 

those who already completed a period of required registration. Id. 

1 This set of amendments is also sometimes referred to as the 2012 

amendments, in reference to the date of publication in the Illinois Compiled Statutes. We refer to them as the 2011 amendments throughout to 

make clear that the provisions took effect in 2011 and therefore felonies 

committed in 2011 are properly covered by the law.
No. 20-1875 3

On January 10, 1996, Kitterman pleaded guilty to aggravated criminal sexual abuse—a crime he committed in July 

1995. See 720 ILCS 5/11-1.60. The resulting conviction carried 

with it a requirement that he register as a sex offender for ten 

years under an earlier version of the law known as the Child 

Sex Offender Registration Act (CSORA). See 1992 Ill. Laws 87-

1064 (H.B. 2736); the ten-year registration requirement was 

codified at 730 ILCS 150/7 (1994). Kitterman’s proceedings 

took place just as Illinois was transitioning to a new registration regime, renamed the Sex Offender Registration Act 

(SORA), 1995 Ill. Laws 89-8 (H.B. 204) (effective date Jan. 1, 

1996), codified at 730 ILCS 150/1 et seq. (1996). Kitterman 

claims that, to address this transition, his guilty plea agreement arranged for his registration requirements to be governed by the previous law, CSORA. That alleged stipulation 

planted the seeds of the current litigation: Kitterman understood that the state was promising that his 1996 sex-offense

conviction would permanently be exempted from SORA, including future amendments to the statute. 

In 2005, Kitterman’s original registration period was extended after he pleaded guilty to failure to register. See 730 

ILCS 150/7 (requiring the Director of ISP to extend the registration period by ten years for failure to comply with SORA). 

Because he understands himself to be exempt from SORA, 

Kitterman believes that this was an unlawful extension of his 

registration duties. Kitterman next ran into registration problems after he was convicted of felony retail theft in late 2011. 

The relevant authorities (the ISP, which maintains Illinois’s 

sex-offender database, as well as BPD and the St. Clair County 

Sheriff’s Department) concluded that the 2011 conviction triggered a new lifetime registration requirement for Kitterman

under SORA. Kitterman pushed back, again arguing that he 
4 No. 20-1875 

was exempt from any such requirement because of his plea 

deal. 

In one way or the other, this dispute has been simmering 

ever since that 2011 conviction. Over those years, Kitterman 

has been arrested many times and convicted four times for 

failure to register. Through it all, Kitterman has fought his 

convictions and his registration duties. He filed repeated petitions (over 230 by his count) with the Supervisor of the ISP 

Sex Offender Registration Unit, Tracie Newton, requesting an 

administrative hearing to challenge his registration duties. 

Newton sent at least one letter in response, explaining to Kitterman why he is required to register. Kitterman also filed 

several federal and state lawsuits alleging that ISP and BPD 

are violating his constitutional rights by requiring his continued sex offender registration. None of Kitterman’s efforts has 

been successful. He has not procured any relief in state court, 

and most of his federal lawsuits were dismissed because there 

was no way for him to proceed on a section 1983 claim without calling into question the validity of his state-court convictions for failure to register. In other words, his federal suits 

were Heck-barred. See Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 486–87 

(1994) (“[I]n order to recover damages for [an] allegedly unconstitutional conviction ..., a § 1983 plaintiff must prove that 

the conviction or sentence has been reversed ....”). 

Kitterman had a glimmer of hope, however, when in 2018,

the Appellate Court of Illinois overturned his convictions for 

failure to register. See People v. Kitterman, 2018 IL App (5th) 

140415-U. The court held that “to prove that the defendant 

unlawfully failed to register as a sex offender ..., the State was 

required to present evidence that the defendant had a continuing duty to register on the date of the alleged offense.” Id. at 
No. 20-1875 5

¶ 24. The trial court had decided that Kitterman’s “registration requirement was a collateral issue not within the jurisdiction of the court” and had therefore excluded evidence and 

argument about whether Kitterman was under such a continuing duty to register. Id. at ¶ 10. Because of this ruling, the 

state never introduced at trial any evidence that Kitterman’s 

registration period had been extended to the present day. 

Against that backdrop, the appellate court reversed the convictions for failure to prove an element of the crime. Id. at ¶ 26. 

