United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted May 15, 2015*

Decided May 15, 2015

Before

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge

RICHARD D. CUDAHY, Circuit Judge

KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge

No. 14-3641

STEPHEN JACKSON,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

VILLAGE OF WESTERN SPRINGS, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division.

No. 14 C 3414

Harry D. Leinenweber,

Judge.

O R D E R

Stephen Jackson, a homeowner in the Village of Western Springs, Illinois, 

brought this action challenging decisions made over a 14-year period to zone nearby 

property for commercial use. He sued the Village and more than 20 other 

defendants—including Village officials, private attorneys, realty professionals, and

 

* After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral 

argument is unnecessary. Thus the appeal is submitted on the briefs and the record.

See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 14-3641 Page 2

engineers—claiming violations of the Constitution and state law. The district court 

dismissed the federal claims on the pleadings and declined to exercise supplemental 

jurisdiction over the state-law claims. We affirm the judgment.

Because the case was dismissed at the pleading stage, we accept Jackson’s factual 

allegations as true and view them in the light most favorable to Jackson. See Doe v. Vill. 

of Arlington Heights, No. 14-1461, 2015 WL 1621398, *2 (7th Cir. Apr. 13, 2015). In 

February 2000, Jackson purchased a recently built home in the Village. At the time, the 

property located directly across the street was zoned for “mixed residential” use, and 

Jackson believed that a townhome development with 16 units would be built there. But 

in March 2001, the Board of Trustees for the Village approved a conditional-use permit 

for a retail center (to be occupied by a gardening store) on the property across the street. 

Jackson attended public meetings and hired counsel to oppose the commercial 

development, but, he says in his complaint, the public meetings were “simply intended 

to provide the illusion of public process” to conceal lucrative insider dealing between 

Village officials and the developers. Jackson later learned that in late 2000, about nine 

months after he purchased his property, the developers had received “preliminary 

approval” from the Village to build the retail center.

Jackson then sued the Village in the Circuit Court of Cook County in March 2001, 

claiming that the Village, by granting the conditional-use permit, had violated state law, 

denied him “due process of law and the equal protection of the law,” and taken “his 

property for public use without compensation.” Three months later, counsel for the 

retail developers wrote Jackson asserting that his lawsuit had been brought in bad faith 

and warning that the developers would ask the state judge to require him to post a 

$5 million bond to protect their investment in the property. One month later Jackson 

voluntarily dismissed the suit.

Over the next 13 years, Village officials continued to make zoning decisions 

affecting the property across the street from Jackson’s home. In 2003 the Board 

amended the Village’s Land Use Plan to recognize the now-authorized commercial use 

of the property (or, in Jackson’s words, to bring their “bad acts into compliance”). Then 

in 2006, the Village entered into a short sale of property adjacent to the retail center for 

the benefit of the developers. Two years after that, the Village approved modifications 

to development plans without convening a public meeting. Meanwhile, the gardening 

store relocated, leaving the retail center vacant for five years. In 2011, after the 

developers had threated to withhold payment of their property taxes unless given 

permission to lease the retail center to a different business, the Board adopted an 
No. 14-3641 Page 3

ordinance approving the use of the space for medical offices, again without observing 

local procedures. When that enterprise proved unsuccessful, the Board in 2014 

authorized a day care to move into the space. 

These commercial uses increased the traffic and noise on Jackson’s street and 

reduced his privacy and safety. Based on a single sale of a residential property located 

farther from the retail center, Jackson estimated that the value of his and his neighbors’

properties had decreased by $111.32 per square foot for a total of $2.2 million.

Jackson then resorted again to litigation in 2014, this time in federal district court. 

He claims that the defendants deprived him of procedural and substantive due process,

denied him equal protection, and violated his First Amendment right to free speech. He 

also claims that the defendants violated the Illinois constitution, Illinois statutes, and 

committed several torts.

The Village and its officials moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, arguing that 

the lawsuit was not ripe. Jackson’s federal claims, these defendants said, should be 

dismissed because he never sought compensation from the Illinois courts as required 

under Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank, 473 U.S. 172, 

194–95 (1985). As for the state-law claims, the defendants argued that the district court 

should decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction. Three other defendants joined the 

motion to dismiss, but three more never answered Jackson’s complaint.

