JEREMIAH C. SHERWOOD and MEGAN DOYLE v. Raymond P. Marchiori

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-2859
JEREMIAH C. S HERWOOD and M EGAN D OYLE,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
R AYMOND P. M ARCHIORI ,* in his official capacity as Acting Di-
rector of the Illinois Department of Employment Security,
Defendant-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 20-cv-07285 — Jorge L. Alonso, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED J UNE 2, 2023 — DECIDED A UGUST 7, 2023
____________________
Before F LAUM , BRENNAN , and S T. EVE, Circuit Judges.
* The Court has substituted Raymond P. Marchiori, the current Acting
Director of the Illinois Department of Employment Security, for the origi-
nal defendant, Kristin Richards. See Fed. R. App. P. 43(c)(2).

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2 No. 22-2859
F LAUM , Circuit Judge. In March 2020, Jeremiah Sherwood
and Megan Doyle lost their jobs because of the COVID-19
pandemic and, as a result, applied for unemployment bene-
fits. They never received those benefits, however, and still
have not received notice of the denial of their claims or an op-
portunity for a hearing. In response, Sherwood and Doyle
turned to federal court. They filed a putative class action law-
suit against the Director of the Illinois Department of Employ-
ment Security (“IDES”)—the Illinois entity responsible for ad-
ministering unemployment benefits—in his official capacity.
Plaintiffs bring equal-protection and procedural-due-process
claims under the Fourteenth Amendment and seek injunctive
relief against the Director. The district court granted the Di-
rector’s motion to dismiss the complaint, and plaintiffs now
appeal. For the following reasons, we affirm the dismissal of
plaintiffs’ claims, albeit on slightly different grounds.
I. Background
A. Factual Background1
During the pandemic, IDES experienced an increased vol-
ume of claims for unemployment benefits. Between March
2020 and late 2021, IDES issued debit cards to all individuals
from whom they received claims. If the claim was ultimately
approved, funds were added to the card. So, IDES’s failure to
add funds to a debit card functionally amounted to the denial
of a claim. However, many individuals who never received
1 To resolve the Director’s motion, we recount the facts as plaintiffs
allege them in their complaint. See Prairie Rivers Network v. Dynegy Midwest
Generation, LLC, 2 F.4th 1002, 1007 (7th Cir. 2021); Bronson v. Ann & Robert
H. Lurie Child. Hosp. of Chi., 69 F.4th 437, 448 (7th Cir. 2023).

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No. 22-2859 3
funds—including plaintiffs—also never received a “determi-
nation” of their claims, which would have provided them
with notice of the denial and an opportunity for a hearing to
contest the denial.2
Sherwood was laid off from his job at a hotel, and thus be-
came eligible for unemployment benefits, on March 13, 2020.
Shortly thereafter, he submitted a claim for benefits and re-
ceived a debit card in the mail from IDES. However, no funds
were ever added to the card. Sherwood repeatedly called and
emailed IDES about the issue to no avail. He never received
benefits or a determination regarding his claim. Sherwood
was re-employed on May 1, 2020.
Doyle was furloughed from her job at a real-estate firm in
March 2020 and submitted a claim for unemployment benefits
soon after. IDES informed her that she would receive a debit
card in about one week, but the card never came. Although
she repeatedly called IDES to inquire about her claim, no one
ever responded. Doyle never received benefits or a determi-
nation of her claim. She regained employment in July 2020.
B. Procedural Background
Plaintiffs brought a putative class action alleging that
IDES’s failure to appropriately process claims for unemploy-
2 Under Illinois law, a “determination” “state[s] whether or not the
claimant is eligible for [unemployment] benefits,” 820 Ill. Comp. Stat.
405/702, and “set[s] forth, in writing, its factual and legal basis,” Ill. Ad-
min. Code tit. 56, § 2720.140(a). A claimant may appeal a determination
within thirty days, 820 Ill. Comp. Stat. 405/800, and must then receive a
“reasonable opportunity for a fair hearing,” id. § 801(A).

