Kilroy Watkins v. Jacklyon Phillips

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted August 18, 2026*
Decided August 21, 2026
Before
MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Chief Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge
No. 25-1656
KILROY WATKINS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
JACKLYON PHILLIPS, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 22 C 7341
Jeffrey I. Cummings,
Judge.
O R D E R
Kilroy Watkins sued police officers and employees of the Illinois Department of
Children and Family Services (“DCFS”) for violating his Fourth and Fourteenth
Amendment rights. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court concluded that the
* 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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. 25-1656 Page 2
defendants were entitled to qualified immunity and dismissed Watkins’s complaint. We
affirm.
I
In February 2022, DCFS investigator Jacklyon Phillips visited the home where
Watkins was staying with his sister (the homeowner), his two minor nieces, and his
nineteen-year-old niece. Phillips visited because DCFS had received a call to its abuse
hotline that Watkins, who at that time was “indicated” for sexual abuse from an alleged
incident in 2021 (specifically for sexual molestation and penetration of a minor), had
access to minor girls living in the home. “Indicated” means that DCFS had conducted a
formal investigation and determined that the allegations were “supported by credible
evidence.” See 325 ILCS 5/7.4(b)(3), 5/7.12; I LL . A DMIN . C ODE tit. 89, § 300.110(i).
DCFS may take temporary protective custody of a child if it reasonably believes that the
child’s safety is in jeopardy and there is insufficient time to acquire a court order.
See 325 ILCS 5/5.
When Phillips arrived at the home, Watkins met her at the door. Phillips
identified herself as a DCFS investigator and told Watkins that he had to leave the home
because he was “a registered sex offender” and could not be around his minor nieces.
Phillips was partially mistaken. Although there were credible allegations against
Watkins related to sexual abuse, he was not a registered sex offender. Rather, Watkins
was listed on the Illinois Violent Offender Against Youth registry for a decades-old
murder. Watkins informed Phillips of this but she was unmoved. Phillips called her
supervisor, Sharon Richardson, and Richardson spoke with Watkins. Richardson told
Watkins he needed to leave the home even though DCFS did not have a court order.
Phillips then called the police.
Upon the officers’ arrival, Phillips informed them that she did not want Watkins
in the house because he was a registered sex offender. Watkins’s sister, who arrived at
the house during the confrontation, told officers she was aware of the sexual abuse
allegations but did not want Watkins to leave. Phillips responded that if Watkins did
not leave the house, Phillips would take all minors in the house into state custody.
Watkins attempted to re-enter the house, but Officers Chanda Blackamore and Maykiae
Ingram blocked the door. Ultimately, Blackamore and Ingram allowed Watkins to enter
the home briefly on his own to retrieve his personal belongings, after which they
instructed him to leave the home. Watkins complied.

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No. 25-1656 Page 3
II
Watkins then sued Phillips and Richardson (the “State Defendants”), as well as
Blackamore, Ingram, and the City of Chicago (the “City Defendants”) in federal court.
In his second amended complaint (the only complaint relevant on appeal), he alleged
that (1) by forcing him out of his sister’s home, the City Defendants violated his right
against unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and (2) both the City and
State Defendants violated his due process right to familial association under the
Fourteenth Amendment. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He also alleged conspiracy by the
individual defendants to commit those violations, failure to intervene, and a state-law
claim of indemnification against the City of Chicago. As an exhibit to the complaint,
Watkins attached excerpts from the investigation reports DCFS wrote about the 2021
allegations of sexual abuse and the interaction with Watkins at his sister’s home.
The district court screened the complaint and concluded that it stated plausible
claims against the defendants. After being served, the defendants moved to dismiss the
complaint and attached the full versions of the investigation reports that Watkins had
excerpted. They argued that they had not violated Watkins’s rights and also that they
were entitled to qualified immunity. Watkins disagreed and argued that the court could
not grant the defendants’ motions because its earlier screening order concluded that his
claims were plausible.
The district court granted the defendants’ motions and dismissed Watkins’s
complaint. It rejected Watkins’s argument that its screening order precluded later
dismissal and concluded the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. The court
dismissed the Fourth Amendment claim because, in relevant part, the officers were
engaged in reasonable “community caretaking” by requiring a credibly accused sexual
predator to leave a home where he had access to minor children and Watkins identified
no clearly established authority that this was a constitutional violation. The court
dismissed the Fourteenth Amendment claims because Watkins identified no clearly
established law that an uncle has a constitutional right to cohabitate with his nieces—to
the contrary, other courts have generally found that such a right is limited to parents
and custodial guardians. The court dismissed Watkins’s remaining claims because there
was no underlying constitutional violation.
III
Watkins raises three procedural challenges to the district court’s dismissal of his
complaint.

