Calvin Lee v. Milwaukee County, Wisconsin

── Calvin Lee v. Milwaukee County, Wisconsin ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Date: May 07, 2026 Category: General In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 24-1945 CALVIN D. LEE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. MILWAUKEE COUNTY, WISCONSIN, Defendant-Appellee. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. No. 2:22-cv-01089 — William E. Duffin, Magistrate Judge. ____________________ ARGUED MARCH 3, 2026 — DECIDED MAY 7, 2026 ____________________ Before ROVNER, SCUDDER, and KOLAR, Circuit Judges. KOLAR, Circuit Judge. Calvin Lee filed a pro se lawsuit against Milwaukee County for allegedly unconstitutional conditions of confinement that he experienced while detained for two and a half years in the County’s Jail. The district court granted summary judgment to the County, and Lee—now represented by counsel—appeals. 2 No. 24-1945 Lee’s allegations are troubling: in particular, his descrip- tions of potential gaps in the Jail’s mental-health resources give us pause. His medical conditions, a traumatic brain in- jury and post-traumatic stress disorder, are serious enough to mandate some level of care under the Fourteenth Amend- ment. And the County’s attempt to insulate itself from liabil- ity by claiming that it lacked notice of any deficient care pro- vided by its private contractor is a non-starter. But on the sparse record before us, we cannot conclude that any of Lee’s claims rise to the level of a constitutional vi- olation. The little evidence available on the scope of Lee’s mental-health needs does not raise a triable issue of fact as to whether the limited care the Jail did offer him was constitu- tionally insufficient. Though we sympathize with the chal- lenges Lee undoubtedly faced in mustering this evidence while litigating the case pro se below, we find he failed to meet his burden at summary judgment. Thus, we affirm. I. Background A. Factual Background We take the following facts from the summary judgment record, drawing all reasonable inferences in Lee’s favor as the nonmovant. Stockton v. Milwaukee County, 44 F.4th 605, 614 (7th Cir. 2022). Like the magistrate judge, 1 we construe his pro se filings below liberally and review the signed and sworn al- legations in his amended complaint as an affidavit for sum- mary judgment purposes. Beal v. Beller, 847 F.3d 897, 901–02 (7th Cir. 2017). 1 Magistrate Judge William E. Duffin presided over the case with the parties’ consent. No. 24-1945 3 Lee was a pretrial detainee at the Milwaukee County Jail from December 2020 to April 2023. The County contracts with Wellpath, LLC to provide routine medical services, including mental-health care, at the Jail. When Lee was initially pro- cessed at the Jail, he informed medical staff that he was a U.S. Army veteran with a documented history of traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, insomnia, de- pression, headaches, and blackouts, as well as nerve pain. Lee said that he was “actively being treated” for these conditions before his detention. But the record yields few details about what this prior treatment entailed and contains no evidence that Lee was evaluated by a mental-health care professional upon intake. In fact, the record contains none of Lee’s medical records from either before or during his time at the Jail. Lee’s arrival came midway through the COVID-19 pan- demic when the Jail was struggling to curb transmission of the virus. As part of the Jail’s efforts to control the spread of COVID-19, Lee and other detainees were regularly confined to their cells for extended periods