Cortez Javan Rogers v. City of Hobart, Indiana

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 20-2919
C ORTEZ JAVAN R OGERS ,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
C ITY OF HOBART, I NDIANA, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:19-cv-04815 — Andrea R. Wood, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED M ARCH 2, 2021 — DECIDED M AY 7, 2021
____________________
Before R IPPLE, HAMILTON , and K IRSCH , Circuit Judges.
R IPPLE, Circuit Judge. Hobart police officers, relying on in-
formation obtained from an investigative database, misiden-
tified Appellant Cortez Javan Rogers as the person who al-
legedly had intimidated a witness in a pending murder

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2 No. 20-2919
case.1 Mr. Rogers shares a first and last (though not middle)
name with another person who was the actual subject of the
officers’ search.
Based on the information found in an investigative data-
base, the Hobart officers applied for an arrest warrant and,
upon obtaining a warrant from an Indiana judge, placed it in
a database accessible to police departments in other states. A
Chicago police officer later had an encounter with Mr. Rog-
ers and, upon checking the outstanding warrants database,
learned of the outstanding Indiana warrant. The officer then
arrested Mr. Rogers. Chicago authorities immediately re-
leased him upon discovery that the Indiana warrant misi-
dentified the suspect.
Mr. Rogers then brought this action in the United States
District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against the
City of Hobart, the Hobart Police Department, and Sergeant
Rod Gonzalez, its lead investigator. The defendants moved
to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. The district court
granted the motion.
We now affirm the district court’s judgment. The Hobart
officers did not purposefully engage in any activity in Illi-
nois or direct any action in Illinois that would cause them to
reasonably anticipate that they would be haled into the
courts of that State. Moreover, the exercise of personal juris-
diction over them would offend traditional notions of fair
play and substantial justice. Simply put, none of the sup-
1 This case involves a number of different individuals all with the last
name Rogers. When we use “Mr. Rogers” throughout this opinion, we
are referring to the appellant, Cortez Javan Rogers.

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No. 20-2919 3
posed Illinois contacts asserted by Mr. Rogers, whether con-
sidered separately or together, constitute the requisite “min-
imum contacts” among the State, the defendants, and the
cause of action necessary to fulfill the requirements of due
process. Furthermore, to subject Indiana law enforcement
officers to the jurisdiction of another state’s courts under
these circumstances would be fundamentally unfair.2
I
A.
In 2019, Juarez Rogers, who lived in Illinois, was arrested
for a murder in Griffith, Indiana. A confidential informant in
that murder investigation later reported to police in nearby
Hobart, Indiana, that Juarez Rogers’s sons, one of whom is
named Cortez Juarez Rogers, were threatening him.
Officers of the Hobart Police Department, led by Sergeant
Rod Gonzalez, investigated the allegations in the report. In
the course of the investigation, Sergeant Gonzalez, or some-
one on his investigative team, reviewed information con-
tained in an “investigative database” and found Mr. Rogers’s
Illinois State ID photo and associated information.3
Mr. Rogers had provided this personal information to the
Illinois Secretary of State and had his photograph taken
2 On March 9, 2021, several days after oral argument, we issued an order
affirming the judgment of the district court. At that time, we noted that
this opinion would follow in due course.
3 R.21 at ¶¶ 51–55. Mr. Rogers does not specify whether Ser-
geant Gonzalez himself was responsible for finding his photo on the da-
tabase. But Sergeant Gonzalez was in charge of the investigation.

