POSNER , Circuit Judge . This suit, instituted in 2008, grows out of an event in Indiana in 1950: Mary Ephrem, a Catholic Sister of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Precious Blood, claimed to have encountered a series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary, which had told her: "I am Our Lady of America." With support from the Catholic Archbishop of Cincinnati an elaborate program of devotions to Our Lady of America was launched. Our Lady has been credited with healing sick people who...
SYKES , Circuit Judge . Gregory Jean-Paul, a Wisconsin prisoner, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254 arguing that he did not knowingly and intelligently waive his right to counsel on his direct criminal appeal in state court. The district court denied relief. We affirm the judgment because the state appellate court reasonably concluded that his waiver was knowing and intelligent. I. Background Jean-Paul was convicted in 2007 of state drug crimes and...
HAMILTON , Circuit Judge . The principal question in this appeal is whether the district court correctly refused to enjoin a state court from adjudicating a case that the state-court plaintiff had voluntarily dismissed in an earlier incarnation in federal court. In the earlier federal case, FirstMerit Bank had sued CFE Group, LLC and related parties (for simplicity, CFE) to enforce a promissory note and guaranties. CFE moved to dismiss that complaint. The district court granted the motion...
HAMILTON , Circuit Judge . Jeffrey Brown, a former flight attendant for United Airlines, appeals from a district court decision upholding the bankruptcy court's denial of his motion to reopen the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which was closed in 2009. Brown wanted the bankruptcy case reopened so that he could pursue pre-petition state-law claims of employment discrimination arising from his discharge in 2001. The district court agreed with the bankruptcy judge that Brown's years of...
POSNER , Circuit Judge . This is an immense, and immensely complicated, bankruptcy proceeding, but the issue presented by the appeal is straightforward, enabling us to spare the reader a mountain of details. For both the bankruptcy judge, and the district judge to whom the bankruptcy judge's ruling was unsuccessfully appealed, based their decisions on a question of statutory interpretation. We must decide simply whether their interpretation was correct. Caesars Entertainment Operating...
EASTERBROOK , Circuit Judge . Alliance for Water Efficiency engaged James Fryer to analyze how urban water agencies' programs affect the elasticity of demand for water during droughts. The Alliance agreed to coordinate several sponsors of Fryer's analysis. Fryer prepared a draft report, which left the Alliance dissatisfied, and it filed this suit in an effort to prevent Fryer from publishing the report. But the California Department of Water Resources, one of the project's sponsors, is...
FLAUM , Circuit Judge . In 2012, the National Labor Relations Board ("the Board") found that Big Ridge, Inc. violated the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 158 ("the Act"). Big Ridge threatened employees with mine closure and job loss based on their support of the union and discharged employee Wade Waller because of his union support. Big Ridge petitioned this Court for review, and the appeal turned on the Board's authority to issue its order. We vacated the Board's order, finding...
POSNER , Circuit Judge . The Cincinnati Insurance Company issued a liability insurance policy to a company called Painters USA for a one-year period beginning on January 15, 2011. It has brought this suit to try to avoid having to provide coverage to another company, Vita Food Products, which claims to be an "additional insured"—that is, to also be covered by the liability insurance policy that Cincinnati had issued to Painters. The policy covered "bodily injury" caused by an "occurrence" (...
FLAUM , Circuit Judge . This appeal arises out of an enforcement action brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") under Section 707(a) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-6. The EEOC claims that CVS Pharmacy, Inc. ("CVS") is violating Title VII by offering a severance agreement that could deterterminated employees from filing charges with the EEOC or participating in EEOC proceedings. The district court granted summary judgment for CVS...
FLAUM , Circuit Judge . Plaintiffs Debra Marshall and Peggy Thurman bring this qui tam action against Woodward, Inc. under the False Claims Act ("FCA"). Plaintiffs allege that Woodward falsely certified helicopter engine parts that it sold to the government. They also claim that Woodward violated the FCA and Illinois state law by terminating their employment. In the district court, Woodward moved for summary judgment. The court granted the motion, holding that even if Woodward made false...
