The Honorable James E. Shadid, District Judge of the 

United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois,

sitting by designation.

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 11-1949

RENAE EKSTRAND, 

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

SCHOOL DISTRICT OF SOMERSET,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Wisconsin.

No. 08 C 193—Barbara B. Crabb, Judge.

ARGUED FEBRUARY 21, 2012—DECIDED JUNE 26, 2012

Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, BAUER, Circuit Judge,

and SHADID, District Judge.



BAUER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff-appellee, Renae

Ekstrand, sued the School District of Somerset,

Wisconsin, under the American with Disabilities Act
2 No. 11-1949

(ADA), alleging that the school district failed to accommodate her disability in violation of the statute. The

school district moved for summary judgment, which the

district court granted. We reversed that ruling in part,

holding that there was a triable issue of fact as to

whether Ekstrand was a qualified individual with a

disability within the meaning of the ADA and as to

whether the school district was aware of that disability.

Ekstrand v. School Dist. of Somerset, 583 F.3d 972 (7th

Cir. 2009). The case went to trial. After the jury returned

a verdict in favor of Ekstrand, the school district moved

for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(b), challenging the sufficiency of the evidence. The district

court denied the motion, and the school district timely

filed this appeal. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Ekstrand taught kindergarten at Somerset Elementary

School from 2000 to 2005. In the spring of 2005, she

asked to be reassigned to teach a first-grade class, and

the school agreed. She was relocated to a first-grade

classroom with no exterior windows in a busy, loud area

of the school. Ekstrand spoke with her principal several

times to request a change of classroom, and although

the principal worked to make the existing classroom

more hospitable, she denied her requests to switch rooms.

In the fall of 2005, after the school year began, Ekstrand

began to experience symptoms of seasonal affective

disorder, a form of depression. Both her psychologist,

Dr. Randi Erickson, and her primary care physician,
No. 11-1949 3

Dr. Arnold Potek, recommended that she take a leave

of absence due to illness. Her initial leave was only

three months, but the following winter, her doctor

wrote to the school district to advise that Ekstrand

would be unable to return to teach for the remainder of

the 2005-06 school term. That leave of absence was then

later extended to include the 2006-07 school term.

The events most relevant to the current dispute

occurred in the time period after Ekstrand received her

initial three-month leave of absence but before the

leave was extended for the rest of the school year

(roughly the time between October of 2005 and January of

2006). When the case went to trial, the parties argued

over whether Ekstrand was ever emotionally capable of

returning to work during that time period and whether

the school district was aware of her capability to return.

For example, a letter from Dr. Erickson dated November 28, 2005, was delivered to the school district’s office. The letter detailed Dr. Erickson’s opinion that

natural light was crucial to Ekstrand’s recovery and

that her classroom without windows had been a major

cause of her condition. This letter backed up Ekstrand’s

prior conversations with both the superintendent and

the school principal in which she had communicated

the importance of natural light to her recovery (and

again, we reiterate, school officials refused each request

for a classroom change).

What follows are just a few of the more relevant

factual developments that came out at trial. The

school superintendent testified, stating that although

Dr. Erickson’s November 28 letter was delivered to his
4 No. 11-1949

office’s business manager, he never saw it until he

became aware of Ekstrand’s lawsuit much later in 2006.

The school principal also testified about conversations

she had with Ekstrand in which Ekstrand requested a

new room with exterior windows. Finally, Dr. Erickson

testified that Ekstrand would have been capable of returning to work from October 18 to December 14

if she had been provided a classroom with natural light.

This case now comes before us for the second time.

Initially, the school district had filed a motion for

summary judgment; the district court granted that

motion and we reversed in part, finding that a genuine

issue of material fact existed for resolution. This led to

a jury trial in the district court to decide the contested

issues. Ekstrand won her case, and now the school

district appeals the denial of its Rule 50(b) motion. This

time around, we confine our discussion to the issues

relevant to the school district’s two specific challenges:

whether there was sufficient evidence for a jury to find

that Ekstrand was a qualified individual with a disability under the ADA, and whether there was sufficient evidence for a jury to find that the school

district knew of that disability within the relevant

time period.

II. DISCUSSION

We review the district court’s denial of a Rule 50(b)

motion for judgment as a matter of law de novo, viewing

the evidence available to the jury in the light most favorable to Ekstrand. Waters v. City of Chicago, 580 F.3d 575,
No. 11-1949 5

580 (7th Cir. 2009) (citations omitted). We will only

reverse if no reasonable juror could have found in

Ekstrand’s favor. Id.

We begin our analysis by recounting the relevant standard under the ADA. Ekstrand’s burden at trial was to

show that (1) she is a qualified individual with a

disability; (2) the school district was aware of her disability; and (3) the school district failed to reasonably

accommodate that disability. See, e.g., King v. City of

Madison, 550 F.3d 598, 600 (7th Cir. 2008). The school

district only challenges Ekstrand on prongs (1) and (2),

arguing that no reasonable jury could have found for

her on those grounds. So was there sufficient evidence

for a reasonable jury to decide that Ekstrand was a qualified individual with a disability and that the school

district knew of that disability? There are several conclusions that reasonable jurors may have drawn given

the evidence in this case. Here are just a few: they

may have credited Ekstrand’s own testimony over the

superintendent’s on key issues; they may have found

Dr. Erickson convincing when he testified that Ekstrand

could have returned to her teaching duties between

October and December provided she had a classroom

with natural light; and they may have decided not to

credit the superintendent’s testimony that he was late

in reading Dr. Erickson’s letter regarding the importance of natural light to Ekstrand’s recovery.

Again, these are just a few possibilities. Taken together,

these determinations could lead a reasonable jury to

conclude that Ekstrand was a qualified individual with
6 No. 11-1949

a disability in October through early December and that

the school district knew about it, but failed to accommodate her with a new classroom. The point is, we are

generally forbidden from reexamining the facts found by

the jury at trial. See U.S. CONST. amend. VII. Ekstrand’s

case was convincing to these jurors, and the school

district cannot now retry the case in the appellate court.

This challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence is

particularly weak because we essentially decided these

very same issues in Ekstrand’s favor the last time this

case was before us. See Ekstrand v. School Dist. of Somerset,

583 F.3d 972 (7th Cir. 2009). When Ekstrand appealed

the entry of summary judgment against her in 2009, we

held that a genuine issue of material fact existed both as

to whether (1) Ekstrand was a qualified individual with

a disability during the relevant time period, and (2) as

to whether the school district was aware. Id. at 977. By

that, we simply meant that Ekstrand had presented

enough evidence for a reasonable jury to find in her

favor on those issues. The standard under Rule 50(b)

presents us with the same question, and the school district has not raised any new legal theory that was not

present in 2009. Instead, the school district hinges its

argument on various factual developments at trial that

it believes bolsters its case. But as we noted at oral argument, unless evidence favoring Ekstrand in the pretrial

stage has since vanished (and there is no allegation that

it has), we are presented with the same situation as

before. Just as there was sufficient evidence for a

possible verdict in Ekstrand’s favor on these very issues

in the last appeal, so is there ample evidence at the post-
No. 11-1949 7

trial stage for a reasonable jury to have found in

Ekstrand’s favor.

III. CONCLUSION

For the aforementioned reasons, the district court’s

order denying the school district’s 50(b) motion

is AFFIRMED.

6-26-12