Jane Doe 9 v. Steven Sloan

── Jane Doe 9 v. Steven Sloan ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Date: April 14, 2026 Category: General In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ Nos. 25-1917, 25-1918 & 25-1919 JANE DOE 1, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. STEVEN V. SLOAN, et al., Defendants-Appellees. ____________________ Appeals from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. Nos. 1:23-cv-01035, -36 & -37 — Jonathan E. Hawley, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED FEBRUARY 17, 2026 — DECIDED APRIL 14, 2026 ____________________ Before BRENNAN, Chief Judge, and RIPPLE and TAIBLESON, Circuit Judges. TAIBLESON, Circuit Judge. In 2019, law enforcement in the small town of Toulon, Illinois, was investigating a collection of sexually explicit images of local underage girls stored on an online file-sharing service. As part of that investigation, of- ficers sent a link to the files to Jason Musselman, an “auxiliary police officer” and IT employee for the Toulon Police Depart- ment. Musselman was supposed to help police identify the 2 Nos. 25-1917, 25-1918 & 25-1919 underage girls, and he did. But he also kept the images for his own use—a fact discovered years later, when Musselman was investigated for and convicted of other child pornography of- fenses. Musselman is currently serving a 35-year sentence for cre- ating, possessing, and sharing child pornography. In addi- tion, nine of Musselman’s victims sued him under state tort law and a federal law that allows victims of child pornogra- phy offenses to recover from perpetrators; those claims are continuing in the district court and are not at issue in this ap- peal. The victim-plaintiffs also sued two local police officers and their employers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that the officers violated their substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment when they gave Musselman ac- cess to their sexually explicit images. The district judge granted defendants’ motions to dismiss those § 1983 claims, and plaintiffs appeal those dismissals. We affirm the judgment below. Although Musselman’s crimes were vile, plaintiffs have not alleged a viable substan- tive due process claim. I. Background 1 In January of 2019, the Stark County, Illinois, Sheriff’s Of- fice learned about a Dropbox file referred to as “Blue Breeze,” which contained sexually explicit images of local underage 1 At the motion to dismiss stage, the court takes all well-pleaded alle- gations as true and views them in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs. See Indep. Tr. Corp. v. Stewart Info. Servs. Corp., 665 F.3d 930, 934 (7th Cir. 2012). We therefore recite here the pertinent “factual allegations of the op- erative complaint without vouching for their truth.” Nelson v. City of Chi- cago, 992 F.3d 599, 602 (7th Cir. 2021). Nos. 25-1917, 25-1918 & 25-1919 3 girls. Defendant Steven Sloan, the Sheriff of Stark County, as- signed the Blue Breeze investigation to defendant Gary Bent, who was both a Deputy Sheriff of Stark County and Chief of the Toulon Police Department. Toulon is a small town and the county seat of Stark County. Deputy Bent sought Musselman’s help with the Blue Breeze investigation. At the time, Musselman was an auxil- iary police officer for the Toulon Police Department. Mussel- man also worked as the “I.T. person for the department,” and he had previously served as Stark County’s Emergency Ser- vices Disaster Agency (“ESDA”) Director. In these capacities, Musselman had “regularly participated in official investiga- tions … that involved the internet and electronic information technology.” Musselman was not, however, a forma