Kimberly Ballard, a former employee of Ameren Illinois Company, alleged she was fired in February 2018 due to a disability and sought retaliation relief under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She filed a Complainant Information Sheet with the Illinois Department of Human Rights in August 2018, within the 300-day window. However, the agency took nearly two years to finalize a formal charge, which was cross-filed with the EEOC after the statutory deadline had passed. The district court dismissed Ballard's lawsuit, ruling that her initial intake form was not a valid 'charge' under the ADA. The district court did not address Ballard's argument that the agency's conduct should have triggered equitable tolling of the deadline.
The Seventh Circuit first addressed whether the Complainant Information Sheet satisfied the ADA's requirement to file a 'charge' within 300 days. Relying on Supreme Court precedent in Federal Express Corp. v. Holowecki and its own prior decision in Carlson v. Christian Bros. Servs., the court held that the intake form was merely a pre-charge screening document. Unlike the filing in Holowecki, which included an attached affidavit explicitly requesting remedial action, Ballard's form contained no such request and explicitly stated it was 'NOT A CHARGE.' Consequently, the court affirmed that the form did not satisfy the statutory deadline. However, the court then turned to the doctrine of equitable tolling. The record showed that IDHR investigators sent emails to Ballard stating her 'information' was 'recognized as having been filed' and that 'no further action' was required, while simultaneously telling her a formal charge was still being drafted. The court noted that these communications were confusing and potentially misleading to a pro se litigant, particularly because the agency failed to distinguish between Illinois state requirements and federal deadlines. Because the record was incomplete regarding the timeline of Ballard's inquiries and the specific nature of the agency's misrepresentations, the district court was in the best position to conduct the necessary fact-intensive inquiry to determine if equitable tolling was warranted.
The dismissal of Ballard's ADA claim is vacated, and the case is remanded to the district court. The lower court must now determine if the IDHR's confusing communications and the two-year delay in finalizing the charge justify equitably tolling the 300-day filing deadline. This requires the district court to likely convert the motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment to develop a complete factual record. If the court finds extraordinary circumstances, the statute of limitations will be tolled for the period Ballard was reasonably diligent.