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No. 25-1656 Page 4
Watkins first faults the district court for taking judicial notice of the DCFS
investigation reports attached to the State Defendants’ motion to dismiss. But the court
relied on those full reports only to the extent that they duplicated information in the
excerpts that Watkins attached. Both versions of the reports showed that Watkins had
been indicated for sexual abuse of a minor, and that he denied owning his sister’s home.
(Although Watkins contests what should be inferred from those facts and the accuracy
of the DCFS investigation, he does not dispute that he was indicated or that he did not
own his sister’s home.) Because Federal Rule of Evidence 201 allows courts to consider
exhibits that are attached to the complaint and central to the allegations, and the State
Defendants’ exhibits were ultimately duplicative of Watkins’s own exhibits, we see no
error here. See Williamson v. Curran, 714 F.3d 432, 436 (7th Cir. 2013).
Watkins next faults the district court for not treating its screening order as
definitively establishing that his claims were plausible, but again we disagree. As the
district court observed, no rule requires a court to rely on its own preliminary
assessment without the benefit of adversarial presentation.
As a final procedural matter, Watkins insists that the district court erred by not
taking judicial notice of the officers’ body camera footage. This argument was not raised
until Watkins’s reply brief, however, so it is waived. Bradley v. Village of University Park,
59 F.4th 887, 897 (7th Cir. 2023). And in any event, there is no factual dispute in this
case, and the court properly accepted all of Watkins’s factual allegations as true, so we
see no reason that the court needed to consider the footage.
IV
Watkins next argues that the district court erred by concluding that the
defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. Qualified immunity shields officials
from liability unless a plaintiff can show “(1) that the official violated a … constitutional
right, and (2) that the right was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the challenged
conduct.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 735 (2011) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald,
457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). We can uphold a grant of qualified immunity on either prong,
and here, we focus on whether Watkins’s purported rights were clearly established.
See id.
Watkins contends that the Supreme Court has clearly established a right to access
one’s home and to familial association. See, e.g., Soldal v. Cook Cnty., 506 U.S. 56, 72
(1992) (home); Smith v. Org. of Foster Fams. for Equal. & Reform, 431 U.S. 816, 844 (1977)
(familial association). The problem for Watkins is that overcoming qualified immunity

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No. 25-1656 Page 5
requires a more granular analysis. Sabo v. Erickson, 128 F.4th 836, 845 (7th Cir. 2025)
(en banc). When dealing with abstract constitutional rights, there must be caselaw
specifically articulating the constitutional right and applying it to similar facts.
Id. at 844–45; see also Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015) (seizure context); Ault v.
Speicher, 634 F.3d 942, 946–47 (7th Cir. 2011) (familial integrity context). Further, it must
be so clear that a defendant’s actions were unconstitutional that every “reasonable
official would understand,” beyond debate, that what he did was unlawful. Sabo,
128 F.4th at 844 (quoting District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 63 (2018)). It is the
plaintiff’s burden to provide the relevantly similar caselaw. Archer v. Chisholm, 870 F.3d
603, 613 (7th Cir. 2017).
For familial association, the most similar case Watkins provides is Hernandez
ex rel. Hernandez v. Foster, 657 F.3d 463 (7th Cir. 2011). Hernandez explains that threats
used to obtain compliance with a child-welfare investigation can violate clearly
established constitutional rights. Id. at 482. But that is only true where they are
unsupported by “proper legal authority,” meaning there is not “’some definite and
articulable evidence giving rise to a reasonable suspicion’ of past or imminent danger of
abuse.” Id. (quoting Brokaw v. Mercer County, 235 F.3d 1000, 1019 (7th Cir. 2000)). In
Hernandez, we affirmed in part and reversed in part grants of qualified immunity to
officials who had taken an injured child into protective custody and coerced the parents
into signing a safety plan. Id. at 467. We held that qualified immunity was properly
granted regarding the initial seizure of the child because a medical professional
suggested he had been abused. Id. at 476, 478. But we denied qualified immunity to the
official who threatened to retain custody of the child if the parents did not agree to a
safety plan because intervening medical evidence showed that the child had merely
suffered an accident, not abuse. Id. at 484. Thus, there was no reasonable suspicion of
past or imminent abuse. Id.
Hernandez is not a similar enough case to defeat qualified immunity on Watkins’s
Fourteenth Amendment claims. Here, Watkins had been credibly accused of sexually
molesting another child and yet presently lived with his two minor nieces. And unlike
Hernandez, no evidence materialized during the interaction at Watkins’s sister’s home to
dispel that concern. Moreover, Watkins provides no case showing that someone like
him, a non-custodial uncle, has a right to familial association with his nieces. See, e.g.,
Moore v. City of E. Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 504–05 (1977) (describing the right to familial
association as concerned with making child-rearing decisions). To the extent that the
right might extend to those without a custodial role, the “parameters of that interest
are,” at best, “less well-defined,” see United States v. White, 782 F.3d 1118, 1139–40

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No. 25-1656 Page 6
(10th Cir. 2015), and neither Hernandez nor any of the other cases Watkins cites provides
a factual parallel.
We also agree with the district court that the City Defendants are entitled to
qualified immunity on Watkins’s Fourth Amendment claim. Watkins points to Florida v.
Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013), to argue that “[a]t the [Fourth] Amendment's ‘very core’
stands ‘the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from
unreasonable governmental intrusion.’” Id. at 6 (quoting Silverman v. United States,
365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961)). He draws on other cases for similarly broad principles. But
such broad statements do not show that the officers’ obstruction of Watkins’s return to
the home was clearly unconstitutional. See Mullenix, 577 U.S. at 12. We have explained
that “this court has yet to resolve the issue of whether a seizure occurs when police, by
threatening arrest, prevent a current or former resident from remaining on their
premises. Of course, the resident was free to travel anywhere else.” White v. City of
Markham, 310 F.3d 989, 994 (7th Cir. 2002). We are not aware of any decision after White
that has spoken on the matter, let alone under circumstances like the ones here, where
the defendants reasonably perceived Watkins as a threat to his minor nieces. To the
extent that Watkins draws on Illinois statutes to show that the defendants violated his
rights, state law has no bearing on the qualified immunity analysis. Ault, 634 F.3d
at 947.
V
Finally, we note that Watkins moved to supplement the record on appeal with
evidence relating to his property interest in his sister’s home. Because these documents
are irrelevant to our decision, we DENY that motion. See Gallo v. Mayo Clinic Health Sys.-
Franciscan Med. Ctr., Inc., 907 F.3d 961, 964–65 (7th Cir. 2018).
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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