Lachelle Bowers v. City of Chicago

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted June 20, 2025*
Decided June 24, 2025
Before
DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge
MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge
CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge
No. 24-2646
LACHELLE BOWERS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
CITY OF CHICAGO,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 23 C 4314
Virginia M. Kendall,
Chief Judge.
O R D E R
LaChelle Bowers, a former City of Chicago employee, sued the City for race and
age discrimination, as well as retaliatory discharge. The district court dismissed the suit
as barred by res judicata. We affirm.
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument the briefs and record
adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. F ED. R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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No. 24-2646 Page 2
Bowers, who is African American and over the age of 40, worked for the City of
Chicago as an auditor from 2007 until 2018, when she was fired. She filed a charge of
discrimination with the Illinois Department of Human Rights and then sued in Illinois
state court. In her state suit, she asserted (1) a violation of the Illinois Whistleblower
Act, 740 ILCS 174; (2) common-law retaliatory discharge; (3) race-based discrimination
in violation of the Illinois Human Rights Act (IHRA), 775 ILCS 5/1-101; (4) age-based
discrimination under the IHRA, id.; and (5) retaliation under the IHRA. Id.
The state court dismissed Bowers’s suit. The court first dismissed Bowers’s
whistleblower and retaliatory-discharge claims with prejudice because they were
preempted under the IHRA. Two years later, the court dismissed Bowers’s remaining
claims for want of prosecution—without prejudice—after she did not appear at a
discovery deposition. When Bowers failed to refile her state court case within a year, the
dismissal converted to one with prejudice.
Four years later, Bowers filed this suit in federal court seeking again to challenge
her 2018 discharge. She reprised her allegations that the City fired her based on race
and age and in retaliation for protected conduct. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–2, 29 U.S.C.
§§ 621–34. The district court granted the City’s motion to dismiss on grounds of res
judicata. The court explained that (1) Bowers’s federal complaint included the same
claims she previously brought in state court; (2) the state court case was dismissed on
the merits; and (3) Bowers sued the same defendant in both actions. Bowers appealed.
We begin with a word on jurisdiction. The City renews its contention that
subject-matter jurisdiction is lacking because Bowers’s complaint did not assert any
violation of federal law, stating only that she “reserves the right to amend her
complaint and add … claims under Title VII and the ADEA.” But as the district court
pointed out, the City’s reading of the complaint is too narrow. If her complaint is
construed liberally (as is the practice for reviewing pro se complaints, see Luster v.
Village of Ashmore, 76 F.4th 535, 538 (7th Cir. 2023)), Bowers alleged plausible claims for
race and age discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Age
Discrimination in Employment Act, as well as retaliatory discharge under both statutes.
See, e.g., Gogos v. AMS Mech. Sys., Inc., 737 F.3d 1170, 1171–72 (7th Cir. 2013) (reversing
dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction because plaintiff’s allegations supported
a federal employment discrimination claim).
On appeal, Bowers challenges the district court’s res judicata analysis by arguing
that the state court did not rule on the merits when it dismissed several of her claims for
want of prosecution. She invokes language from the federal rule of civil procedure that

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No. 24-2646 Page 3
governs a dismissal for want of prosecution—F ED. R. C IV. P. 41(b) (“Unless the dismissal
order states otherwise, a dismissal under this subsection … operates as an adjudication
on the merits.”)—and construes it to mean that the state court’s dismissal for want of
prosecution must not have been on the merits.
Bowers misinterprets the operation of res judicata here. The Full Faith and Credit
Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1738, requires us to “apply the preclusion law of the state that rendered
the judgment to determine whether [res judicata] controls this case.” Robbins v. MED-1
Solutions, LLC, 13 F.4th 652, 656 (7th Cir. 2021) (internal citation omitted). Under Illinois
law, res judicata prohibits parties from relitigating claims that have been resolved by a
court with jurisdiction. Baek v. Clausen, 886 F.3d 652, 660 (7th Cir. 2018) (citing River
Park, Inc. v. City of Highland Park, 703 N.E.2d 883, 889 (Ill. 1998)). One of the doctrine’s
requirements is that there must be a final judgment on the merits, id., and here that
requirement was met. The state court dismissed two claims with prejudice on
preemption grounds, and it dismissed the remaining claims for want of prosecution—a
dismissal that became a final judgment on the merits when Bowers’s one-year refiling
window closed late in 2022. See BankFinancial, FSB v. Tandon, 989 N.E.2d 205, 212
(Ill. App. Ct. 2013) (citing SC Vaughan Oil Co. v. Caldwell, Troutt & Alexander, 693 N.E.2d
338, 344 (Ill. 1998)).
AFFIRMED

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