Back in Belleville after his failure-to-register convictions 

were overturned, Kitterman alleges that he was “targeted” by 

the defendants and threatened with “immediate arrest and 

imprisonment” because he continued to contest his registration requirements. Kitterman asserts that BPD Officer Dan 

Collins was harassing and abusive in his efforts to force Kitterman to register as a sex offender. Kitterman filed complaints with BPD about this behavior; in the wake of those 

complaints, Kitterman says, Collins’s harassment intensified. 

This prompted Kitterman’s present lawsuit against the 

City of Belleville, Collins, ISP, Newton, ISP Director Brendan 

Kelly, and several defendants associated with the St. Clair 

County Sheriff’s Department. Kitterman asserts that the defendants’ repeated efforts to force him to register have violated his First, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment 

rights, as well as the Contracts Clause and the Ex Post Facto

Clause of the federal Constitution. Kitterman also alleges injuries that occurred between 2005 and 2011 after his registration period was extended for the first time. Early in the case, 

the district court dismissed the suits against Newton and 

Kelly in their individual capacity for failure of service. The remaining defendants moved to dismiss Kitterman’s case. The 
6 No. 20-1875 

district court held that none of Kitterman’s constitutional theories changed the fact that the 2011 amendments to SORA and 

Kitterman’s 2011 felony render him subject to a lifetime sexoffender registration requirement. The court thus dismissed

all claims for failure to state a claim. See FED. R. CIV. P.

12(b)(6). Kitterman has appealed.

II

There are two threshold questions we must address before 

turning to the details of Kitterman’s appeal. We alluded to the 

first earlier: is this a case concerning solely the state officials’ 

compliance with state law—for instance, their adherence to 

the terms of an Illinois plea agreement, or the scope of the registration requirement under different versions of Illinois 

law—or is this a case raising questions of federal law? Reading Kitterman’s complaint, the primary dispute seems to be

whether and how Illinois law should have applied to him. If 

that were all, then we could reject this appeal summarily: as 

we repeatedly have held, a party seeking to show a violation 

of federal law must demonstrate more than a failure to follow 

state law. See, e.g., Jones v. Cummings, 998 F.3d 782, 788–89 (7th 

Cir. 2021); Siddique v. Laliberte, 972 F.3d 898, 904 (7th Cir. 2020); 

see also Pennhurst State School & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 

89, 106 (1984).

But Kitterman’s submissions do assert that the course of 

events he describes violated various federal constitutional 

provisions. We do not find these assertions to be so devoid of 

merit that “the alleged claim under the Constitution or federal 

statutes clearly appears to be immaterial and made solely for 

the purpose of obtaining jurisdiction” or that the “claim is 

wholly insubstantial and frivolous.” Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678, 

682–83 (1946). We therefore assess the theories that Kitterman 
No. 20-1875 7

has presented, bearing in mind that a lack of merit does not 

mean that jurisdiction is lacking outside the extraordinary situations mentioned in Bell v. Hood. 

The other threshold matter is how to treat Kitterman’s contention that his 1996 plea deal gave him a wholesale exemption from SORA. This determination has important implications for the fate of Kitterman’s remaining theories. 

To support this argument, Kitterman attached several exhibits to his first amended complaint in the federal district 

court. This allows us “independently [to] examine the document and form [our] own conclusions as to the proper construction and meaning to be given the material.” Rosenblum v. 

Travelbyus.com Ltd., 299 F.3d 657, 661 (7th Cir. 2002) (quoting 

5 Wright & Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure § 1327 (1990)). 

In doing so, we see no explicit promises about the future application of sex-offender registration duties. Exhibit Two is 

Kitterman’s 1996 Conditions of Probation. It does indicate 

that his probation would require compliance with CSORA rather than with SORA. But nowhere do the conditions suggest 

that the agreement was conferring a permanent exemption 

from SORA or any other future registration law. Exhibit 

Three—the notification form that Kitterman signed—makes 

this plain. That form specifically states that it pertains to the 

“Sex Offender Registration Act,” and thus it seems to contradict Kitterman’s own account of his plea deal. Because the exhibits attached to Kitterman’s complaint undermine his assertions, we need not accept as true the statement in the complaint that “he would not be subjected to the amendments of 

