CHICAGO (LN) — A Seventh Circuit panel on Monday vacated the dismissal of a disability discrimination lawsuit against Ameren Illinois Company, ruling that a central Illinois federal judge who threw out Kimberly Ballard's ADA claims on timeliness grounds never considered whether the state agency that handled her complaint had effectively misled her about the 300-day federal filing deadline.

Ballard, who worked as an energy efficiency advisor for Ameren starting in 2013, alleges that she injured her wrist at a work conference in February 2015, underwent surgeries, and requested accommodations. She alleges Ameren responded with negative performance reviews, passed her over for promotion, and ultimately fired her on February 26, 2018.

She filed a Complainant Information Sheet with the Illinois Department of Human Rights 178 days after her termination — well within the 300-day window. But the IDHR took more than a year to convert that intake form into a finalized charge, which it did not cross-file with the EEOC until September 5, 2019 — 556 days after her firing.

U.S. District Judge Jonathan E. Hawley dismissed the suit, concluding that the CIS did not constitute a "charge" under the ADA and that Ballard had therefore failed to comply with the statutory deadline. The Seventh Circuit agreed on the charge question, reaffirming its 2016 ruling in Carlson v. Christian Brothers Services that an IDHR intake form is a "pre-charge screening form" — "merely a prelude to a charge, and not the charge itself." Ballard had urged the panel to overturn Carlson, but Circuit Judge Taibleson, writing for the panel, said that was "too big an ask."

What the district court never addressed, the panel held, was whether the IDHR's own communications had lulled Ballard into inaction. On December 21, 2018 — 298 days after her termination, with two days left on the federal clock — an IDHR investigator emailed Ballard to say her information was "recognized as having been filed on" August 24, 2018, that it would be cross-filed with the EEOC, and that "no further action [was] required" of her at that time. Later correspondence from the agency repeatedly confirmed that Ballard's "charge" was deemed filed as of the date the IDHR received her CIS.

"While those statements might have been accurate as a matter of Illinois law, they were likely misleading as to Ballard's federal claims," Taibleson wrote. "And, at least on the record before us, the IDHR did not differentiate between Illinois and federal requirements. Just the opposite: it confirmed that its own process would automatically trigger a filing with the EEOC."

The panel noted the awkward structural mismatch at the heart of the case: the IDHR's website directs complainants to submit a CIS as the only path to filing a discrimination charge, yet it is the agency — not the complainant — that controls when the formal charge is actually prepared and submitted. That arrangement sits uneasily alongside the ADA's 300-day clock, which the complainant bears the burden of satisfying.

The court vacated and remanded, directing Judge Hawley to conduct the fact-intensive equitable tolling inquiry in the first instance — a process the panel said will likely require converting Ameren's motion to dismiss into a summary judgment proceeding so both sides can develop the record.

Adding to the confusion Ballard faced: under Illinois law, a CIS does qualify as a charge satisfying the comparable deadline for state Human Rights Act claims — a distinction the IDHR apparently never flagged for her.

The panel was Chief Judge Brennan and Circuit Judges Ripple and Taibleson.