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4 No. 22-2859
ment benefits violated their constitutional rights to equal pro-
tection and procedural due process.3 Plaintiffs named the Di-
rector in his official capacity pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1983,
seeking injunctive relief and attorneys’ fees. The district court
granted the Director’s motion to dismiss these claims for lack
of jurisdiction. Plaintiffs now appeal that ruling, arguing that
they have standing, their claims fit within the exception to
sovereign immunity provided by Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123
(1908), and they have sufficiently stated claims for relief.
II. Discussion
We review a district court’s dismissal of a complaint under
either Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) or 12(b)(6) de
novo. Doe v. McAleenan, 926 F.3d 910, 913 (7th Cir. 2019); KAP
Holdings, LLC v. Mar-Cone Appliance Parts Co., 55 F.4th 517, 523
(7th Cir. 2022). In doing so, we “accept all well-pleaded fac-
tual allegations as true and draw all reasonable inferences in
favor of the plaintiff.” Prairie Rivers, 2 F.4th at 1007; see Silha v.
ACT, Inc., 807 F.3d 169, 174 (7th Cir. 2015).
A. Jurisdiction
We must begin with this Court’s jurisdiction. Ware v. Best
Buy Stores, L.P., 6 F.4th 726, 731 (7th Cir. 2021). One limitation
to our jurisdiction, as dictated by Article III of the Constitu-
tion, is standing. Pucillo v. Nat’l Credit Sys., Inc., 66 F.4th 634,
637 (7th Cir. 2023). To establish standing, plaintiffs must suf-
3 The operative complaint also raises substantive-due-process claims
and claims pursuant to the Social Security Act. Plaintiffs, however, have
waived any challenge to the district court’s adjudication of these claims.
See Miller v. Chi. Transit Auth., 20 F.4th 1148, 1155 (7th Cir. 2021).

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No. 22-2859 5
ficiently “allege an injury in fact that is traceable to the de-
fendant’s conduct and redressable by a favorable judicial de-
cision.” Int’l Union of Operating Eng’rs, Loc. 139, AFL-CIO v.
Daley, 983 F.3d 287, 294 (7th Cir. 2020) (citation omitted).
That said, “even if a plaintiff could otherwise establish
that he has standing to sue a state or a state official, the Elev-
enth Amendment generally immunizes those defendants
from suit in federal court.” Doe v. Holcomb, 883 F.3d 971, 975
(7th Cir. 2018). Indeed, “the Eleventh Amendment is ‘jurisdic-
tional’ in the sense that a defendant invoking its sovereign im-
munity deprives a federal court of jurisdiction over the claims
against that defendant.” McHugh v. Ill. Dep’t of Transp., 55
F.4th 529, 533 (7th Cir. 2022). A narrow exception to sovereign
immunity, though, “allows suits … for declaratory or injunc-
tive relief against state officers in their official capacities.”
Reed v. Goertz, 143 S. Ct. 955, 960 (2023). Specifically, “[u]nder
the Ex parte Young doctrine, private parties may sue individ-
ual state officials for prospective relief to enjoin ongoing vio-
lations of federal law.” Lukaszczyk v. Cook County, 47 F.4th 587,
604 (7th Cir. 2022) (citation and internal quotation marks
omitted). Here, plaintiffs sue the IDES Director, a state offi-
cial, in his official capacity. Thus, to determine whether Ex
parte Young applies, we must “conduct a straightforward in-
quiry into whether the complaint alleges an ongoing violation
of federal law and seeks relief properly characterized as pro-
spective.” Id. (citation omitted).
1. Equal-Protection Claims
The complaint alleges that IDES violated plaintiffs’ rights
to equal protection by arbitrarily selecting their particular
claims to deny without any process while providing process

