Curtis L. Oats v. McHenry County, Illinois

arrived at the Wonder Lake address and noticed the dog secured by a leash in the front yard. As Enos approached the front door of the home, a man, later identified as Oats, spoke to Enos from the porch. Although Oats provided some information about the dog, he refused to give Enos his own name. Enos then walked back to his car but stopped at Oats' mailbox along the way. According to Oats, Enos opened the mailbox and rifled through the mail in an apparent attempt to learn Oats' name. Several months later, on March 23, 2022, McHenry County cited Oats for two local ordinance violations for failure to register and vaccinate his dog.

Initially acting pro se, Oats sued Enos and McHenry County in federal court on April 14, 2022. While his federal action was proceeding, the state case involving his alleged ordinance violations was dropped on June 16, 2022. After obtaining counsel, Oats filed the operative third amended complaint in April 2023. Invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Oats alleged that Enos violated the Fourth Amendment by walking on the curtilage of Oats' home and conducting a warrantless search through Oats' mail. He also alleged that McHenry County violated the First Amendment by retaliatorily issuing pet ordinance violations. Lastly, Oats maintained that McHenry County had engaged in malicious prosecution under Illinois state law.

On August 15, 2024, the district court granted the Defendants summary judgment on all claims. The district court held, as relevant to this appeal, Enos was entitled to qualified immunity on the Fourth Amendment claim, even assuming the officer had gone through Oats' mailbox. Because Oats failed to engage with or otherwise challenge the district court's disposition of his First Amendment or malicious prosecution claims, we do not discuss those claims further. Hackett v. City of South Bend,

956 F.3d 504, 510 (7th Cir. 2020) ("An appellant who does not address the rulings and reasoning of the district court forfeits any arguments he might have that those rulings were wrong.").

On appeal, Oats initially raised three Fourth Amendment arguments: (1) Enos violated the Fourth Amendment by walking on the curtilage of Oats' home; (2) Enos violated the Fourth Amendment by opening Oats' mailbox; and (3) Enos waived his qualified immunity defense below, so the district court erred in granting qualified immunity. Oats withdrew his second and third arguments in his reply brief and explicitly abandoned these arguments at oral argument, leaving only the curtilage question for us to resolve.¹In other words, Oats concedes that Enos did not act

2

unconstitutionally by going through his mail, and he further concedes that he must overcome Enos' invocation of qualified immunity.

We review a district court's grant of summary judgment de novo, viewing all evidence and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party. Lane

v. Stericycle, Inc., 162 F.4th 866, 871 (7th Cir. 2025). To overcome the qualified immunity defense, Oats has the burden to show that Enos violated a clearly established constitutional right. Pam v. City of Evansville, 154 F.4th 523, 530 (7th Cir. 2025). To do so, Oats must produce "controlling authority" or "a robust consensus of cases of persuasive authority" that would make it "clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted." District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 63 (2018) (internal quotations and citations removed). Oats need not produce a case exactly on point, but we cannot define a clearly established constitutional right "at a high level of generality, since doing so avoids the crucial question whether the official acted reasonably in the particular circumstances that he or she faced." Id. at 63-64 (quoting Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765, 779 (2014)).

Oats' argument is peculiar in that he does not challenge the constitutionality of Enos allegedly opening Oats' mailbox and searching through his mail. That is an interesting choice because the Supreme Court has long maintained that government actors may not open mail without a warrant. United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 114 (1984) (explaining that letters "are in the general class of effects in which the public at large has a legitimate expectation of privacy" and that "warrantless searches" of letters

"are presumptively unreasonable" under the Fourth Amendment); Ex parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727, 733 (1877) (explaining that Fourth Amendment protections extend to one's papers, "wherever they may be," and that the government needs a warrant to open mail). While there are exceptions to this general rule recognized by our sister circuits, the location and characteristics of Oats' mailbox are distinguishable. Cf. United States v. Stokes, 829 F.3d 47, 52 (1st Cir. 2016) (addressing "whether a defendant can hold a reasonable expectation of privacy in a rented mailbox" located in a public place such as post office mailroom); United States v. Osunegbu, 822 F.2d 472, 480 (5th Cir. 1987) (same); United States v. Hinton, 222 F.3d 664, 676 (9th Cir. 2000) (finding "there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a parcel locker at a post office."). Congress, too, has spoken about mailbox privacy by criminalizing, among other things, the unauthorized removal of mail from mailboxes by members of the public and postal workers alike. 18 U.S.C. §§ 1708, 1709. All of this suggests that members of the public may well have an expectation of privacy "that society is prepared to recognize as 'reasonable'"—and therefore protected by the Fourth Amendment—in the contents of their private