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4 No. 20-2919
when he had applied for his State ID card. An Illinois resi-
dent, Mr. Rogers had never been to Indiana.
Believing, albeit mistakenly, that Mr. Rogers was the in-
dividual about whom the confidential informant had com-
plained, Sergeant Gonzalez obtained a criminal information
by attesting that Mr. Rogers “did communicate a threat to
another person … with the intent that the other person be
placed in fear of retaliation for a prior lawful act, and that
threat was to commit a forcible felony.”4 Based on Ser-
geant Gonzalez’s affidavit and information, a judge of the
Superior Court of Lake County, Indiana, issued an arrest
warrant for Mr. Rogers on March 25, 2019. The arrest war-
rant was then listed in a database available to law enforce-
ment officers in Indiana and other states.
On April 2, a Chicago police officer stopped a car in
which Mr. Rogers was a passenger. After consulting a data-
base and ascertaining that Mr. Rogers was subject to the out-
standing Indiana warrant, the Chicago officer arrested him
as a “fugitive from justice.”5 A judge of the Circuit Court of
Cook County, Illinois, denied Mr. Rogers bail and remanded
him to the Cook County Jail pending extradition to Indiana.
The following evening, however, the State of Indiana filed a
motion to correct the incorrect warrant information with the
4 R.28-9 at 2.
5 R.28-1 at ¶ 25.

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No. 20-2919 5
Lake County (Indiana) court. Upon learning of this action,
Chicago officers immediately released Mr. Rogers.6
On April 10, a captain from the Hobart Police Depart-
ment attempted to contact Mr. Rogers at his home in Illinois
but had to leave a voicemail with a friend. The record does
not reveal the purpose of this call.
B.
Mr. Rogers then brought this action in the United States
District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. His com-
plaint alleged five causes of action under Illinois tort law:
instigation of false imprisonment; false light; invasion of
property; instigation of false arrest; and negligent infliction
of emotional distress. The complaint alleged that Ser-
geant Gonzalez had committed the tortious actions and that
the City of Hobart and the Hobart Police Department were
vicariously liable. Mr. Rogers also alleged that Ser-
geant Gonzalez had violated his Fourth Amendment right to
be free from unreasonable seizures. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983.7
6 On April 2, the Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana published an article
with Mr. Rogers’s photo and the headline, “Sons of man charged in Val-
paraiso teen’s murder accused of intimidating informant.” R.21 at ¶ 31.
The newspaper had obtained Mr. Rogers’s Illinois ID card photo from
the Hobart Police Department. The Post-Tribune has a large readership
in Illinois. The newspaper, however, is not a party to this case. Moreover,
the record reveals nothing further about the newspaper’s obtaining this
material, and Mr. Rogers makes no independent contention justifying
jurisdiction over these defendants for conduct related to the newspaper.
7 The jurisdiction of the district court was predicated on 28 U.S.C. § 1331
and 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1).

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6 No. 20-2919
The defendants moved to dismiss the action on the
ground that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over them
because they did not have minimum contacts with Illinois.
In response, Mr. Rogers filed a counterstatement of material
facts. He emphasized the police officers’ use of information
that he had submitted to the Illinois Secretary of State and
which the defendants had accessed through a third-party
investigative database, their knowledge that Mr. Rogers
lived in Illinois, and their intention to extradite him from Il-
linois to Indiana. He also relied on the Hobart police cap-
tain’s telephone call to his friend in Illinois one week after his
release.8
The district court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss,
concluding that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over
the defendants.9 Relying to a large extent on the Supreme
Court’s holding in Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 289–90
(2014),10 the court reasoned that the defendants had not pur-
8 Mr. Rogers also asked for an evidentiary hearing if the defendants con-
tested his alleged facts. At a later status hearing, Mr. Rogers’s counsel
stated that no hearing was needed because the defendants did not con-
test the facts in Mr. Rogers’s counterstatement.
9 The district court stayed discovery pending its decision on the motion
to dismiss. After the motion remained unresolved for nearly one year,
Mr. Rogers moved to have the stay lifted to begin merits discovery. The
defendants opposed the motion on the ground that the court should re-
solve first the question of personal jurisdiction. They noted that they
would not contest personal jurisdiction if Mr. Rogers moved to transfer
the case to the Northern District of Indiana. See 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a).
10 There, the Supreme Court concluded that Nevada courts lacked per-
sonal jurisdictional over a Georgia police officer who had wrongfully
(continued … )

