Joan Humphrey Gottschall
How Judge Gottschall rules, drawn from 23 signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
About Judge Gottschall
Joan B. Gottschall is a judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Appointed by President William J. Clinton, Judge Gottschall received a commission on August 1, 1996. Judge Gottschall assumed senior status on April 23, 2012.
Judge Gottschall's practices and standing orders
Rules for cases before Judge Gottschall, as published on the court's website (checked October 8, 2026). Judges revise these often, so confirm the current version on the court's site before you file.
Key rules
Motions
File the joint initial status report by the court’s deadline.
“In most cases commenced by the filing of a complaint, the court will set a deadline to file a joint initial status report within approximately sixty days after the complaint is filed.”
Motions
If a motion remains unaddressed after three business days, counsel may email chambers.
“If a motion has not been addressed within three business days, counsel may send a message to [email protected].”
Motions
Call the courtroom deputy before filing an emergency motion.
“Before filing an emergency motion, counsel must notify Judge Gottschall’s courtroom deputy by phone.”
Standing orders for every case in this court
Orders the court applies to all of its cases, whichever judge has them, as published on the court's website (checked October 8, 2026).
How Judge Gottschall decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
At the pleading stage, she treats plausible case-specific allegations as sufficient even when a defendant offers a competing explanation that may appear more likely. In retaliation and discrimination disputes, the complaint need not prove its theory, plead the full prima facie framework, or identify fully developed comparators before discovery.
“At the pleadings stage, a plaintiff must provide enough facts to show that what he alleges is not the only possible explanation but merely a plausible one.”
In Ware v. Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Gottschall declined to consider personnel and arbitration documents the defendant submitted with a dismissal motion. The plaintiff had not referenced them in the complaint, and using them to support a defense would turn the pleading motion into one sided summary judgment.
“If defendant’s exhibits could be considered just because they shed further light on the circumstances surrounding Ware’s demotion when Ware did not even mention those documents in his amended complaint, anything else bolstering the defendant’s position could as well, and incorporation would become a backdoor to a one-sided summary judgment procedure—the very thing Rule 12(d) seeks to prevent.”
She applies notice pleading to civil-rights/employment claims and rejects attempts to impose a heightened standard: under Swierkiewicz (undisturbed by Twombly/Iqbal) a Title VII plaintiff need not plead a prima facie McDonnell-Douglas case to survive a motion to dismiss. A single incident plus involvement of a final policymaker (an Illinois sheriff for jail operations) plausibly states Monell liability — the plaintiff need not identify other victims.
“under a notice pleading system, it is not appropriate to require a plaintiff to plead facts establishing a prima facie case”
Procedural preferences
In Segal v. Amadeus IT Group, S.A., Gottschall dismissed the amended antitrust complaint because its allegations of information sharing and parallel conduct did not plausibly show an agreement in restraint of trade.
“Since, as pleaded, Segal’s § 1 claim rests exclusively on defendants’ parallel conduct to allege an agreement in restraint of trade, Twombly forecloses it, for Twombly holds that parallel conduct does not nudge a § 1 claim across the line from conceivable to plausible.”
In Harris v. ARB Gaming LLC, she left contract-formation and enforceability questions to the arbitrator because Harris challenged the agreement as a whole rather than its delegation provision specifically.
“Applied here, the rule articulated in Rent-a-Center dictates that unless Harris attacks the delegation provisions in § 17 of the Terms of Use specifically, her challenge to the validity of the contract as a whole must be left for the arbitrator.”
In Ammons v. Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, Gottschall granted the employer summary judgment because later, discrete failures to transfer were not reasonably related to the plaintiff’s earlier EEOC charge and had not been exhausted.
“this court is not at liberty to follow the law of other Circuits where there is controlling Seventh Circuit authority”
In Ammons v. Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, Gottschall reminded the parties that her standing order bars argument in Local Rule 56.1 fact statements and calls for short, numbered paragraphs generally containing one fact each.
“argument masquerading as fact will not be considered by the court”
In Purzel Video v. Does 1-84, Gottschall denied motions to quash ISP subpoenas but limited disclosure to subscriber names and mailing addresses and allowed the subscribers to proceed by pseudonym. She denied severance without prejudice at that stage.