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6 No. 22-2859
for other denied claims. IDES, according to plaintiffs, was un-
equipped to handle the influx of claims during the pandemic.
As such, plaintiffs allege that IDES utilized an arbitrary selec-
tion methodology to make its “processing statistics appear
better than they actually were.”
These allegations refer to purely past conduct. Indeed, the
complaint specifically alleges that the unlawful conduct at is-
sue occurred in spring 2020, when plaintiffs were singled out
to be denied process. Even more, the complaint alleges that
IDES stopped using the debit-card system (and thus the arbi-
trary selection criteria) entirely “in late 2021.” Therefore,
based on the complaint, one could not reasonably infer that
IDES is still utilizing this methodology in violation of appli-
cants’ rights. See Webber v. Armslist LLC, 70 F.4th 945, 967 (7th
Cir. 2023) (explaining plaintiffs must allege facts that “move
their complaints over the line from conceivable to plausible”).
Simply put, plaintiffs allege that IDES violated their equal-
protection rights in the past—not that IDES is continuing to
do so today.
As a result, even if plaintiffs had standing to bring these
claims,4 sovereign immunity bars them. See Driftless Area Land
Conservancy v. Valcq, 16 F.4th 508, 522 (7th Cir. 2021) (explain-
ing that the Ex parte Young exception “does not apply when
federal law has been violated [only] at one time or over a pe-
riod of time in the past” (alteration in original) (citation and
internal quotation marks omitted)); cf. Papasan v. Allain, 478
U.S. 265, 282 (1986) (applying the Ex parte Young exception be-
4 We need not address plaintiffs’ standing before sovereign immunity.
See Amling v. Harrow Indus. LLC, 943 F.3d 373, 379 (7th Cir. 2019).

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No. 22-2859 7
cause “the essence of the [plaintiffs’] equal protection allega-
tion” focused on a “present disparity” as opposed to the
state’s “past actions” (emphasis added)). “[W]hen there is no
continuing conduct that states must change to comply with
federal law[,] the reason for the rule of Young no longer ap-
plies.” Watkins v. Blinzinger, 789 F.2d 474, 484 (7th Cir. 1986).
Thus, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of plaintiffs’
equal-protection claims.
2. Procedural-Due-Process Claims
The analysis differs for plaintiffs’ procedural-due-process
claims. A procedural-due-process violation occurs when
there has been: “(i) [a] deprivation by state action of a pro-
tected interest in life, liberty, or property, and (ii) inadequate
state process.” Reed, 143 S. Ct. at 961. Here, the complaint al-
leges that: (i) IDES deprived plaintiffs of a protected property
interest, the unemployment benefits for which they were
qualified, (ii) with inadequate process because they never re-
ceived notice of the denial or an opportunity for a hearing.
Specifically, plaintiffs allege that IDES failed to promptly pro-
vide them with an appealable determination notifying them
of the denial of their claims and their hearing rights. Plaintiffs
concede that they are only entitled to this sort of post-depri-
vation process.
a. Standing
To have standing, plaintiffs’ alleged “injur[ies] in fact
must be ‘concrete and particularized’ and ‘actual or immi-
nent.’” Holcomb, 883 F.3d at 978 (quoting Lujan v. Defs. of Wild-
life, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992)). The Director argues that the al-
leged procedural violations (failure to provide a determina-

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8 No. 22-2859
tion) are divorced from any concrete harm because the under-
lying deprivations of property (unemployment benefits)
ended once plaintiffs regained employment. Put differently,
according to the Director, the only present injury is a bare pro-
cedural violation that does not suffice for standing purposes.
Certainly, the “deprivation of a procedural right” is “in-
sufficient to create Article III standing” unless it affects “some
concrete interest.” Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488,
496 (2009). However, assuming plaintiffs were eligible for
benefits when they applied, the Director does not dispute that
plaintiffs maintain a property interest in those benefits today.5
Plaintiffs sufficiently allege that IDES’s present failure to pro-
vide adequate process “impair[s] [their] separate concrete in-
terest” in those benefits, Lujan, 504 U.S. at 572; they contend
that IDES’s continued refusal to provide them determinations
is preventing them from challenging the wrongful depriva-
tions of their property. See Protect Our Parks, Inc. v. Chi. Park
Dist., 971 F.3d 722, 736 (7th Cir. 2020). Further, the alleged in-
jury is not based on purely past conduct because the com-
plaint alleges that IDES is currently denying plaintiffs pro-
cess. See Simic, 851 F.3d at 738. Plaintiffs therefore have al-
leged a sufficient injury to pursue their procedural-due-pro-
cess claims.6
5 To be clear, the Director appropriately points out that plaintiffs could
not proceed on the “conjectural or hypothetical” theory that they may be-
come unemployed in the future and be denied benefits without process
again. Simic v. City of Chicago, 851 F.3d 734, 738 (7th Cir. 2017) (citation
omitted).
6 Of course, as noted above, there are other elements of standing, see
Summers, 555 U.S. at 493, but they are easily satisfied in this case (and the
Director does not contend otherwise).

