Wroblewski, Randy v. Schroeder, Daniel et al

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN
RANDY WROBLEWSKI,
Plaintiff, OPINION AND ORDER
v.
25-cv-624-wmc
DANIEL SCHROEDER, BRONWYN BALDWIN,
MICHELLE ZACCARD AND GRACE KNUTSON,
Defendants.
Plaintiff Randy Wroblewski was convicted of first-degree sexual assault of a child in
2007. Following his release from prison to extended supervision, he was placed on
mandatory lifetime GPS monitoring. Under Wisconsin law, however, Wroblewski was not
subject to a lifetime of GPS monitoring. Nonetheless, despite Wroblewski’s requests that
the Wisconsin Department of Corrections correct its error, he was subjected to nearly two
years of GPS monitoring before DOC corrected its mistake and released him from the
monitoring. Wroblewski then filed this lawsuit, claiming that the DOC’s continuation of
GPS monitoring after being notified of the error amounted to an unreasonable search under
the Fourth Amendment.
Before the court is defendants’ motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a Fourth Amendment claim, failure to allege
sufficient personal involvement by defendants and qualified immunity. Even accepting the
allegations in plaintiff’s complaint as true, the court agrees with defendants that his claims
implicate state law, not a federal constitutional claim under the Fourth Amendment.
Moreover, given the uncertainty of federal law on this subject, defendants would be entitled
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to qualified immunity. Accordingly, the court will grant defendants’ motion and plaintiffs’
claims will be dismissed.
UNDISPUTED FACTS1
Under Wisconsin law, first-degree sexual assault of a child can entail either sexual
intercourse or “sexual contact.” During his criminal trial, all involved parties used the term
“sexual contact” to describe Wroblewski’s offensive conduct, including during voir dire,
opening statements, trial material, closing statements and the judge’s jury instructions.
Moreover, the jury convicted Wroblewski of having had sexual contact with a child, for
which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, to be followed by 15 years of extended
supervision.
On March 15, 2022, Wroblewski was released from prison to extended supervision.
Under Wisconsin law, individuals convicted of a child sex offense are subjected to
electronic monitoring upon release from prison: (1) if they have committed a Level One
or Level Two child sex offense, in which case Wis. Stat. § 301.48 mandates the imposition
of a lifetime of GPS monitoring or (2) if the Department of Corrections (“DOC”)
determines in the exercise of reasonable discretion that the person’s risk of future offense
renders GPS monitoring appropriate. Wroblewski was initially placed on discretionary
GPS monitoring for 90 days following his release, but DOC’s Sex Offender Registry
Program (“SORP”) mistakenly later informed him that a lifetime of GPS monitoring was
1 The following allegations are drawn from plaintiffs’ complaint and accepted as true for purposes
of resolving defendants’ pending motion to dismiss. McCray v. Wilkie, 966 F.3d 616, 618 (7th Cir.
2020).
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mandated in his case. More specifically, a Corrections Program Specialist for the Sex
Offender Registry, Katherine Mears, had incorrectly determined that Wroblewski had been
convicted of having sexual intercourse with a child, which classified him as a Level One
child sex offender subject to mandatory lifetime GPS monitoring.
On August 30, 2022, Brittany Lee, acting as an advocate for Wroblewski, emailed
Mears on his behalf to request that he be taken off GPS monitoring. In her letter attached
to the email, Lee further detailed the reasons why Wroblewski did not meet the
classification of a Level One child sex offender. Her letter also offered to provide the trial
transcripts, referred to various supporting documents, and listed the contents of each
supporting document in an appendix. The documents themselves were also embedded in
a link at the end of Lee’s email titled “DOC Documents.”
After reading the email and letter from Lee, Mears clicked on the link to the
supporting documents but was unable to access them. Mears then forwarded Lee’s
communications to her supervisor at DOC, Daniel Schroeder, informing him that she had
been unable to access the documents via the link. She also forwarded Lee’s
communications to DOC’s Office of Legal Counsel. The email and letter were then
reviewed by DOC attorneys Bronwyn Baldwin and Michelle Zaccard. Now all named
defendants, Schroeder, Baldwin, and Zaccard did not attempt to obtain the supporting
documents Lee mentioned in her letter, nor did they contact Lee to inform her the link
was inaccessible. Instead, on October 27, 2022, DOC’s SORP Director Grace Knutson
emailed Lee that (1) the information she provided had been reviewed, and (2) Wroblewski
was still required to be on GPS monitoring based on “state statute.”
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At some later point, Wroblewski retained Attorney Eric Schanowski to contest his
lifetime GPS monitoring, and on May 24, 2024, Schanowski emailed to SORP the same
documents previously referred to in Lee’s August 2022 letter that definitively established
Wroblewski was not a Level One sex offender. On May 28, 2024, SORP replied that based
on the “additional information” Attorney Schanowski had provided, SORP agreed a
lifetime of monitoring was not required. Thus, after nearly two years of GPS monitoring,
Wroblewski’s ankle bracelet was removed on May 28, 2024.
OPINION
Plaintiff contends that defendants violated the Fourth Amendment in subjecting
him to mandatory GPS monitoring, despite receiving notice that he was “ineligible” for a
lifetime of GPS monitoring. In moving to dismiss, defendants argue that this act did not
implicate the Fourth Amendment, and even if it did, they are entitled to qualified
immunity.
To survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), the complaint must allege facts
that plausibly lead to a claim upon which relief could be granted. Gogos v. AMS Mech. Sys.,
737 F.3d 1170, 1172 (7th Cir. 2013) (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)).
In resolving a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the court assumes the truth of the complaint’s well-
pleaded factual allegations, construes the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving
party, and draws all inferences in the favor of the nonmoving party. Zahn v. N. Am. Power
& Gas, LLC, 815 F.3d 1082, 1087 (7th Cir. 2016). After review, the court concludes that
defendants’ motion must be granted.