... SORA.” Indeed, the interpretation of the agreement and 

the evaluation of its legal consequences strike us as issues of 

law that we are free to resolve.
8 No. 20-1875 

Even if we do accept as true Kitterman’s allegation that 

“Illinois ... promised that the law governing the Plaintiff’s 

duty to register as a sex offender ... would remain the ‘outdated’ Child Sex Offender Registration Act,” Kitterman has 

not given a plausible account of how the defendant state actors reneged on that agreement. Kitterman’s current registration duties were triggered in 2011 when he committed additional crimes, not in 1996. Kitterman does not claim, nor do 

the attached exhibits indicate, that his 1996 plea deal purports 

to tie the state’s hands with respect to any future crime. Therefore, requiring registration under SORA because of a 2011 

conviction does not contradict any promises made to Kitterman that the CSORA would govern his 1996 conviction. 

We also doubt that a state prosecutor has the power to 

make the promises that Kitterman describes. A state normally 

cannot be estopped from enforcing its own laws. See, e.g., 

Heckler v. Community Health Servs. of Crawford Cnty., Inc., 467 

U.S. 51, 60–61 (1984) (explaining that “the Government may 

not be estopped on the same terms as any other litigant” because the “interest of the citizenry as a whole in obedience to 

the rule of law” almost always outweighs “the countervailing 

interest of citizens” requesting the estoppel). And in any 

event, Kitterman’s pleadings do not suffice to overcome 

SORA’s intentionally broad language. There is no indication 

that the statute creates any exceptions to its application. To 

the contrary, the 2011 amendments were explicitly crafted to 

bring offenders under the ambit of the current regulatory 

scheme, even where SORA had never applied to them. See 730 

ILCS 150/3(c)(2.1) (“A sex offender or sexual predator, who has 

never previously been required to register under this Act, has a 

duty to register if the person has been convicted of any felony 

offense after July 1, 2011.”) (emphasis added). Kitterman is no 
No. 20-1875 9

different from all the other people convicted of a sex offense 

before 1996 who never expected to be governed by SORA, but

who nonetheless now face registration requirements under 

the Act. 

This analysis also dictates the outcome of Kitterman’s alleged injuries from 2005 to 2011, following the original extension of his registration duties. First, those claims are presumably time-barred, given that any injury would have occurred 

several years before he initiated this lawsuit in 2019. Furthermore, the allegations in Kitterman’s complaint relating to that

earlier period still rest on the incorrect premise that he was 

permanently exempt from SORA, an argument that fails for 

the reasons we have discussed. In sum, the pleadings and the 

public record show that Kitterman has been under a lawful 

duty to register ever since his 1996 guilty plea. 

III

Turning to the substance of Kitterman’s constitutional arguments, we consider de novo the district court’s decision to 

dismiss the complaint under Rule 12(b)(6), “construing the 

complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, accepting as true all well-pleaded facts and drawing reasonable inferences in the plaintiff’s favor.” Levy v. West Coast Life Ins. Co., 

44 F.4th 621, 626 (7th Cir. 2022) (quoting Bilek v. Federal Ins. 

Co., 8 F.4th 581, 586 (7th Cir. 2021)). 

Kitterman raises two sets of theories that warrant closer 

attention: those under the First Amendment, and those under 

the Eighth. His remaining counts, which allege violations of 

the Due Process, Ex Post Facto Clause, and Contracts Clause, 

are all foreclosed by Supreme Court and Seventh Circuit precedent. 
10 No. 20-1875 

A 

Kitterman’s First Amendment argument rests on his allegation that the defendants retaliated against him after he filed 

complaints with BPD. The complaint states that Collins, 

“act[ed] in furtherance of the policy, custom, and practice of 

the ISP ... and BPD, to unlawfully force the Plaintiff to register 

as a sex offender.” To do this, Collins “hunted the Plaintiff 

down in the streets”; “stormed the residence of the Plaintiff 

and attempted to batter down the door”; “stormed the place 

of employment of the Plaintiff’s wife”; and told Kitterman

“that [Collins] would make sure the new charges and the new 

convictions would stick this time.” Kitterman argues that 

these facts are sufficient to establish retaliatory arrest and harassment in response to protected speech. 