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No. 22-2859 9
b. Eleventh Amendment
Plaintiffs must also clear the sovereign-immunity hurdle.
Again, under Ex parte Young, “[t]he relevant inquiry is
whether the suit seeks prospective relief against an ongoing
violation of federal law.” Driftless, 16 F.4th at 523. The parties
here do not dispute that plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief
is “properly characterized as prospective.” Id. at 521 (citation
omitted). Instead, the Director argues that the alleged viola-
tions are not ongoing because the complaint solely challenges
IDES’s denial of benefits over a period of time in the past and
plaintiffs are no longer eligible for benefits. This position is
unavailing for reasons similar to those discussed in the stand-
ing context.
Sonnleitner v. York is instructive here. 304 F.3d 704 (7th Cir.
2002). In that case, a state employee sued his supervisors on
the grounds that he was demoted without an adequate pre-
disciplinary hearing. Id. at 708–10. We concluded that because
the employee “was eventually given an opportunity to tell his
side of the story” through a post-deprivation hearing, he had,
“at most, [claimed] a past rather than an ongoing violation of
federal law.” Id. at 718. That is to say, “[a]fter the postdepri-
vation hearing, the alleged error in the predeprivation process
could not be characterized as ‘ongoing.’” Driftless, 16 F.4th at
524.
Unlike the employee in Sonnleitner, plaintiffs in this case
have never had a chance “to tell [their] side of the story.”
Sonnleitner, 304 F.3d at 718. The provision of such process was
determinative in Sonnleitner. See Driftless, 16 F.4th at 524 (“Our
holding in Sonnleitner turned on the fact that the plaintiff had
received a postdeprivation hearing that complied with due-
process requirements.”). Thus, given the sustained absence of

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10 No. 22-2859
any process here, along with plaintiffs’ continued property in-
terest in the underlying benefits, the alleged federal due-pro-
cess violations are still ongoing. As such, plaintiffs can invoke
the Ex parte Young exception to sovereign immunity.
B. Failure to State a Claim
We turn next to the sufficiency of plaintiffs’ procedural-
due-process claims under Rule 12(b)(6). As explained above,
these claims require “(i) [a] deprivation by state action of a
protected interest in life, liberty, or property, and (ii) inade-
quate state process.” Reed, 143 S. Ct. at 961. The process prong
is at issue here. Plaintiffs concede that due process only re-
quires a post-deprivation remedy in these circumstances;
their complaint alleges that they never received a determina-
tion after the denial of their claims and seeks an injunction
requiring the Director to provide those determinations.7
However, plaintiffs can only sustain their claims if Illinois
provides no adequate post-deprivation remedies that they
could have pursued instead of coming to federal court. See
Cleven v. Soglin, 903 F.3d 614, 617 (7th Cir. 2018) (“[A] plaintiff
simply cannot refuse to pursue the available state remedies
and then come into federal court complaining that he was not
afforded due process.” (citation and internal quotation marks
omitted)); see also Ellis v. Sheahan, 412 F.3d 754, 756–58 (7th Cir.
2005) (considering the adequacy of post-deprivation, state-
law remedies in a case involving an alleged “systematic” pol-
icy of due-process violations).
7 Again, a determination would offer plaintiffs both notice of the basis
for denial and an opportunity to be heard. See, e.g., 820 Ill. Comp. Stat.
405/702, 800, 801(A); Ill. Admin. Code tit. 56, § 2720.140(a).

