Curtis L. Oats, Sr. v. MCHENRY COUNTY, ILLINOIS and JASON ENOS

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued April 10, 2025
Decided May 29, 2026
Before
KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge
DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge
DORIS L. PRYOR, Circuit Judge
No. 24-2512
CURTIS L. OATS, SR.,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
MCHENRY COUNTY, ILLINOIS and
JASON ENOS,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Illinois, Western Division.
No. 3:22-cv-50113
Iain D. Johnston,
Judge.
O R D E R
Curtis Oats, Sr. appeals a district court order granting summary judgment to
McHenry County, Illinois, and McHenry County animal control officer Jason Enos after
Oats sued them for First and Fourth Amendment violations and malicious prosecution.
We affirm.
On the morning of August 18, 2021, McHenry County dispatched an animal
control officer, Jason Enos, to investigate a complaint about a dog barking in the front
yard of a single-family home located in Wonder Lake, Illinois. At about 10:40 a.m., Enos
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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arrived at the Wonder Lake address and noticed the dog secured by a leash in the front
yard. As Enos approached the front door of the home, a man, later identified as Oats,
spoke to Enos from the porch. Although Oats provided some information about the
dog, he refused to give Enos his own name. Enos then walked back to his car but
stopped at Oats’ mailbox along the way. According to Oats, Enos opened the mailbox
and rifled through the mail in an apparent attempt to learn Oats’ name. Several months
later, on March 23, 2022, McHenry County cited Oats for two local ordinance violations
for failure to register and vaccinate his dog.
Initially acting pro se, Oats sued Enos and McHenry County in federal court on
April 14, 2022. While his federal action was proceeding, the state case involving his
alleged ordinance violations was dropped on June 16, 2022. After obtaining counsel,
Oats filed the operative third amended complaint in April 2023. Invoking 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983, Oats alleged that Enos violated the Fourth Amendment by walking on the
curtilage of Oats’ home and conducting a warrantless search through Oats’ mail. He
also alleged that McHenry County violated the First Amendment by retaliatorily
issuing pet ordinance violations. Lastly, Oats maintained that McHenry County had
engaged in malicious prosecution under Illinois state law.
On August 15, 2024, the district court granted the Defendants summary
judgment on all claims. The district court held, as relevant to this appeal, Enos was
entitled to qualified immunity on the Fourth Amendment claim, even assuming the
officer had gone through Oats’ mailbox. Because Oats failed to engage with or
otherwise challenge the district court’s disposition of his First Amendment or malicious
prosecution claims, we do not discuss those claims further. Hackett v. City of South Bend,
956 F.3d 504, 510 (7th Cir. 2020) (“An appellant who does not address the rulings and
reasoning of the district court forfeits any arguments he might have that those rulings
were wrong.”).
On appeal, Oats initially raised three Fourth Amendment arguments: (1) Enos
violated the Fourth Amendment by walking on the curtilage of Oats’ home; (2) Enos
violated the Fourth Amendment by opening Oats’ mailbox; and (3) Enos waived his
qualified immunity defense below, so the district court erred in granting qualified
immunity. Oats withdrew his second and third arguments in his reply brief and
explicitly abandoned these arguments at oral argument, leaving only the curtilage
question for us to resolve.1 In other words, Oats concedes that Enos did not act
1 Oral Argument at 1:20–1:35, 5:58–6:09.

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unconstitutionally by going through his mail, and he further concedes that he must
overcome Enos’ invocation of qualified immunity.
We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, viewing all
evidence and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party. Lane
v. Stericycle, Inc., 162 F.4th 866, 871 (7th Cir. 2025). To overcome the qualified immunity
defense, Oats has the burden to show that Enos violated a clearly established
constitutional right. Pam v. City of Evansville, 154 F.4th 523, 530 (7th Cir. 2025). To do so,
Oats must produce “controlling authority” or “a robust consensus of cases of
persuasive authority” that would make it “clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct
was unlawful in the situation he confronted.” District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48,
63 (2018) (internal quotations and citations removed). Oats need not produce a case
exactly on point, but we cannot define a clearly established constitutional right “at a
high level of generality, since doing so avoids the crucial question whether the official
acted reasonably in the particular circumstances that he or she faced.” Id. at 63–64
(quoting Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765, 779 (2014)).
Oats’ argument is peculiar in that he does not challenge the constitutionality of
Enos allegedly opening Oats’ mailbox and searching through his mail. That is an
interesting choice because the Supreme Court has long maintained that government
actors may not open mail without a warrant. United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 114
(1984) (explaining that letters “are in the general class of effects in which the public at
large has a legitimate expectation of privacy” and that “warrantless searches” of letters
“are presumptively unreasonable” under the Fourth Amendment); Ex parte Jackson, 96
U.S. 727, 733 (1877) (explaining that Fourth Amendment protections extend to one’s
papers, “wherever they may be,” and that the government needs a warrant to open
mail). While there are exceptions to this general rule recognized by our sister circuits,
the location and characteristics of Oats’ mailbox are distinguishable. Cf. United States v.
Stokes, 829 F.3d 47, 52 (1st Cir. 2016) (addressing “whether a defendant can hold a
reasonable expectation of privacy in a rented mailbox” located in a public place such as
post office mailroom); United States v. Osunegbu, 822 F.2d 472, 480 (5th Cir. 1987) (same);
United States v. Hinton, 222 F.3d 664, 676 (9th Cir. 2000) (finding “there is no reasonable
expectation of privacy in a parcel locker at a post office.”). Congress, too, has spoken
about mailbox privacy by criminalizing, among other things, the unauthorized removal
of mail from mailboxes by members of the public and postal workers alike. 18 U.S.C.
§§ 1708, 1709. All of this suggests that members of the public may well have an
expectation of privacy “that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable’”—and
therefore protected by the Fourth Amendment—in the contents of their private