Whether an arrest amounts to retaliation in violation of the 

First Amendment is governed by Nieves v. Bartlett, 139 S. Ct. 

1715 (2019). We invited the parties to address whether an attempted arrest is subject to the Nieves framework, since many 

of Collins’s efforts did not end in an arrest. They agreed that 

the Nieves analysis for retaliatory arrests applies with equal 

force to such attempts. We thus have no need to test the outer 

limits of Nieves here: like the parties, we will assume that it 

applies to both actual and attempted arrests.

Under Nieves, “a plaintiff must establish a ‘causal connection’ between the government defendant’s ‘retaliatory animus’ and the plaintiff’s ‘subsequent injury.’” Id. at 1722 (quoting Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250, 259 (2006)). Where the alleged injury is an arrest, “[t]he causal inquiry is complex.” Id.

at 1723. The Supreme Court has cautioned against probing the 

“subjective intent of the officers.” Id. at 1724. Instead, a 
No. 20-1875 11

plaintiff must allege that the arrest was objectively unreasonable by pleading the absence of probable cause. Id. at 1723–24. 

Kitterman has not plausibly pleaded an absence of probable cause. The closest he comes is his allegation that Collins 

said that he (Collins) would make a new conviction “stick this 

time.” Taking this statement in the light most favorable to Kitterman, we can infer that Collins knew that Kitterman’s previous convictions for failure to register had been overturned. 

But Kitterman wants us also to infer from that statement that 

Collins should have known that Kitterman was no longer under a duty to register. The latter inference is not supported by 

the factual allegations in Kitterman’s complaint. 

As we already explained, Kitterman is under a duty to register under SORA based on his 2011 felony theft conviction.

The fact that Kitterman’s past failure-to-register convictions 

were vacated because of a failure of proof does not change 

this. Notably, ISP still lists Kitterman as someone in Collins’s 

jurisdiction who is obligated to register, notwithstanding Collins’s purported knowledge of Kitterman’s overturned convictions. Kitterman offers no reason why Collins should have 

distrusted the ISP database. Collins therefore had probable 

cause to arrest Kitterman based on a failure to register. His

attempts to effectuate that arrest, including the alleged visits 

to Kitterman’s wife’s workplace, are not retaliatory under the 

rule announced by Nieves. Kitterman included no other factual allegations that, if believed, would show that Collins’s 

conduct was objectively unreasonable or that another defendant violated his First Amendment rights. Kitterman’s First 

Amendment theory was thus properly dismissed. 
12 No. 20-1875 

B 

With respect to the Eighth Amendment, Kitterman states 

that subjecting him to continued registration requirements 

“after the lawful punishment expired ... constitutes cruel and 

unusual punishment.” The district court dismissed this claim 

because “Kitterman’s registration period was lawfully extended pursuant to his 2011 felony conviction.” The district 

court also explained that mandated compliance with SORA is 

not punitive, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Smith v. 

Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003), which held that Alaska’s substantially 

similar sex-offender registration requirements did not constitute punishment. 

We too conclude that Kitterman’s Eighth Amendment 

claims were properly dismissed. We do so, however, only on 

the first ground cited by the district court. We express no 

opinion on the question whether Illinois’s SORA is punitive.

We tread carefully on the latter point because intervening 

amendments to Illinois’s SORA differentiate it from the sexoffender registration requirements that the Court considered 

in Smith v. Doe. Moreover, several state supreme courts and 

the Sixth Circuit have decided in the interim that the burdens 

of some sex-offender registration laws do constitute punishment. See, e.g., Does #1–5 v. Snyder, 834 F.3d 696, 701–05 (6th 

Cir. 2016). Illinois’s courts have not yet resolved whether its 

SORA is punitive. Compare People v. Tetter, 2018 IL App (3d) 

150243, ¶ 69 (deciding that SORA’s requirements are punitive) with People v. Rodriguez, 2019 IL App (1st) 151938-B, ¶ 30

(reaching the opposite conclusion). The Illinois Supreme 

Court has not spoken definitively on the matter. See People v. 

