This episode covers three important decisions that the Seventh Circuit issued in November 2025: Chicago Teachers Union v. Educators for Excellence (a case addressing whether there is a private cause of action to enforce the federal ban on employer advocacy of candidates for union offices), Schoeps v. Sompo Holdings (a case brought by heirs of a German Jewish art collector to recover a Van Gogh painting now owned by a Japanese insurance company), and Bostic v. Murray (a Section 1983 case arising from a probation officer’s rape of a female probationer).

Kian kicks off the episode with Chicago Teachers Union, which involves a union’s attempt to enforce a provision of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) that prohibits unions and employers from spending money to promote candidates in union elections. The Seventh Circuit panel held that the union lacked an implied cause of action, explaining that this provision has an alternative method of enforcement (submitting complaints to the Department of Labor) and that a different LMRDA provision does have an express private cause of action.

Next, Lara brings her considerable art-history expertise to bear in discussing Schoeps, a case about a German family’s attempt to recover a painting (one of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers) that was misappropriated during the Holocaust and that was purchased many years later by a Japanese insurance company (which now displays the painting in Tokyo). The family sued in Illinois federal court, because an affiliate of the Japanese company sells insurance in Illinois and because the painting was briefly displayed at a Chicago art museum in 2001. In doing so, the family invoked the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, which preempts state-law statutes of limitations—but which does not create its own cause of action. The Seventh Circuit held that neither federal common law nor federal equitable principles gave the family a federal cause of action. And the Seventh Circuit rejected the family’s state-law claims on personal-jurisdiction grounds, holding that the insurance company’s contacts with Illinois were insufficient to establish “purposeful availment.”

Mark wraps up the episode with Bostic, a case that raises an important question under Section 1983—if a supervisor is personally involved in a constitutional violation committed by one of their subordinates, what state of mind must the supervisor have to be liable? The Seventh Circuit held that the answer depends upon the constitutional provision at issue, including the state of mind required to establish the underlying constitutional violation. Because the plaintiff in Bostic pursued a substantive due process theory, the Court held that the applicable standard was deliberate indifference—and it held that the plaintiff failed to meet that standard at summary judgment because the information the defendants possessed was insufficient to put them “on actual notice of the risk that [the probation officer] would eventually grope and rape [the plaintiff].”

Your hosts Kian, Mark, and Lara return from their summer breaks to discuss three significant Seventh Circuit decisions from August, September, and October: Schoenthal v. Raoul (a Second Amendment case that, in addition to the merits, raised a difficult standing issue), Neita v. City of Chicago (a Section 1983 case arising from an Illinois animal-neglect prosecution), and Hadley v. City of South Bend (a Takings Clause case involving the destructive search of an innocent woman’s house).

The episode kicks off with Schoenthal, a challenge to an Illinois law that bars carrying loaded guns on public transportation. After overviewing the Court’s merits decision (the panel unanimously upheld the law), Kian explains how Judge Kolar (writing for the majority) addressed the defendants’ argument that the plaintiffs lacked standing because they would not be able to carry on trains even if they invalidated the Illinois law (because the train operator separately bans carrying guns). Judge Kolar concluded that the plaintiffs’ sought-for relief would redress their injury (and thus they had standing) because their injury was facing prosecution under the Illinois statute; enjoining enforcement of that statute would redress that injury. Kian also discusses Judge St. Eve’s concurrence which likewise addressed the standing issue and highlighted the difficult questions that arise where a plaintiff defines her injury as the inability to engage in protected activity, rather than the threat of prosecution under the challenged law.

From there, Mark takes the lead in discussing Neita, a case brought by a man who claimed that Chicago police officers lacked even arguable probable cause to arrest him for neglecting his pet dog. The panel’s majority opinion (written by Judge Jackson-Akiwumi) agreed with the man, rejecting the officers’ qualified-immunity defense because a jury could conclude that the officers lacked a sufficient basis to believe the man had violated Illinois’s animal-neglect statute.

Lara concludes the episode with a discussion of Hadley, where the plaintiff asked the Seventh Circuit to reconsider an earlier decision holding that the Takings Clause does not require the government to compensate for property damage resulting from the lawful execution of a search warrant. The panel (in an opinion authored by Judge Kolar) declined to do so, explaining that other circuits have adopted similar rules and that the plaintiff’s proposed rule (that innocent property owners can bring Takings claims) would raise difficult questions regarding how courts would determine innocence.

In this month’s episode, the crew tackles three notable decisions from the Seventh Circuit.

First up, Lara walks us through Lukaszczyk v. Cook County, a case involving a vaccine mandate, claims under Section 1983, and some strategic forfeitures that ultimately doomed the plaintiffs’ case.

Next, Kian digs into Union Pacific Railroad Co. v. Illinois Mine Subsidence Insurance Fund, a jurisdictional dispute involving long-ago mining activity, subsidence claims, and whether Union Pacific can shut the door on future lawsuits.