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No. 20-2919 7
posefully directed their activities into Illinois by obtaining
information about Mr. Rogers from an investigative data-
base. Such use of an investigative database, concluded the
court, was an insufficient basis to justify that State’s exercise
of jurisdiction.
Nor, continued the court, was the issuance of an arrest
warrant for a forum resident, in itself, sufficient to establish
personal jurisdiction. Simply placing a warrant in a nation-
wide database does not amount to the sort of purposeful
availment that subjects a law enforcement officer to the ju-
risdiction of the state where the subject of the warrant is
eventually arrested. It is worth noting, said the court, that
the operative complaint makes no allegation that the Indiana
defendants took any affirmative steps to solicit specifically
the assistance of the Illinois officers. They neither worked
with, nor contacted, Illinois authorities seeking specific assis-
tance in securing the arrest of Mr. Rogers. All they did was
make the warrant visible to officers in other states, including
Illinois.
Finally, the court addressed the telephone call made by a
Hobart police captain. The court noted that, although this
situation certainly demonstrates that the captain attempted
to contact Mr. Rogers in Illinois, the call was insufficient to
establish the requisite minimum contacts. There is no show-
ing, said the court, that the call was related to the alleged tor-
( … continued)
seized the plaintiffs’ cash in an Atlanta airport just before they boarded a
plane to Nevada and who then submitted a false probable cause affidavit
in Georgia. Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 280–81 (2014).

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8 No. 20-2919
tious activity surrounding the issuance of the warrant, the
arrest, or the incarceration of Mr. Rogers.
II
A.
Mr. Rogers now submits that the district court erred in
determining that it lacked specific personal jurisdiction over
the defendants. He presents two primary arguments. First,
he contends that the defendants purposefully took
Mr. Rogers’s identifying information from the Illinois Secre-
tary of State when they consulted the investigative database.
In his view, the defendants’ use of that database amounted to
obtaining “property” from the State of Illinois and therefore
amounted to availing themselves of the benefits of that state.
Mr. Rogers further maintains that the officers’ use of the
database to transmit information about the warrant issued
for his arrest and the making of a phone call to his friend
constitute forum-related activities in Illinois. Relying on
Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 475 n.18 (1985),
and Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 788–89 (1984), he submits
that the effects of the defendants’ tortious activities were all
felt in Illinois. We now examine each of these contentions.
B.
1.
The basic principles that must govern our evaluation of
Mr. Rogers’s submission to us are well established and do
not require that we venture into uncharted doctrinal waters.
Although we have set forth these principles recently in Curry
v. Revolution Laboratories, LLC, 949 F.3d 385, 392–98 (7th Cir.

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No. 20-2919 9
2020), we pause to set them out again, albeit in summary
fashion.
We review de novo the district court’s dismissal for want
of personal jurisdiction. Brook v. McCormley, 873 F.3d 549, 551
(7th Cir. 2017). Once a defendant moves to dismiss under
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2), the plaintiff has the
burden of establishing personal jurisdiction. Curry, 949 F.3d
at 392.11 We must look to Illinois law and to the federal Con-
stitution to determine whether the district court could exer-
cise personal jurisdiction.12 Id. at 393. Because the Illinois
long-arm statute extends as far as the Constitution permits,
735 ILCS 5/2-209(c), we need only look to whether exercising
personal jurisdiction here would comport with federal due
process. Curry, 949 F.3d at 393.
Personal jurisdiction may be “general” or “specific.” Ford
Motor Co. v. Mont. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 141 S. Ct. 1017, 1024–
25 (2021). Here, Mr. Rogers focuses solely on the latter, so we
need not evaluate whether he could show general jurisdic-
tion. Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117, 126 (2014); Int’l Shoe
Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 318 (1945).
11 As we noted in Curry v. Revolution Laboratories, LLC, 949 F.3d 385, 392–
93 (7th Cir. 2020), the precise nature of that burden depends on whether
the district court holds an evidentiary hearing. When the court does not
hold an evidentiary hearing, the plaintiff has the burden of making a
prima facie case for jurisdiction. Here, Mr. Rogers submitted a “Coun-
ter-Statement of Material Facts Pertaining to Jurisdiction.” R.28-1.
12 Mr. Rogers pleads only one federal cause of action based on 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983. That provision does not provide for nationwide service of pro-
cess.

