Lee A. Brown v. Michael Meisner

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

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No. 22-2458

LEE A. BROWN,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

MICHAEL MEISNER, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 2:21-cv-00542-BHL — Brett H. Ludwig, Judge.

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ARGUED AUGUST 1, 2023 — DECIDED AUGUST 25, 2023

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Before WOOD, HAMILTON, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges.

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. The central issue in this appeal is

whether plaintiff-appellant Lee Brown, a Wisconsin prisoner,

alleged a viable claim that prison officials violated Title II of

the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12132,

by denying his request for accommodation of his injured

knee. The district court dismissed Brown’s ADA claim on the

pleadings for failure to state a claim. We find that he alleged

2 No. 22-2458

everything needed to assert an ADA claim. We vacate that

portion of the judgment and remand.

Brown’s pro se amended complaint supplies the operative

factual allegations, which we construe liberally and take as

true. Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007). Brown injured

his knee when he fell at his former prison. He received medi-

cal care there and was placed on “special needs,” which in-

cluded being assigned a lower bunk, a wheelchair, and

crutches. Several weeks later, Brown was transferred to his

current prison, Oshkosh Correctional Institution. Over the

first few months there he spent time in segregation. Brown

asked several times for medical help but received none. He

was later moved to a shared cell where his cellmate, who was

disabled, slept in the lower bunk. While climbing to his top

bunk, Brown fell. Afterward, Brown saw a doctor who said

that Brown needed surgery on his knee but that the prison

would not provide it because he was “too young.”

Brown then asked the prison’s “special needs committee”

to provide him “accommodations,” and he “filed an ADA rea-

sonable accommodation request.” Through these requests

and his medical history, he alleges, prison officials knew

about his serious medical needs but failed to protect him from

further harm and “kept him in imminent danger by denying

him reasonable accommodations or treatment.”

Brown’s initial complaint named more than twenty de-

fendants over thirty pages. In it, he specified that he was ac-

commodated with a lower bunk at his prior prison and that

he later requested the same “reasonable accommodations” at

Oshkosh, including “a low bunk.” He alleged that the defend-

ants denied that request, apparently concluding that his knee

injury was “not a disability.” He also alleged more generally

No. 22-2458 3

that defendants violated his Eighth Amendment rights by de-

liberately ignoring his medical needs. The district court

screened the original complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(a)

and dismissed it for not providing a “short and plain state-

ment” of any claim within the terms of Federal Rule of Civil

Procedure 8. The court told Brown he could amend his com-

plaint if he pared it down to no more than ten pages.

Brown followed the instruction and filed a much shorter

amended complaint. Most relevant to this appeal, he repeated

that his prior prison had accommodated his knee’s “special

needs” by assigning him a low bunk and that his current

prison was denying him an “accommodation” for his knee.

He asked for injunctive relief to provide “necessary accom-

modations to mitigate [his] severe pain, injuries, [and] exacer-

bation of [his] known painful condition.” He also asked for

compensatory and punitive damages. The district court al-

lowed him to proceed on a separate Eighth Amendment claim

against Dawn Fofana, a manager of the Health Services Unit,

for failing to provide medical care while he was in segrega-

tion. The court dismissed the remainder of his complaint, in-

cluding the ADA claim, writing that Brown had “not allege[d]

any facts that would implicate the ADA” because “[h]e only

alleges inadequate medical treatment, which is not a proper

claim under the ADA.” The court later entered summary

judgment for Fofana on Brown’s Eighth Amendment claim,

finding that she had not been involved in his medical care.

On appeal, Brown does not contest summary judgment in

favor of Fofana on the Eighth Amendment claim. He contends

only that he alleged a viable failure-to-accommodate claim in

his amended complaint. The pleading standard Brown must

meet “is not an exacting standard.” Jaros v. Illinois Dep’t of

4 No. 22-2458

Corrections, 684 F.3d 667, 672 (7th Cir. 2012) (reversing dismis-

sal of prisoner’s claims under ADA and Rehabilitation Act).

“Specific facts are not necessary” under Rule 8 because the

plaintiff “need only give the defendant fair notice of what

the … claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.” Swanson

v. Citibank, N.A., 614 F.3d 400, 404 (7th Cir. 2010), quoting Er-

ickson, 551 U.S. at 93. Brown’s complaint did not need to iden-

tify any particular legal theory, nor did it need to allege all

legal elements of a particular claim. E.g., Zimmerman v.

Bornick, 25 F.4th 491, 493 (7th Cir. 2022) (collecting authorities

and reversing dismissal of prisoner’s complaint without leave

to amend).

To state a claim under Title II of the ADA, Brown needed

only to plead facts suggesting that he is a “qualified individ-

ual with a disability” who “by reason of such disability” was

“denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of

a public entity.” 42 U.S.C. § 12132. An allegation that the de-

fendants failed to make reasonable accommodations can state

a violation of Title II of the ADA. E.g., Shaw v. Kemper, 52 F.4th

331, 334 (7th Cir. 2022), citing § 12132 and 28 C.F.R.