Bingham, 2018 IL 122008, ¶ 18 (avoiding the issue by deciding 
No. 20-1875 13

that courts cannot consider the constitutionality of SORA on 

direct criminal appeal).

Kitterman’s Eighth Amendment theory fails because he 

has not shown that registration requirements were imposed 

on him after the time for lawful punishment expired. Instead, 

additional registration requirements were triggered under Illinois law by Kitterman’s 2011 felony conviction. Kitterman 

may feel frustrated by the imposition of a lifetime sex-offender registration duty triggered by a felony that had no sexual component. But that is what SORA mandates, and Kitterman has not offered any reason why (assuming it is punitive) 

it falls outside the wide boundaries of the Eighth Amendment. He offers no detail about the kind of punishment he is 

facing or how lifetime registration amounts to “excessive 

sanctions.” See Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 469 (2012) 

(quoting Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 560 (2005)). We cannot ascertain any claim for relief under the Eighth Amendment. 

C 

Kitterman also alleges that his due process rights under 

both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments were violated because defendants have failed to provide an adequate process 

for challenging registration requirements under SORA. But 

the Supreme Court has held that where sex offender registration requirements “turn on an offender’s conviction alone,” 

the underlying conviction proceedings ensure that the offender “already had a procedurally safeguarded opportunity 

to contest.” Connecticut Dep’t of Public Safety v. Doe, 538 U.S. 1, 

7 (2003). Kitterman is not entitled to any additional process

for challenging his registration duties. He had the chance to 

contest the underlying allegations in the criminal proceedings
14 No. 20-1875 

for his 1996 sex offense and 2011 retail theft. Under Doe, that 

is enough. 

We accept that the state must also “have a procedure in 

place to correct errors listed in the registry.” Murphy v. 

Rychlowski, 868 F.3d 561, 567 (7th Cir. 2017). But ISP has such 

a system. Kitterman used it to file several letters with ISP, and 

he received a response from Newton explaining that there 

was no error and the registry requirements remained applicable to Kitterman. Kitterman obviously did not like that answer, but that does not mean that the state’s procedures were 

inadequate. And to the extent that an alleged registry error 

puts Kitterman at risk of criminal prosecution for a new violation of an asserted duty to register, he would enjoy the full 

panoply of rights associated with a criminal trial in any such 

new case—rights under the federal Constitution, under Illinois’s Constitution, and under state law. Those rights will adequately protect Kitterman’s opportunity to argue that he 

should not have been subject to a registration requirement

and thus should not be convicted of a crime for failing to do 

so. The Constitution requires no more, and so his due process 

contentions were properly dismissed. 

D 

Next we touch on Kitterman’s ex post facto argument. He 

contends that the retroactive application of Illinois’s 2011 

SORA amendments to his 1996 conviction violated that constitutional provision. But this argument is foreclosed by our 

decision in Johnson v. Madigan, 880 F.3d 371 (7th Cir. 2018). 

There we held that the 2011 SORA amendments did not have 

a retroactive effect because the new registration requirements 

were triggered by a later felony and did not operate as an increased penalty for the old sex offense. Id. at 376. We likened 
No. 20-1875 15

the lifetime registration requirement to habitual criminal sentencing enhancements: “a stiffened penalty for the latest 

crime” and not “new jeopardy or additional penalty for the 

earlier crimes.” Id. (quoting Gryger v. Burke, 334 U.S. 728, 732 

(1948)). Kitterman has not asked us to overturn Johnson, and 

we are not inclined to do so. 

E 

Finally, Kitterman alleges that SORA violates the Contracts Clause of the federal Constitution because it impairs the 

contractual agreement embodied in his 1996 plea deal. But, as 

we noted earlier, there is no indication that subjecting Kitterman to a lifetime registration requirement violates the terms 

of that agreement. Furthermore, even if there were an impairment in the contractual bargain, the “Contracts Clause restricts the power of States to disrupt contractual arrangements.” Sveen v. Melin, 138 S. Ct. 1815, 1821 (2018) (emphasis 

added). As the district court held, the state of Illinois is not a 

party to this lawsuit. There are no named defendants that can 

enact or abrogate any SORA provisions and therefore there is 

no remedy available to Kitterman under the Contracts Clause.

IV 

We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.