United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 22-2791 CELINA MONTOYA, et al., individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v. ROB JEFFREYS, Director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, Defendant-Appellee. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:18-cv-01991 — John Robert Blakey, Judge; Gary Feinerman, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED DECEMBER 7, 2023 — DECIDED APRIL 18, 2024 ____________________

Before WOOD, KIRSCH, and JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judges. KIRSCH, Circuit Judge. Celina Montoya, Jennifer Tyree, Ronald Molina, and Zachary Blaye brought a class action law- suit against the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) challenging an IDOC policy restricting contact between a 2 No. 22-2791 parent convicted of a sex offense and her minor child while the parent is on mandatory supervised release (MSR). The plaintiffs alleged that this policy violates Fourteenth Amend- ment procedural and substantive due process. The district court entered judgment largely for IDOC. Though we agree with the court that IDOC’s policy does not violate procedural due process, we hold that its ban on phone contact violates substantive due process. On this record, call monitoring is a ready alternative to the phone-contact ban that accommo- dates the plaintiffs’ right to enjoy the companionship of their children at a de minimis cost to IDOC’s penological interests. We therefore affirm in part and reverse in part. I In Illinois, a parent on mandatory supervised release who has been convicted of a sex offense is subject to an IDOC pol- icy restricting her written, phone, and in-person contact with her minor child. Upon her release from prison, she is pre- sumptively banned from contact with her minor child. She may request contact, though she must enroll in sex offender therapy if she does so. She is not limited to seeing an IDOC therapist and may see a therapist in private practice instead. If the parent cannot get an appointment with a therapist within 14 days, an IDOC sex offender therapist will review her file and complete assessments to allow the parent’s con- tainment team to begin making a determination regarding her child-contact request. The containment team, comprised of the parent’s parole agent, a sex offender therapist, and the parole commander for the district, evaluates the risk she poses to her child. The pa- role agent considers the parent’s compliance with MSR, in- cluding compliance with MSR rules. The therapist assesses No. 22-2791 3 the risk of harm to the child and makes a dangerousness de- termination. This assessment holds considerable weight be- cause of the therapist’s expertise in evaluating sex offenders. Each therapist may use her own policies to reach a contact recommendation, including policies related to how long the parent must be enrolled in therapy before the therapist makes a recommendation. The team must give the parent an initial decision on her contact request within 21 days. If the contain- ment team restricts or denies contact, it must provide the par- ent with written reasons for the decision and review of the restrictions or prohibitions every 28 days. A therapist may deny contact on the basis of insufficient therapy to make a recommendation to allow child contact. The parent may appeal the containment team’s decision to IDOC’s Manager of Sex Offender Services, Sarah Brown- Foiles. Brown-Foiles serves as an independent appella