“the identity and mailing address of the bill payer are the only pieces of information that are discoverable”
In a second dismissal motion concerning the same complaint, the court applied circuit precedent allowing a renewed Rule 12(b)(6) argument but declined to revisit arguments it had already rejected without a change in controlling law or a basis for reconsideration.
“Reyes and SDR Garage’s Rule 12(b)(6) arguments are rejected for the reasons given in the September 9, 2025, opinion and for failure to satisfy the standard for reconsidering those rulings.”
In Afsharinejad v. Kameli, Gottschall transferred an investment dispute to the Middle District of Florida under the parties’ forum-selection clause after finding that the plaintiff had not shown extraordinary circumstances against transfer. She left merits arguments open for the transferee court.
“Afsharinejad has not carried his burden to show that extraordinary circumstances weigh against transfer under § 1404(a) and Atlantic Marine.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“For the foregoing reasons, Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s complaint [9] is granted.”
“Accordingly, defendant's motion 27 to stay discovery is denied as moot.”
“For the reasons given above, defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s amended complaint (ECF No. 25) is denied.”
“The motion to dismiss [15] filed by Defendant Bionic Products of America, Inc. (‘Bionic’) is denied.”
“Because the subpoenas will yield information relevant to Plaintiff’s claims, and because the requirements of Rule 45 are satisfied, the court denies the motions to quash.”
“Because a state-law civil conspiracy claim for copyright infringement is not qualitatively different from a federal copyright infringement claim, it is preempted by the Copyright Act. . . . The court therefore dismisses count III of the complaint.”
“MWRD’s motion for summary judgment is granted. Ammons’ motion to strike is denied as moot.”
“For the reasons stated above, defendants’ motion for attorney fees’ and/or sanctions is denied.”
“Defendant's motion for summary judgment is therefore denied.”
“For the reasons set forth above, Local 2's motion for summary judgment is granted.”
“For the reasons stated above, the defendant's motion to dismiss [23] is denied.”
“Consequently, the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment is denied and the defendant's motion for summary judgment is granted.”
“For the foregoing reasons, IDOT's motion for summary judgment is granted.”
“Because a dispute of fact exists as to whether Cruz exhausted his administrative remedies, the defendants' motion for summary judgment is denied.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 626.0 days (N = 6).
- Sampled 2014-2016 and current (2026) filings.
- Nature-of-suit mix is dominated by 'Schedule A' intellectual-property enforcement suits (trademark 840, copyright 820, patent 830 — the 'Partnerships and Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule A' pattern, frequently TRO-then-quick-termination), ADA Title III/disability (446) and other civil rights (440/442), personal injury (360), and contract (190/196), alongside a heavy volume of same-day administrative/miscellaneous matters.
- A few §2255 prisoner-vacate-sentence matters run for years (e.g. United States v. Bluford and United States v. Miles, each ~5.7 years).
How long civil cases take in this court
For the whole of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, not for Judge Gottschall: median time from filing to disposition of the civil cases the court closed in the 12 months ending September 30, 2025, as reported by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
| Cases | Median time | |
|---|---|---|
| All civil cases closed | 12,205 | 5.9 months |
| Closed with no court action | 4,300 | 7 months |
| Closed before pretrial | 7,558 | 5.4 months |
| Closed during or after pretrial | 305 | 12.6 months |
| Closed during trial | 42 | 49.5 months |
| 12 months ending | Cases closed | Median time |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2025 | 12,205 | 5.9 months |
| Sep 2024 | 9,700 | 6.8 months |
| Sep 2023 | 7,093 | 6 months |
| Sep 2022 | 6,841 | 7.3 months |
| Sep 2021 | 9,703 | 15.1 months |
| Sep 2020 | 8,046 | 10.6 months |
| Sep 2019 | 8,134 | 7.4 months |
The table leaves out prisoner petitions, land condemnations, deportation reviews, recovery of overpayments and enforcement of judgments, and reports no median for fewer than 10 cases. A district that closed a large multidistrict litigation in the period shows very large counts and long medians for that year. Source: Table C-5, U.S. District Courts (spreadsheet).
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Ezel grounds your drafting and research in this profile: what has persuaded Judge Gottschall, and what has not, cited to the signed orders.
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