In opposing the motion to dismiss, Jackson did not assert that he had sought 

relief through state process. Rather, he argued that he was not required to exhaust state 

remedies before bringing a takings claim in federal court because it would be futile to 

seek relief from Village officials who are conspiring against him. And, he argued, his 

other federal claims were not subject to the exhaustion requirement. Jackson also filed 

separate motions for a default judgment against each defendant who had not filed an 

answer.

Before ruling on the motion to dismiss, the district court announced during a 

hearing that it was “in the process of dismissing the case for lack of federal 

jurisdiction,” and thus Jackson’s “motion for default would be moot.” The court 

immediately denied as moot Jackson’s motions for default judgment and then, three 

days later, dismissed his suit. The court concluded that Jackson was required to exhaust 

his due-process claims because those claims seek essentially the same relief as a takings 

claim: money damages for the diminished property value attributable to the zoning 

changes. Likewise, the court explained, Jackson was required to exhaust his 
No. 14-3641 Page 4

equal-protection claim (which, Jackson says, is premised on a “class of one”). That 

claim, the court added, does not plausibly allege that the defendants had made their 

zoning decisions out of spite aimed directly at him.

That left Jackson’s claim under the First Amendment, which the district court 

dismissed on its own initiative. The court characterized this claim as “difficult to 

decipher” and concluded that the “closest” Jackson comes to alleging a First 

Amendment violation is his allegation that the developers threatened him in retaliation 

for filing his state lawsuit. Yet the district court could not fathom how this litigation 

tactic conceivably violated Jackson’s rights. And since Jackson does not otherwise allege 

that he was denied an opportunity to attend public meetings, disseminate information, 

or associate with his neighbors, the court reasoned that his complaint does not raise a 

First Amendment issue. The court then declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction 

over Jackson’s state-law claims.

On appeal Jackson first argues that the district court misconstrued as a takings 

claim what really is an allegation that he was denied procedural due process. This 

due-process claim, says Jackson, asserts that the Village disregarded local procedures 

and engaged in delay tactics. Yet we have consistently held that applying the label 

“procedural due process” does not absolve a litigant’s obligation to first seek 

compensation in state court before turning to federal court. See, e.g., Forseth v. Vill. of 

Sussex, 199 F.3d 363, 368 (7th Cir. 2000); River Park, Inc. v. City of Highland Park, 23 F.3d 

164, 167 (7th Cir. 1994). When a plaintiff’s claim of a violation of procedural due process 

asks the federal courts to review the same conduct that resulted in an alleged taking, the 

“exhaustion requirement applies with full force.” Greenfield Mills, Inc. v. Macklin, 361 

F.3d 934, 961–62 (7th Cir. 2004); see Gosnell v. City of Troy, Ill., 59 F.3d 654, 658–59 (7th 

Cir. 1995); Braun v. Ann Arbor Charter Twp., 519 F.3d 564, 571–73 (6th Cir. 2008). 

Jackson’s claim that the Village used an unfair process in reaching its zoning decisions 

is merely ancillary to, and not independent of, his takings claim. Because Jackson did 

not appeal the Board’s decisions to the zoning board of appeals, see 65 ILCS 5/11-13-12, 

and then to the state courts on administrative review, see 65 ILCS 5/11-13-13, or pursue 

other remedies that Illinois has provided for property owners challenging excessive 

zoning regulation, see Peters v. Vill. of Clifton, 498 F.3d 727, 733–34 (7th Cir. 2007), we 

agree with the district court that Jackson’s claim of a violation of procedural due

process is unripe and subject to dismissal.

Jackson next argues that the district court erroneously concluded that his 

equal-protection claim likewise is subject to the exhaustion requirement. Jackson insists 
No. 14-3641 Page 5

that no “logical, rational, or legitimate state purpose” underlies the decision to permit 

commercial use on the property across the street from him, and thus, he says, his 

complaint states an equal-protection claim independent of his takings claim. But neither 

can Jackson dodge Williamson County by recasting his takings claim as one arising under 

the Equal Protection Clause. If, as here, a plaintiff’s contentions come down to an 

accusation that a government entity greatly diminished the value of his property, then 

pursuant to Williamson County he must go to state court because the claim is “truly (and 

solely) one for a taking.” Patel v. City of Chicago, 383 F.3d 569, 573 (7th Cir. 2004) 

(quoting Hager v. City of West Peoria, 84 F.3d 865, 870 (7th Cir. 1996)). The premise of 

Jackson’s equal-protection claim is that other Village residents (including some 

defendants) benefitted from the commercial use while those residents on his side of the 

street were adversely affected. He reasons that Village officials treated him differently 

(and out of spite, no less) simply because the commercial use was allowed over his 

objections. But this same assumption is the basis for Jackson’s real grievance: that the 

zoning changes lowered the value of his property. And that is a takings claim that he 

must litigate first in state court.