FLAUM , Circuit Judge . Plaintiffs Citadel Securities, LLC, et al., sued defendants Chicago Board Options Exchange, Inc., et al., in Illinois state court, seeking to recover fees they claim were improperly charged to and paid by plaintiffs to defendants under defendants' "payment for order flow" programs. Defendants removed the case to federal district court. The district court dismissed the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction based on plaintiffs' failure to exhaust administrative...
SYKES , Circuit Judge . Alva and Sandra Butler and their company, BBL, Inc. (we'll refer to them collectively as "BBL"), purchased a restaurant in the City of Angola, Indiana, and planned to convert it to an adult-entertainment venue featuring nude dancing. Within days of the purchase, Angola amended its zoning and other ordinances to make this use of the property impossible. The Butlers and their company brought this suit alleging claims for violation of their rights under the First...
WILLIAMS , Circuit Judge . An administrative law judge disbelieved Anne Hill's testimony that she could not sit, stand, or walk for extended periods of time and denied her application for Disability Insurance Benefits and Supplemental Security Income. In this action arising under 42 U.S.C. 405(g), Hill challenges this adverse credibility finding as well as the ALJ's assessment of her residual functional capacity. We agree with Hill that the ALJ's credibility analysis was flawed and remand...
BAUER , Circuit Judge . Plaintiff-appellant, Michael Dunderdale ("Dunderdale"), filed a discrimination action against defendant-appellee, United Airlines, Inc. ("United"), under the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq., ("ADA"), for failure to accommodate. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of United, and Dunderdale appealed. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the district court's ruling. I. BACKGROUND Dunderdale began working for United in...
POSNER , Circuit Judge . Backpage.com (we'll call it just Backpage) provides an online forum for classified ads sectioned by subject matter, such as rentals, real estate, jobs, and, among still others, "adult." The adult section in turn is subdivided into escorts, body rubs, strippers and strip clubs, dom[ination] and fetish, ts (transsexual escorts), male escorts, phone [sex], and adult jobs (jobs related to services offered in other adult categories, whether or not the jobs are sexual—not...
BAUER , Circuit Judge . Plaintiff-appellant, Paul Burritt ("Burritt"), appeals the district court's order granting summary judgment in favor of defendants-appellees, Lisa Ditlefsen ("Ditlefsen") and Polk County, on all of Burritt's causes of action, as well as the district court's denial of his Rule 59(e) motion. Burritt's complaint advances claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983 for false arrest and false imprisonment in violation of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, as well as state...
WOOD , Chief Judge . After Mathew Neisler, a Wisconsin inmate, lost his prison job, he brought a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. 12132, asserting that the defendant prison administrators had fired him in violation of Title II of that statute. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants and Neisler has appealed. Because Title II does not apply to a prisoner's claim of employment discrimination in a prison job, we affirm. Neisler worked as a...
POSNER , Circuit Judge . On July 5, 2013, the Governor of Wisconsin signed into law a statute that the Wisconsin legislature had passed the previous month. So far as relates to this appeal the statute prohibits a doctor, under threat of heavy penalties if he defies the prohibition, from performing an abortion (and in Wisconsin only doctors are allowed to perform abortions, Wis. Stat. 940.15(5)) unless he has admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 30 miles from the clinic in which...
POSNER , Circuit Judge . The plaintiff, an occasional employee (we'll explain what that means) of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), appeals from the dismissal of a suit against the department in which she charges retaliation against her for filing an administrative claim of discrimination on the basis of her race (black), age (in her forties at the time of the incident), and sex. Both the suit and the administrative...
POSNER , Circuit Judge . Chicago is a major destination city for illegal drugs originating in Central and South America. Interstate 55, which runs from LaPlace, Louisiana, to Chicago, is part of the network of north-south and west-east highways used by drug dealers to deliver their illegal drugs to the Windy City. See, e.g., National Drug Intelligence Center, National Drug Threat Assessment 2006, "Drug Transportation Corridors," www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs 11/18862/transport.htm;...