3

mailboxes. See Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740 (1979) (quoting Katz v. United States,

389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring)); see also United States v. Lewis, 738 F.2d 916, 920 (8th Cir. 1984) (assuming without deciding that opening a private mailbox could constitute an illegal search under the Fourth Amendment).

Nevertheless, we do not reach this issue because Oats withdrew any argument that he had "a clearly established expectation of privacy in the contents of his mailbox."²He argues instead that Enos violated a clearly established "Fourth Amendment prohibition on crossing the curtilage to conduct a search." He cites two Supreme Court cases for support. In Florida v. Jardines, the Supreme Court held that officers' warrantless use of a drug-sniffing dog while standing on the suspect's front porch, from which the dog could detect the smell of drugs inside the home, constituted a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment because the sniff occurred in the home's curtilage. 569 U.S. 1, 3-6, 11-12 (2013). And in Collins v. Virginia, the Court held that the warrantless search of a motorcycle parked in a partial enclosure at the top of the petitioner's driveway, which the Court concluded was part of the home's curtilage, violated the Fourth Amendment. 584 U.S. 586, 593-94 (2018). Here, too, argues Oats, a government actor walked onto the curtilage of his home without a warrant and therefore violated the Fourth Amendment.

We note at the outset that it is questionable whether Oats' mailbox was located within the curtilage of his home at all. The curtilage "is the area outside the home itself but so close to and intimately connected with the home and the activities that normally go on there that it can reasonably be considered part of the home." United States v. French, 291 F.3d 945, 951 (7th Cir. 2002); see also United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 301 (1987). Oats argues that his mailbox was on the curtilage because "[y]ou literally have to come onto the property in order to access it." But the "curtilage line is not necessarily the property line." United States v. Redmon, 138 F.3d 1109, 1112 (7th Cir. 1998) (en banc); United States v. Hedrick, 922 F.2d 396, 399 (7th Cir. 1991). Whether an area is in the curtilage "depends not only on proximity to the house but also on the use of the area and efforts to shield it from public view and access as well as the nature for which it is used." French, 291 F.3d at 951 (emphasis removed).

Nevertheless, the Defendants do not meaningfully contest whether Oats' mailbox was in the curtilage. They merely ask us to defer to the district court's holding that

"Oats failed to establish that the mailbox was in the curtilage" without any additional

4

argument. But the Defendants have not identified where the district court reached that conclusion in its order, nor could we locate such a finding. We consider such cursory arguments to be waived. Shipley v. Chicago Bd. of Election Comm'rs, 947 F.3d 1056, 1062- 63 (7th Cir. 2020). We thus assume without deciding that the mailbox was in the curtilage.

Even making this assumption, however, Oats' argument fails. True, a warrantless search was at the core of both Jardines and Collins. But by withdrawing any argument about the warrantless search of his mailbox, Oats is left with the argument that Enos violated the Fourth Amendment by trespassing within the curtilage. Oats failed to offer any case law clearly establishing that an officer's mere presence in the curtilage is itself unconstitutional. While the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, it is not a blanket protection against all trespass. Caniglia v. Strom, 593 U.S. 194, 198 (2021). An officer does not violate the Fourth Amendment just because he "reach[es] a suspect's door by cutting across the yard (trampling on the rhododendrons in the process) rather than using the pathway, or because [he] enter[s] a home's curtilage to seize garbage in which there is no privacy interest." United States v. Tolar, 268 F.3d 530, 532 (7th Cir. 2001) (citation omitted). Unable to overcome the "clearly established" prong, Oats cannot overcome qualified immunity.

In affirming the district court, we do not imply that government officials may wantonly open a private mailbox and examine its contents without a warrant. Rather, our decision is based on Oats' choice to narrow his appeal to the question of trespass while ignoring the troubling intrusion into his mailbox. We therefore AFFIRM.

5