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mailboxes. See Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740 (1979) (quoting Katz v. United States,
389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring)); see also United States v. Lewis, 738 F.2d
916, 920 (8th Cir. 1984) (assuming without deciding that opening a private mailbox
could constitute an illegal search under the Fourth Amendment).
Nevertheless, we do not reach this issue because Oats withdrew any argument
that he had “a clearly established expectation of privacy in the contents of his
mailbox.”2 He argues instead that Enos violated a clearly established “Fourth
Amendment prohibition on crossing the curtilage to conduct a search.” He cites two
Supreme Court cases for support. In Florida v. Jardines, the Supreme Court held that
officers’ warrantless use of a drug-sniffing dog while standing on the suspect’s front
porch, from which the dog could detect the smell of drugs inside the home, constituted
a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment because the sniff occurred in
the home’s curtilage. 569 U.S. 1, 3–6, 11–12 (2013). And in Collins v. Virginia, the Court
held that the warrantless search of a motorcycle parked in a partial enclosure at the top
of the petitioner’s driveway, which the Court concluded was part of the home’s
curtilage, violated the Fourth Amendment. 584 U.S. 586, 593–94 (2018). Here, too,
argues Oats, a government actor walked onto the curtilage of his home without a
warrant and therefore violated the Fourth Amendment.
We note at the outset that it is questionable whether Oats’ mailbox was located
within the curtilage of his home at all. The curtilage “is the area outside the home itself
but so close to and intimately connected with the home and the activities that normally
go on there that it can reasonably be considered part of the home.” United States v.
French, 291 F.3d 945, 951 (7th Cir. 2002); see also United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 301
(1987). Oats argues that his mailbox was on the curtilage because “[y]ou literally have to
come onto the property in order to access it.” But the “curtilage line is not necessarily
the property line.” United States v. Redmon, 138 F.3d 1109, 1112 (7th Cir. 1998) (en banc);
United States v. Hedrick, 922 F.2d 396, 399 (7th Cir. 1991). Whether an area is in the
curtilage “depends not only on proximity to the house but also on the use of the area
and efforts to shield it from public view and access as well as the nature for which it is
used.” French, 291 F.3d at 951 (emphasis removed).
Nevertheless, the Defendants do not meaningfully contest whether Oats’ mailbox
was in the curtilage. They merely ask us to defer to the district court’s holding that
“Oats failed to establish that the mailbox was in the curtilage” without any additional
2 App. Dkt. 22 at 1.

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argument. But the Defendants have not identified where the district court reached that
conclusion in its order, nor could we locate such a finding. We consider such cursory
arguments to be waived. Shipley v. Chicago Bd. of Election Comm’rs, 947 F.3d 1056, 1062–
63 (7th Cir. 2020). We thus assume without deciding that the mailbox was in the
curtilage.
Even making this assumption, however, Oats’ argument fails. True, a
warrantless search was at the core of both Jardines and Collins. But by withdrawing any
argument about the warrantless search of his mailbox, Oats is left with the argument
that Enos violated the Fourth Amendment by trespassing within the curtilage. Oats
failed to offer any case law clearly establishing that an officer’s mere presence in the
curtilage is itself unconstitutional. While the Fourth Amendment protects against
unreasonable searches and seizures, it is not a blanket protection against all trespass.
Caniglia v. Strom, 593 U.S. 194, 198 (2021). An officer does not violate the Fourth
Amendment just because he “reach[es] a suspect’s door by cutting across the yard
(trampling on the rhododendrons in the process) rather than using the pathway, or
because [he] enter[s] a home’s curtilage to seize garbage in which there is no privacy
interest.” United States v. Tolar, 268 F.3d 530, 532 (7th Cir. 2001) (citation omitted).
Unable to overcome the “clearly established” prong, Oats cannot overcome qualified
immunity.
In affirming the district court, we do not imply that government officials may
wantonly open a private mailbox and examine its contents without a warrant. Rather,
our decision is based on Oats’ choice to narrow his appeal to the question of trespass
while ignoring the troubling intrusion into his mailbox. We therefore AFFIRM.

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