Background
In 2019, law enforcement in Toulon, Illinois, investigated child pornography images stored on a file-sharing service. An auxiliary police officer and IT employee named Jason Musselman was given access to the images to help identify victims but instead kept them for his own use. Musselman was later convicted of child pornography offenses and sentenced to thirty-five years. Victims sued Musselman and the police officers under federal civil rights law, alleging a violation of substantive due process rights when the officers provided Musselman access to the images. The district court dismissed the federal claims, finding no recognized constitutional right was violated.
The court’s reasoning
The court reviewed the dismissal de novo, applying the standard that a complaint must state a claim that is plausible on its face. To succeed on a substantive due process claim, plaintiffs must identify a fundamental liberty interest deeply rooted in the nation’s history and tradition. The court analyzed various formulations of the claimed right, including the right to privacy regarding sexual images during an investigation, but concluded that none of these describe a fundamental right protected by the Due Process Clause. The court distinguished prior cases like York v. Story and Whalen v. Roe, noting they involved different facts and predate the rigorous historical analysis required by recent Supreme Court precedent. The court emphasized that not every wrong committed by a state actor constitutes a constitutional violation and declined to break new ground without a principled grounding in history or tradition.
Not every wrong is a constitutional one, and plaintiffs continue to press their statutory and common-law tort claims below.
Jane Doe 1 v. Sloan, No. 25-1917 (7th Cir. Apr. 14, 2026)
What it means going forward
The ruling clarifies that police sharing child pornography images with untrained personnel during an investigation does not automatically constitute a violation of substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, leaving victims to pursue statutory and state tort claims instead.
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