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No. 22-2859 11
We have often cited mandamus as an adequate post-dep-
rivation remedy available under state law. See, e.g., Cleven, 903
F.3d at 617–18; Armato v. Grounds, 766 F.3d 713, 722 (7th Cir.
2014); Ellis, 412 F.3d at 756–58; Flower Cab Co. v. Petitte, 685
F.2d 192, 193 (7th Cir. 1982). Here, there is no question that
Illinois law imposed a non-discretionary duty on IDES to con-
sider plaintiffs’ claims for unemployment benefits and pro-
vide corresponding determinations. See, e.g., 820 Ill. Comp.
Stat. 405/702; Ill. Admin. Code tit. 56, § 2720.100(c). In turn,
mandamus allows plaintiffs to “enforce [their] right to a pub-
lic officer’s performance of an official nondiscretionary duty.”
Beauchamp v. Dart, 207 N.E.3d 1118, 1122 (Ill. App. Ct. 2022);
see also McHenry Township v. County of McHenry, 201 N.E.3d
550, 559 (Ill. 2022). Therefore, mandamus offers a state-law
route to the relief plaintiffs seek: an order requiring IDES to
provide them with determinations.
Plaintiffs, however, maintain that mandamus is an inade-
quate remedy here. To be adequate, a state remedy must “of-
fer meaningful redress for the particular injury suffered by
the plaintiff.” Simpson v. Brown County, 860 F.3d 1001, 1010
(7th Cir. 2017). To start, plaintiffs cite caselaw indicating that
Illinois courts have previously declined to grant mandamus
relief on behalf of a class. See, e.g., People ex rel. Aramburu v.
City of Chicago, 219 N.E.2d 548, 553 (Ill. App. Ct. 1966).8 But a
8 We express no opinion on whether Illinois courts would prohibit this
sort of lawsuit today. However, we note that the Illinois Code of Civil Pro-
cedure suggests that mandamus is now a suitable claim for a class action.
See 735 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/1−108(a) (“The provisions of Article II of this Act
[which includes rules governing class actions] apply to all proceedings
covered by Articles III through XIX of this Act [which includes rules gov-
erning mandamus] except as otherwise provided in each of the Articles III
through XIX, respectively.”).

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12 No. 22-2859
state remedy need not mirror the relief available under § 1983
to be adequate. Simpson, 860 F.3d at 1010. In other words,
plaintiffs cannot circumvent the adequacy of mandamus as a
state remedy just because they chose to bring their claims on
a class-wide basis in federal court.
Plaintiffs briefly raise the related argument that a class ac-
tion is the only adequate way to bring this case. According to
them, applicants for unemployment benefits will typically be
unable to afford counsel to file a mandamus action on an in-
dividual basis. In that sense, plaintiffs argue that a class action
is the sole way to provide applicants with an adequate post-
deprivation remedy.
Even if we could consider such a factor within our ade-
quacy inquiry here, plaintiffs overlook that this is not yet a
class action. Certification has not been granted, so the named
plaintiffs are the only members of the putative class before us
now. Cf. Kohen v. Pac. Inv. Mgmt. Co., 571 F.3d 672, 676 (7th
Cir. 2009) (“Before a class is certified … the named plaintiff
must have standing, because at that stage no one else has a
legally protected interest in maintaining the suit.”).9 Plaintiffs
do not point to any allegations which support the conclusion
that they personally lack the means to file a mandamus action.
See Webber, 70 F.4th at 967.
Finally, plaintiffs argue that succeeding in a mandamus
action would not actually remedy their substantive harm be-
9 Plaintiffs do not contend that a decision on the motion to dismiss
should be deferred until the district court has had a chance to decide cer-
tification. See McReynolds v. Merrill Lynch & Co., 694 F.3d 873, 879 n.4 (7th
Cir. 2012). In fact, plaintiffs never filed for certification below.

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No. 22-2859 13
cause it would only require IDES to provide them with a de-
termination—not the benefits themselves. IDES’s failure to
provide plaintiffs with a determination is the precise injury
plaintiffs allege here, though, and they exclusively seek in-
junctive relief as redress. See Cleven, 903 F.3d at 617 (holding
that mandamus was adequate relief because it could “accom-
plish exactly” what the plaintiff sought in federal court). In
light of this, plaintiffs cannot now claim that mandamus
would not serve as a “meaningful procedure[] to remedy [the]
erroneous deprivations” at issue. Tucker v. Williams, 682 F.3d
654, 661 (7th Cir. 2012) (discussing the requirements of due
process “[w]hen a predeprivation hearing is not required”).
Plaintiffs’ argument only goes to show why mandamus suf-
fices as post-deprivation relief here.
In sum, mandamus provides an adequate state-law rem-
edy in this case. As a result, plaintiffs have failed to state pro-
cedural-due-process claims.
III. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we A FFIRM the dismissal of
plaintiffs’ complaint. Further, we modify the judgment to re-
flect the dismissal of plaintiffs’ procedural-due-process
claims with prejudice for failure to state a claim. See Roe v.
Dettelbach, 59 F.4th 255, 257, 262 (7th Cir. 2023).

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