Atrella Reynolds v. Scottrade, Inc./td Ameritrade, Inc.

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted June 16, 2026*
Decided June 18, 2026
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge
JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge
REBECCA TAIBLESON, Circuit Judge
No. 25-2910
ATRELLA REYNOLDS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
SCOTTRADE, INC./TD AMERITRADE,
INC., et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 23-cv-159
April M. Perry,
Judge.
O R D E R
Atrella Reynolds sued Scottrade, Inc./TD Ameritrade, Inc., Charles Schwab
Corporation, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly
misappropriating funds in her personal brokerage account. The district court compelled
* 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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

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No. 25-2910 Page 2
arbitration between Reynolds and the corporate defendants, entered summary
judgment in favor of the SEC, and later confirmed the arbitral award in favor of the
defendants.1 Reynolds challenges all three decisions on appeal, but seeing no error by
the district court, we affirm.
Reynolds sued the defendants in 2023. Reynolds alleged that in 1997, she
attempted to purchase a bundle of stock, but when she checked her account in 2015,
expecting to find $79,000 in assets, the investments were not there. After trying
unsuccessfully to fix the problem with Scottrade, Reynolds filed a complaint with the
SEC. Around the same time, Reynolds said she expected assets of significantly greater
value to be transferred into her account based on her power of attorney over someone
else’s assets. Not seeing those assets in her account, Reynolds repeatedly followed up
with Scottrade over the next six years. Meanwhile, TD Ameritrade acquired Scottrade,
and then Charles Schwab acquired TD Ameritrade. Reynolds also reached out to TD
Ameritrade about the allegedly missing assets. In 2021, the owner of those expected
assets passed away. Reynolds alleged that she was the sole beneficiary of that person’s
payable-on-death account but that she still did not receive the assets.
Three of the district court’s orders are relevant to this appeal. First, the court
granted Scottrade/TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab’s joint motion to compel
arbitration. When Reynolds initially opened her account with Scottrade, she signed a
Brokerage Account Application that included a broad arbitration agreement and an
inurement clause, which applied the agreement to “Scottrade and its successors.” (The
court discussed two other arbitration agreements—including one with TD Ameritrade
after it acquired Scottrade—but determined that neither is binding on Reynolds.) The
court determined that TD Ameritrade, as Scottrade’s successor, could enforce
Reynolds’s agreement with Scottrade. The court further decided that the arbitration
agreement applied to Reynolds’s claims against Schwab, explaining that Reynolds
conceded that Schwab, “as an affiliate to TD Ameritrade,” was also Scottrade’s
successor in the agreement.
Second, the court granted the SEC’s motion for summary judgment, concluding
that the agency was protected by sovereign immunity. The court rejected Reynolds’s
arguments that the agency waived its immunity. First, the court concluded that the
Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 702, did not apply because Reynolds’s
1 Three different judges had responsibility for the case while it was in the district
court. Having noted this, we refer to the “district court” without further distinctions.

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No. 25-2910 Page 3
complaint sought only monetary relief, which the Act does not cover. Second, the court
concluded that the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2671–2680, did not apply
because none of Reynolds’s administrative complaints to the SEC demanded money
damages from the SEC, meaning she did not satisfy the Act’s exhaustion requirement.
Lastly, after the arbitral panel dismissed Reynolds’s claims, the court denied her
motion to vacate the arbitral award and granted the defendants’ motion to confirm it.
Reynolds argued that the arbitral panel relied on fraudulent documents produced by
the defendants. But the court concluded that the panel actually relied on a document
produced by Reynolds, that Reynolds could have discovered the alleged fraud prior to
arbitration, and that, in any event, Reynolds failed to establish fraud.
On appeal, Reynolds first challenges the dismissal of her claims against the SEC
at summary judgment.2 She argues that she properly exhausted her administrative
remedies under the Federal Tort Claims Act by giving the SEC adequate notice of her
complaints. Exhaustion under the Act requires: “(1) notification of the incident;
(2) demand for a sum certain; (3) title or capacity of the person signing; and (4) evidence
of the person’s authority to represent the claimant.” Chronis v. United States, 932 F.3d
544, 547 (7th Cir. 2019). We “construe pro se administrative complaints generously and
deem exhausted any claim fairly implicit in the facts that would be clear to a legally
sophisticated reader.” Delgado v. Merit Sys. Prot. Bd., 880 F.3d 913, 925 (7th Cir. 2018), as
amended on denial of reh’g and reh’g en banc (June 19, 2018).
But even under a forgiving standard, Reynolds’s argument fails because she
never demanded money from the SEC in any of her administrative complaints.
Reynolds submitted three complaints—two through the SEC’s website and one through
a letter to a member of Congress. In those complaints, Reynolds described her
difficulties with Scottrade and its parent companies and requested the SEC’s help, but
she never demanded any amount of money from the SEC. Because requesting an
agency’s assistance in obtaining restitution from a third party does not amount to
making a monetary demand, see Chronis, 932 F.3d at 548, Reynolds failed to meet the
Act’s exhaustion requirement.
2 Reynolds does not contest the district court’s determination that the
Administrative Procedure Act does not apply to her claims. And rightly so because
“§ 702 waives sovereign immunity only with respect to relief ‘other than money
damages’.” Builders NAB LLC v. Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp., 922 F.3d 775, 777 (7th Cir. 2019).
And Reynolds’s complaint seeks only money damages.

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No. 25-2910 Page 4
Reynolds next challenges the district court’s order compelling arbitration. She
argues that because the assets were missing from her account before TD Ameritrade
acquired Scottrade, her arbitration agreement with TD Ameritrade did not cover that
prior alleged misconduct. But, as the district court explained, Reynolds’s agreement
with TD Ameritrade is not the operative agreement in this case. Rather, Reynolds’s
Brokerage Account Agreement with Scottrade included a provision to arbitrate “any
dispute” with “Scottrade and its successors.” So TD Ameritrade, as Scottrade’s
successor to the agreement, can enforce the arbitration agreement against Reynolds.
See Dr. Robert L. Meinders, D.C., Ltd. v. United Healthcare Servs., 7 F.4th 555, 562–63
(7th Cir. 2021) (third party may be contractually bound by an arbitration agreement).
Finally, Reynolds challenges the district court’s order confirming the arbitral
award against her.3 She accuses the defendants of procuring the arbitral award by
fraud, which—if true—would justify vacating the award. See 9 U.S.C. § 10(a)(1). But
Reynolds has not produced any evidence of fraud. She suggests that the defendants
manipulated records of her account statements before submitting them as evidence to
the arbitral panel, but she has produced no evidence to support this assertion.
Reynolds raises new arguments, including that the arbitral panel was biased
against her, for the first time in her reply brief. Arguments raised for the first time in a
reply brief are waived. Jackson v. City of Madison, No. 24-2104, 2026 WL 1492153, at *4
(7th Cir. May 28, 2026).
AFFIRMED
3 While this appeal was pending, the Supreme Court held that a federal court
that has previously stayed claims pending arbitration has jurisdiction to confirm or
vacate a resulting arbitral award as to those claims. Jules v. Andre Balazs Props., 146 S. Ct.
1209, 1214 (2026); see Hinkes v. Sunera Techs., Inc., No. 25-1268, 2026 WL 1453563, at *1
(7th Cir. May 22, 2026).

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