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10 No. 20-2919
The Due Process Clause protects a defendant’s liberty in-
terest in “not being subject to the binding judgments of a fo-
rum with which he has established no meaningful ‘contacts,
ties, or relations.’” Burger King Corp., 471 U.S. at 471–72
(quoting Int’l Shoe, 326 U.S. at 319). Specific jurisdiction
achieves that purpose by requiring “an ‘affiliatio[n] between
the forum and the underlying controversy,’ principally, ac-
tivity or an occurrence that takes place in the forum State
and is therefore subject to the State’s regulation.” Goodyear
Dunlop Tire Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915, 919 (2011)
(alteration in original) (citation omitted). This concept of
“minimum contacts” thus promotes the purpose of the Due
Process Clause in two ways. First, it ensures that states,
through their courts, do not reach out beyond the limits im-
posed on them by their status as coequal sovereigns in a fed-
eral system. Second, it protects the defendant against the
burdens of litigating in a distant or inconvenient forum.
On that first point, the minimum contacts requirement
must be seen ultimately as a function of the individual liber-
ty interest preserved by the Due Process Clause. The Clause,
said the Court, “is the only source of the personal jurisdic-
tion requirement” and “makes no mention of federalism
concerns.” Ins. Corp. of Ireland Ltd. v. Compagnie des Bauxites
de Guinee, 456 U.S. 694, 702 n.10 (1982). The second function
of the minimum contacts approach—and the one upon
which most of the Supreme Court’s cases focus—is ensuring
that maintenance of the suit “does not offend traditional no-
tions of fair play and substantial justice.” World-Wide
Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 292 (1980) (inter-
nal quotation marks omitted). Summarizing World-Wide
Volkswagen’s discussion of “fair play and substantial justice,”
we said in Curry:

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No. 20-2919 11
Relevant factors include the inconvenience to
the defendant, the forum State’s interest in ad-
judicating the dispute, the plaintiff’s interest in
obtaining convenient and effective relief, the
interstate judicial system’s interest in obtaining
the most efficient resolution of controversies,
and the shared interest of the several States in
furthering fundamental substantive social poli-
cies. The Due Process Clause thus provides a
degree of predictability to the legal system that
allows potential defendants to structure their
primary conduct with some minimum assur-
ance as to where that conduct will and will not
render them liable to suit.
949 F.3d at 396 (quoting World-Wide Volkswagen, 444 U.S. at
292, 297) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
In recent years, the Supreme Court has emphasized that
the relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the
litigation must arise out of contacts that the defendant has
created with the forum state. A person should not be haled
into the courts of a state unless he has purposefully availed
himself of the protection of the laws of that jurisdiction. The
question is not whether the plaintiff experienced a particular
injury or effect in the forum state but whether the defend-
ant’s conduct connects him with the forum in a meaningful
way. Id. at 396. That “meaningful way” is identified by alle-
gations or evidence that the defendant has “purposefully di-
rected” his actions at the forum. Id. at 397–98.
In sum, specific personal jurisdiction requires that (1) the
defendant has purposefully directed his activities at the fo-
rum state or purposefully availed himself of the privilege of

