Foster Chambers v. Village of Oak Park

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted July 9, 2025*
Decided July 9, 2025
Before
THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge
JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge
JOSHUA P. KOLAR, Circuit Judge
No. 25-1104
FOSTER CHAMBERS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
VILLAGE OF OAK PARK,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 22-cv-6008
Jeffrey I. Cummings,
Judge.
O R D E R
Foster Chambers, a home-renovation contractor in the Village of Oak Park,
Illinois, appeals the dismissal of his civil-rights lawsuit alleging that Village employees
singled him out for disparate enforcement of building codes. Because Chambers admits
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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

-- 1 of 4 --

No. 25-1104 Page 2
violating the ordinances and because his theory of selective enforcement does not state
a class-of-one claim under the Equal Protection Clause, we affirm.
Our focus is Chambers’s fourth amended complaint, and we take its allegations
at face value for purposes of this appeal. See Sabo v. Erickson, 128 F.4th 836, 842 (7th Cir.
2025) (en banc). For what Chambers concedes were building-code violations, he
received 60 or so tickets citing problems at eight properties: inadequate construction
fences, improperly placed portable toilets and dumpsters, uncut grass, and insufficient
or expired permits. He faced over $40,000 in fines. Remedying the violations took time
and resources, leading to the failure of certain projects.
Although Chambers admits the violations, he says enforcement was at best
uneven. Other contractors, he insists, violated the same provisions but were never
ticketed. He adds that his tickets began after a “verbal altercation” with a Village official
who had enforcement duties. This official, he says, not only disparaged Chambers to
project workers and investors but said the Village would run him out of business.
As relevant here, Chambers sued the Village under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, pressing a
“class of one” theory under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Village moved to dismiss the operative complaint, arguing, among other things,
that it did not state a claim because the Village had a rational basis for issuing the
tickets: Chambers had violated the ordinances. The district court agreed and, because it
had previously warned Chambers that this was his last opportunity to file a complaint
that states a claim, dismissed the case with prejudice. Chambers appeals.
In general terms, a class-of-one claim states that a plaintiff was “intentionally
treated differently from others similarly situated and that there is no rational basis for
the difference in treatment.” Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, 528 U.S. 562, 564 (2000). But
what counts as a sufficiently rational basis depends on the specific kind of treatment at
issue. Here, there is no dispute that the Village had a rational basis for issuing tickets
because Chambers violated the ordinances, as conceded in his complaint and (later) his
appellate brief. That distinguishes this case from Geinosky v. City of Chicago, 675 F.3d
743, 747–49 (7th Cir. 2012), which involved obviously false (“bogus”) tickets, meaning
that officials lacked any rational basis to accuse Geinosky of wrongdoing. By contrast,
valid tickets, on their own, are no basis for an equal-protection claim. See Miller v. City of
Monona, 784 F.3d 1113, 1121–22 (7th Cir. 2015).
Yet Chambers argues that non-enforcement against others, plus officials’
expressed irritation with him, made it unlawful to enforce the rules against him. But the

-- 2 of 4 --

No. 25-1104 Page 3
Village’s decisions to ticket Chambers for genuine code violations are an exercise of
prosecutorial discretion. And uneven exercises of that discretion against true offenders
do not support a class-of-one theory, as we explained in Tuffendsam v. Dearborn County
Board of Health, 385 F.3d 1124, 1127–28 (7th Cir. 2004).
This limitation harmonizes class-of-one doctrine with two bedrock constitutional
principles: that selective-prosecution claims ordinarily must be based on suspect
classifications or enumerated fundamental rights; and that individuals cannot compel
prosecution of others. See id. (citing United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 464–65
(1996), and Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 831–32 (1985)). As the Supreme Court
remarked in a case ruling out class-of-one theories for employment disputes, “allowing
an equal protection claim on the ground that a ticket was given to one person and not
others, even if for no discernible or articulable reason, would be incompatible with the
discretion inherent in the challenged action.” Engquist v. Or. Dep’t of Agric., 553 U.S.
591, 604 (2008). Absent allegations that selective enforcement was based on a
constitutionally invidious criterion—race, for example—it cannot be the basis for an
equal-protection claim. See Tuffendsam, 385 F.3d at 1128; Katz-Crank v. Haskett, 843 F.3d
641, 649 (7th Cir. 2016) (citing Engquist, 553 U.S. at 603–04).
Chambers next argues that if Village officials harbored animus against him, then
no otherwise-rational basis for enforcement survives equal-protection scrutiny. But only
when a court cannot conceive of any rational basis for the challenged actions do
allegations of animus come into play in a class-of-one case. See Ind. Land Tr. #3082 v.
Hammond Redev. Comm’n, 107 F.4th 693, 698 (7th Cir. 2024). “If we can come up with a
rational basis for the challenged action, that will be the end of the matter—animus or
no.” Miller, 784 F.3d at 1122 (internal quotation omitted).
Chambers’s cited cases are not to the contrary. Olech, for instance, expressly
rested not on an improper subjective motivation, but on the lack of an objectively
rational basis for a local government’s demand for an unusually large easement.
528 U.S. at 565. To be sure, Swanson v. City of Chetek, 719 F.3d 780, 784–85 (7th Cir. 2013),
emphasizes that a clear showing of animus might relieve class-of-one plaintiffs of the
need to identify similarly situated persons who were treated differently. But it does not
relieve them of the need to show that the enforcement actions against them also lacked
an objectively rational basis. For otherwise-valid enforcement actions, animus does not
create a class-of-one claim.
Chambers’s other arguments are irrelevant or waived. He asserts that the district
court improperly decided that other contractors’ projects with un-ticketed code

-- 3 of 4 --

No. 25-1104 Page 4
violations were insufficiently similar to his. But the basis for the district court’s
dismissal was that enforcement was rational, not that other projects had insufficiently
similar violations. Chambers also argues that in dismissing his fourth amended
complaint, the district court overlooked a due-process claim that the Village failed to
give him adequate notice and a chance to respond to the building-code violations. But
Chambers abandoned this claim early in the district-court proceedings; his fourth
amended complaint and related filings in the district court make no mention of it. It is
therefore waived. See Puffer v. Allstate Ins. Co., 675 F.3d 709, 718 (7th Cir. 2012).
There is one final matter. The Village has moved for sanctions under Rule 38 of
the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, which applies to frivolous appeals. In
support, the Village points to spots where Chambers’s filings misquote cases,
misrepresent their facts or holdings, and in some instances appear to cite nonexistent
cases. Because we are aware of the difficulty of litigating cases pro se, and because
Chambers has not responded to the Village’s pending motion, we order Chambers,
within 14 days, to show cause as to why he should not be subject to monetary sanctions
or a filing bar. The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

-- 4 of 4 --