Finally, Mark unpacks Ollison v. Gossett, a case that hits on both qualified immunity and arbitration. Can a police officer avoid liability under Section 1983? And who gets to decide whether a party waived arbitration through litigation conduct — the court or the arbitrator?

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The podcast returns with our monthly dose of Seventh Circuit opinions.

First, Lara tackles a complex insurance coverage case with wide-ranging implications in Starstone Insurance SE v City of Chicago. The case starts with an esoteric jurisdictional question: Is a “societas Europaea” more like a corporation or a partnership for purposes of diversity jurisdiction? It then analyzes whether the insurer needed to pay the defendant’s legal fees in the underlying lawsuit as part of the “ultimate net loss” covered by the policy.

Lara then addresses Griffith Foods v. AIG, another important insurance case where the court (in its own words) tackled an “important question of Illinois law about the meaning and scope of the pollution exclusion in standard form commercial general liability policies.” It resolved some of the issues in the case by sua sponte certifying issues to the Illinois Supreme Court.

Next, Kian discusses Garage Door Systems v. Blue Giant Corp., an international arbitration case. The case begins by addressing the enforceability of international arbitration agreements. While the Seventh Circuit has held that a district court generally cannot compel arbitration to occur outside its geographic district, courts can still compel arbitration under international agreements — so long as the signatories are citizens of contracting states under the New York Convention — regardless of where the arbitration is to be held.

On the merits, the Court found that a text box on an “Order Acknowledgment” form stating that “Terms and Conditions can be found” on the company’s website was sufficient to incorporate those terms by reference. If those terms include an arbitration provision, the parties can be bound to arbitrate.

Lastly, Mark discusses an objection to a class action settlement in the Broiler Chicken nationwide antitrust case. The Court examines when a class settlement may bind class members on claims that the class representative chose not to pursue in the suit.

This month’s podcast focuses on a trio of significant cases the Seventh Court handed down in mid-March within days of each other. Each of these cases has major ramifications for those in the Seventh Circuit.

First, Kian takes on the Court’s en banc opinion in St. Anthony Hospital v. Whitehorn, which addresses when Section 1983 may be used to enforce Medicaid requirements. The opinion reversed a panel opinion discussed on the podcast earlier this year. The case sets out key guideposts for all cases attempting to enforce federal statutes through Section 1983.

Second, Lara tackles an opinion addressing a fundamental question about the very nature of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. In USA v. Black, the Seventh Circuit determined that it did not need to defer to the Sentencing Commission’s interpretation of a provision in the First Step Act. Given the opinion’s analysis of both the rule set out in Loper Bright regarding deference to agencies and its thorough examination of the Sentencing Commission’s role, the Black case is a notable decision that might attract the Supreme Court’s attention.

Finally, Mark addresses Kilborn v. Amiridis, a First Amendment case challenging a law school’s decision to discipline a professor for what students found to be racially insensitive speech in an exam and during lectures. In yet another case that might be a candidate for certiorari, the Court set ground rules for when a professor’s free speech intersects with a university’s power to control what happens in the classroom.

In this month’s podcast, the trio discusses three new Seventh Circuit decisions. First, Kian takes a deep dive into a fractured en banc decision on an unusual qualified immunity issue. Next, Lara gets philosophical with a case that raises the question of whether an Indian tribe can be a Section 1983 plaintiff — but definitely doesn’t answer it! To round out the program, Mark addresses a decision on who decides when litigation conduct constitutes a waiver of the right to arbitrate. No spoilers, except to say that in Judge Easterbrook’s own words, “it has nothing to do with mootness.”

Kian, Lara and Mark take on a new batch of key Seventh Circuit cases in this month’s podcast. First, the three discuss the Court’s en banc decision in U.S. v. Page, in which the Court changed the standard for proving conspiracy to distribute in drug cases and limited the availability of plain error review for jury instructions. Second, Lara takes on the constitutional limits on punitive damages in an interesting new trademark case. Finally, Kian (aka “Mr. Jurisdiction”) explains two recent jurisdictional cases, one involving a vacatur of a stay that destroyed appellate jurisdiction and one holding that the lack of Article III standing requires remanding a removed case, not dismissing it.

In this special episode, Mark and Kian welcome a third member to the podcast team – Lara Langeneckert, commercial litigator at Barnes & Thornburg and formerly of the Indiana Solicitor General’s Office and the Southern District of Indiana U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The team begins with a labor law extravaganza, discussing three significant cases under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA): Jacks v. DirectSat, Acevedo v. Professional Transportation, and Walters v. Professional Labor Group. These cases address the requirements for (and distinctions between) class actions and collective actions under the FLSA, as well as the FLSA’s rules for when employers must compensate employees for commuting time.

The episode concludes with United States v. House, which explores whether the Fourth Amendment requires the police to obtain a warrant before using a pole camera (i.e., a video camera affixed to a utility pole) to observe a suspect’s home.