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12 No. 20-2919
conducting business in the state; (2) the alleged injury arises
out of or relates to the defendant’s forum-related activities;
and (3) any exercise of personal jurisdiction must comport
with traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.
Id. at 398. With these basic principles in mind, we now turn
to an examination of Mr. Rogers’s specific contentions in this
appeal.13
2.
Mr. Rogers must demonstrate that his claims arise out of
Sergeant Gonzalez’s contacts with Illinois and that those con-
tacts are constitutionally sufficient. uBID, Inc. v. GoDaddy
Group, Inc., 623 F.3d 421, 425 (7th Cir. 2010); Helicopteros
Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408, 414 n.8
(1984). As the Supreme Court explained in Walden, 571 U.S.
at 284–85, a defendant’s relationship to the forum state
“must arise out of contacts that the ‘defendant himself’ cre-
ates with the forum State” and that the relationship must be
“with the forum State itself” and not merely with “persons
who reside there.” “[T]he plaintiff,” the Court explained,
“cannot be the only link between the defendant and the fo-
rum.” Id. at 285; see also Advanced Tactical Ordnance Sys., LLC
v. Real Action Paintball, Inc., 751 F.3d 796, 802 (7th Cir. 2014).
13 Because the City of Hobart can be liable only vicariously, if at all, we
focus on Sergeant Gonzalez’s contacts with Illinois in assessing whether
this suit can go forward. Further, as the City of Hobart has pointed out,
the Hobart Police Department is not an independently suable entity but
rather a part of the municipality itself. See Sow v. Fortville Police Dep’t, 636
F.3d 293, 300 (7th Cir. 2011).

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No. 20-2919 13
Mr. Rogers submits that Sergeant Gonzalez had the req-
uisite minimum contacts with Illinois for two reasons. First,
because the information Sergeant Gonzalez procured from a
database was information that Mr. Rogers had given to the
Illinois Secretary of State (and that had become, in his view,
the property of Illinois). Second, because Sergeant Gonzalez
had obtained an arrest warrant for an individual living in
Illinois. By placing the warrant information on an interstate
database, moreover, Sergeant Gonzalez manifested an intent
that authorities in Illinois effect an arrest. Mr. Rogers at-
tempts to strengthen these arguments by pointing out that
Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. at 783, sanctions the invocation of
specific personal jurisdiction when the plaintiff suffers the
effect of a tortious act committed outside the forum.
These arguments suffer from a fundamental flaw. Ac-
cording to the allegations in this case, the defendants simply
did not undertake any affirmative action in Illinois, or any
action purposefully designed to have an effect within Illi-
nois. All of Sergeant Gonzalez’s actions—consulting an in-
vestigative database, procuring a warrant, and placing that
warrant on a database available to police authorities
throughout the Nation—took place in Indiana, not Illinois.
Nor were any of those actions specifically aimed at Illinois.
The record is devoid of any assertion that the defendants
took any affirmative action specifically aimed at Illinois in
their efforts to arrest Mr. Rogers.14
14 While this case was under advisement, the Supreme Court decided
Ford Motor Company v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, 141 S. Ct.
1017 (2021). That decision does not alter the governing principle in this
case. Indeed, it supports it. Ford presented two consolidated products
(continued … )