§ 35.130(b)(7)(i) (reversing dismissal of prisoner’s Title II

claim).

Brown’s amended complaint states a plausible claim for

relief under Title II of the ADA. The defendants accept at least

for purposes of this appeal that Brown’s alleged knee injury

renders him disabled within the meaning of the ADA. But

they insist that Brown’s amended complaint “focuses solely”

on “the medical care he received for his knee” and never al-

leged a failure to accommodate that disability. That simply is

not correct. Brown’s amended complaint included Eighth

Amendment claims for deliberate indifference to his serious

No. 22-2458 5

medical needs, but he also alleged failure to accommodate his

disability. Brown alleged that after he fell from his top bunk

at Oshkosh, he asked the prison for “an ADA reasonable ac-

commodation” to mitigate his “severe pain” and to prevent

“further harm” to his disabled knee. Despite their knowledge

of his condition and his fall, he alleged, prison officials “kept

him in imminent danger by denying him reasonable accom-

modations.” Those allegations gave fair notice to prison offi-

cials that Brown was suing for failing to accommodate his dis-

abling knee condition at Oshkosh. See Jaros, 684 F.3d at 672.

The defendants offer two counterarguments that are not

persuasive. First, they argue Brown failed to state an ADA

claim because he did not specify in his amended complaint

that the specific accommodation he requested was a “lower

bunk.” No rule of law required Brown to identify a particular

accommodation in his complaint. See Swanson, 614 F.3d

at 404. Nor would such a pleading requirement make sense

for an ADA claim. A covered entity has considerable flexibil-

ity in deciding about how a disability will be accommodated.

E.g., EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 417 F.3d 789, 802 (7th Cir.

2005) (citation omitted). 1

1 The parties debate on appeal whether Brown can rely on his original

complaint, which the district court struck. The original complaint speci-

fied the lower bunk accommodation he wanted, but the district court

struck that pleading for not being a short and plain statement of any

claims for relief. The defense argument seems like a whipsaw, or perhaps

an echo of the story of Goldilocks, asking the district court to work with a

plaintiff so that he alleges not too much and not too little, but gets it just

right. This defense argument invites district courts to waste time on a ster-

ile task of fine-tuning pleadings. In the end, however, we need not decide

whether and to what extent Brown may rely on his stricken complaint.

6 No. 22-2458

Second, the defendants contend that Brown’s ADA claim

fails under Bryant v. Madigan, 84 F.3d 246, 249 (7th Cir. 1996),

where we held that the ADA “does not create a remedy for

medical malpractice.” (The district court, too, quoted Bryant

in concluding that inadequate medical treatment cannot be

redressed under the ADA.) We agree with that statement in

Bryant, but Brown’s claim for failure to accommodate is not

about allegedly substandard medical care. His claim is that

the defendants failed to accommodate his disabling knee con-

dition when they denied him a lower bunk, and perhaps other

accommodations. That claim does not involve allegations of

medical malpractice, so the rule of Bryant does not bar it.

The defendants also raise additional issues that we need

not resolve here. All agree that if Brown stated a claim under

the ADA—which he did—we must remand the case so that he

can pursue at least injunctive relief. The ADA claim went off

the rails at the very outset of this case, and our remand will

call for a reset in the district court to get the failure-to-accom-

modate claim back on track. The defendants will have the op-

portunity on remand to raise defenses, such as sovereign im-

munity, and plaintiff may be able to raise other legal theories

that could support both money damages and injunctive relief,

including the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794. That Act is,

for practical purposes, the same as the ADA, Shaw, 52 F.4th

at 334, except that it circumvents “the thorny question of sov-

ereign immunity.” Jaros, 684 F.3d at 672. See generally Shaw,

52 F.4th at 333–35 (reversing dismissal of prisoner’s claims un-

der ADA and Rehabilitation Act); Koger v. Dart, 950 F.3d 971,

974–75 (7th Cir. 2020) (remanding some of prisoner’s claims

(Was it struck correctly or erroneously? Shouldn’t that matter?) His

amended complaint was legally sufficient.

No. 22-2458 7

after improper dismissal on pleadings). We leave the needed

reset to the district court’s sound discretion.

A final note about the caption. At screening, the district

court dismissed every defendant other than Fofana, and the

court later entered summary judgment for her on Brown’s

Eighth Amendment claim. On appeal, Fofana was initially the

only listed defendant, but Brown has pursued only claims

that do not seem to involve her. We amend the caption to in-

clude all the defendants listed in Brown’s amended com-

plaint. On remand, the district court may consider whether it

should dismiss any other defendants because they were not

involved in the decision to deny Brown accommodations for

his injured knee.

Accordingly, we AFFIRM summary judgment in favor of

defendant Fofana, VACATE all other portions of the judg-

ment, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with

this opinion.