Moreover, we agree with the district court that Jackson’s complaint does not 

plausibly allege that the defendants acted out of spite targeted at him. As we recently 

explained, even at the pleading stage a class-of-one plaintiff must negate “’any 

reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis.’” Miller v. City 

of Monona, No. 13-2575, 2015 WL 1947886, *7 (7th Cir. May 1, 2015) (quoting Scherr v. 

City of Chicago, 757 F.3d 593, 598 (7th Cir. 2014)). And so long as “’we can come up with 

a rational basis for the challenged action, that will be the end of the matter—animus or 

no.’” Id. (quoting Fares Pawn, LLC v. Ind. Dep’t of Fin. Insts., 755 F.3d 839, 845 (7th Cir. 

2014)). Jackson pleaded himself out of court because his complaint reveals an obvious 

rational basis for the Village’s actions: The owners of the land across the street have a 

stake in developing their property for commercial use. Jackson is not a “target” of this 

interest; his complaint acknowledges that the developers and Village officials were 

negotiating plans to build a commercial center even before he bought his house. For 

Jackson’s theory to hold water, one would have to assume that Village officials would 

have turned away the developers if anyone other than Jackson had bought his house. 

And though only Jackson’s house is directly across the street from the commercial 

development, he does not allege that he has suffered harm uniquely intended for him.

To the contrary, he alleges that his neighbors (including one of the defendant 

developers) have shared in the downturn in property values.
No. 14-3641 Page 6

Next, Jackson maintains that the district court misunderstood the basis of his 

First Amendment claim. Jackson elaborates on appeal that several Village officials were 

represented by the law firm that employs the Village attorney; this “conflict of interest,” 

Jackson explains, led to political corruption “such that Plaintiff never stood (or stands) a 

chance of receiving legitimate consideration” when attempting to petition the Village. 

But a plaintiff must allege that state actors actually interfered with his access to the 

courts to state a claim for relief under the First Amendment. See Campbell v. PMI Food 

Equip. Grp., Inc., 509 F.3d 776, 789–90 (6th Cir. 2007); see also Bridges v. Gilbert, 557 F.3d 

541, 555 (7th Cir. 2009); Hilton v. City of Wheeling, 209 F.3d 1005, 1007 (7th Cir. 2000). 

Here, Jackson does not allege that a state actor interfered with this suit or the 2001 state 

suit; the retail developers’ “threat” to protect their private interests does not show any 

interference by state actors. Furthermore, the sheer amount of Jackson’s participation in 

the zoning disputes—including hiring counsel, voicing concerns at public meetings,

and attending a workshop—belies any claim that his First Amendment rights were 

impeded.

Still, says Jackson, the district court ignored his alternative theory that the 

defendants conspired to deny him access to the state courts in violation of 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1985(2) and (3). But a plaintiff must allege a racial or class-based animus to state a 

claim under § 1985, see Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 102 (1971); Wright v. Ill. Dep’t 

of Children & Family Servs., 40 F.3d 1492, 1507 (7th Cir. 1994), which Jackson has not 

done.

Finally, we briefly address Jackson’s remaining arguments. Because his 

complaint was properly dismissed for lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim, 

any procedural irregularity in denying the motion for default judgment before 

dismissing the complaint was not an abuse of discretion. See Mommaerts v. Hartford Life 

& Accident Ins. Co., 472 F.3d 967, 968–69 (7th Cir. 2007). Furthermore, because Jackson 

did not challenge the defendants’ method of serving their motion to dismiss in the 

district court, he waived this argument for appeal. See Kathrein v. City of Evanston, Ill., 

752 F.3d 680, 688–89 (7th Cir. 2014); Local 15, Int’l Bhd. of Elec. Workers, AFL-CIO v. 

Exelon Corp., 495 F.3d 779, 783 (7th Cir. 2007). Lastly, the district court did not abuse its 

discretion in relinquishing jurisdiction over the state-law claims after properly 

dismissing the federal claims. See Capeheart v. Terrell, 695 F.3d 681, 686 (7th Cir. 2012); 

RWJ Mgmt. Co., Inc. v. BP Products North America, Inc., 672 F.3d 476, 479 (7th Cir. 2012).

AFFIRMED.