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14 No. 20-2919
Finally, as we have noted earlier, the Due Process Clause
forbids a situation that would violate “traditional notions of
fair play and substantial justice.” Felland v. Clifton, 682 F.3d
665, 677 (7th Cir. 2012) (citing Int’l Shoe, 326 U.S. at 316).
Among the factors pertinent to this inquiry are “principles of
interstate federalism.” Ford. Motor Co., 141 S. Ct. at 1030 (in-
ternal quotation marks omitted). To require a municipality
and a municipal police officer to defend the use of databases
employed in the normal course of their work in any jurisdic-
tion where the fugitive decides to travel would certainly im-
pair “the shared interest of the several States in furthering
( … continued)
liability actions arising out of accidents involving Ford vehicles. Ford
maintained that the plaintiffs, both of whom had been injured while
driving in their home states, could not sue the company in those states
because the company initially had sold those cars out of state and the
plaintiffs had obtained the cars by resale. Id. at 1023.
In rejecting Ford’s theory of personal jurisdiction, the Court noted
that Ford “enjoys the benefits and protection of [the forum states’] laws,”
id. at 1029 (quoting Int’l Shoe, 326 U.S. at 319), and that consideration cre-
ated “reciprocal obligations.” Ford’s reliance on Walden, said the Court,
was misplaced. Indeed, wrote the Court, “Walden has precious little to do
with the cases before us.” Id. at 1030. Here, by contrast, the mere act of
accessing a database available in his own police station and entering into
another database a warrant approved by a local judicial officer does not
constitute the development of a reciprocal obligation, or expectation, to
answer for the correctness of that warrant in every state to which the fu-
gitive may decide to travel.
In this case, we need not decide whether, or under what circum-
stances, the same result would obtain if there were specific allegations
that the defendants had affirmatively requested the assistance of officers
located within the forum state.

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No. 20-2919 15
fundamental substantive social policies” in law enforcement.
World-Wide Volkswagen, 444 U.S. at 292.15
15 Many other courts have reached similar conclusions about law en-
forcement officers who, like Sergeant Gonzalez, simply initiated investi-
gations or posted warrants that were ultimately executed in the forum
states. In Jackson v. Village of Grayslake, the district court concluded that
personal jurisdiction did not exist over the defendant, a Wisconsin assis-
tant district attorney, who received evidence from police that had been
obtained in Illinois. No. 15-cv-2661, 2016 WL 4418231, at *7 (N.D. Ill.
Aug. 16, 2016). The court concluded that this contact was too tenuous for
specific personal jurisdiction and further concluded that forcing the as-
sistant district attorney to be a defendant in Illinois litigation for conduct
she undertook in Wisconsin while trying to enforce Wisconsin law
“would ‘offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’”
Id. at *6 (quoting Int’l Shoe, 326 U.S. at 316).
Similarly, in Poteat v. Gibson, No. 17-cv-1903, 2018 WL 6413300 (D.
Md. Dec. 6, 2018), which dealt with nearly identical facts to those we en-
counter here, the district court determined that personal jurisdiction was
lacking because the defendant detective did not “mak[e] inquiries to
Maryland law enforcement officials about the warrant or tak[e] other
steps to execute the warrant there.” Id. at *3; see also Doe v. Del. State Po-
lice, 939 F. Supp. 2d 313, 333–34 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) (posting a warrant, with-
out more, did not create personal jurisdiction); Hicks v. Assistant Att’y
Gen. of Colo., No. 08-cv-0362, 2010 WL 5067611, at *5 (W.D. Mo. Dec. 6,
2010) (posting a warrant and talking to forum-state law enforcement of-
ficers did not create personal jurisdiction); Snyder v. Snyder, No. 06-cv-
3072, 2007 WL 894415, at *4 (D. Minn. Mar. 21, 2007) (posting a warrant
and transferring information by fax to forum state did not create person-
al jurisdiction); Cook v. Holzberger, 788 F. Supp. 347, 351 (S.D. Ohio 1992)
(holding that “simply accessing the information available through the
[National Crime Information Center] system is insufficient to constitute
‘purposeful availment,’” and noting that to hold otherwise “would sub-
ject law enforcement officers to personal jurisdiction in every state”).

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16 No. 20-2919
Sergeant Gonzalez had no meaningful contacts with Illi-
nois. In the course of his duties in Indiana, he simply ac-
cessed a database available to him to determine fairly basic
biographical information about Mr. Rogers. After obtaining a
warrant from an Indiana judicial officer, he simply entered
the existence of that warrant in another database. Neither
Sergeant Gonzalez nor the City of Hobart have the requisite
minimum contacts with Illinois to sustain specific personal
jurisdiction over them.
Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the
district court. The defendants may recover their costs in this
court.
AFFIRMED

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