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I. Fourth Amendment Search
To begin, plaintiff’s GPS monitoring via ankle bracelet was a search subject to the
reasonableness requirements of the Fourth Amendment. See Grady v. North Carolina, 575
U.S. 306, 309 (2015) (“[A] State also conducts a search when it attaches a device to a
person's body, without consent, for the purpose of tracking that individual's movements.”).
Whether the search was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, however, “depends on
the totality of the circumstances, including the nature and purpose of the search and the
extent to which the search intrudes upon reasonable privacy expectations.” Id. at 310.
As already discussed, plaintiff was subjected to GPS monitoring because he was a
convicted sex offender on extended supervision. Moreover, the Seventh Circuit has
concluded that such a search is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Specifically, in
Belleau v. Wall, 811 F.3d 929 (7th Cir. 2016), the Seventh Circuit upheld the lifetime
imposition of GPS monitoring on a sex offender under Wis. Stat. § 301.48 against a Fourth
Amendment challenge. Id. at 936. In coming to this holding, the court first recognized
that sex offenders have diminished privacy expectations, noting in particular that convicted
sex offenders in Wisconsin -- even those no longer subject to parole or probation -- are
already subject to sex offender registry requirements, which include public access to the sex
offender’s criminal history, home address and photograph under Wis. Stat. § 301.45(2).
The Seventh Circuit further concluded that “persons convicted of crimes, especially very
serious crimes such as sexual offenses against minors, and especially very serious crimes
that have high rates of recidivism such as sex crimes, have a diminished reasonable
constitutionally protected expectation of privacy.” Id. at 936 (emphasis omitted). Indeed,
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given these statutory registry requirements, the court found that an offender’s loss of
privacy resulting from additional GPS monitoring was “slight” and “incremental,” and that
monitoring sex offenders on supervision would be “unassailable.” As to the nature and
purpose of the search, the Seventh Circuit explained that GPS monitoring advances
Wisconsin’s interest in reducing sex offender recidivism and reintegrating offenders into
society without unduly burdening their reduced privacy expectations. Id. at 933–36; see
also Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 874 (1987) (parolees and probationers “do not enjoy
‘the absolute liberty to which every citizen is entitled, but only . . . conditional liberty
properly dependent on observance of special [probation] restrictions.’”) (quoting Morrissey
v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 480 (1972)).
Similarly, the Supreme Court has held that conditions of release to supervision
generally are a valid waiver of Fourth Amendment rights justifying searches of a released
person with no warrant or suspicion. Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 850 (2006); see
also United States v. Hagenow, 423 F.3d 638, 643 (7th Cir. 2005) (same); United States v.
Barnett, 415 F.3d 690, 691–92 (7th Cir. 2005) (sacrificing privacy on probation is
constitutionally valid and less invasive of personal privacy than prison).
Applying this case law generally and Belleau in particular to this case, plaintiff’s GPS
monitoring was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment given his diminished expectation
of privacy as a child sex offender on extended supervision and the state’s interest in
reducing sex offender recidivism and monitoring offenders upon release, particularly where
children’s safety is at stake. That plaintiff’s GPS monitoring was not sanctioned by Wis.
Stat. § 301.48 without some exercise of discretion by the DOC does not change the Fourth
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Amendment analysis because, as the Seventh Circuit has explained, the reasonableness of
lifetime GPS monitoring is not confined to only those who qualify as Level One offenders
under Wis. Stat. § 301.48. To the contrary, “the Wisconsin legislature could, without
violating the Fourth Amendment, make lifetime wearing of the anklet monitor a mandatory
condition of supervised release for anyone convicted of sexual molestation of a child.”
Belleau, 811 F.3d at 935–936. Moreover, since a violation of state law only violates state
law, not the Constitution, Sabo v. Erickson, 128 F.4th 836, 849 (7th Cir. 2025)
(Easterbrook, concurring), whether Wis. Stat. § 301.48 was correctly applied to plaintiff
does not change the Fourth Amendment analysis. See Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 61
(1967) (“Just as a search authorized by state law may be an unreasonable one under [the
Fourth Amendment], so may a search not expressly authorized by state law be justified as
a constitutionally reasonable one.”); Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164, 176 (2008) (“state
restrictions do not alter the Fourth Amendment’s protections”); Jackson v. Parker, 627 F.3d
634, 640 (7th Cir. 2010) (“state law does not control the reasonableness inquiry under the
Fourth Amendment”). Therefore, plaintiff’s claim that he was misclassified as a Level One
offender under state law does not give rise to a Fourth Amendment claim. Only a claim
that he was unreasonably subject to GPS monitoring is subject to Fourth Amendment
scrutiny, and because Seventh Circuit precedent establishes that GPS monitoring of sex
offenders is reasonable where the offender’s minimal privacy interest is outweighed by the
government’s interest, as here, plaintiff’s complaint must be dismissed for failure to state
a claim upon which relief can be granted.
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II. Qualified Immunity
Defendants also assert that even if plaintiff has sufficiently stated a claim for a
Fourth Amendment violation, his complaint should be dismissed because defendants are
entitled to qualified immunity. Generally, qualified immunity protects government
officials from liability for civil damages arising from discretionary acts if their conduct did
not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable
person would have known. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009) (quoting Harlow
v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). This doctrine is meant to protect “all but the
plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S.
335, 341 (1986). Here, because the sole relief requested by plaintiff for the defendants’
alleged Fourth Amendment violations is monetary damages, this case must also be
dismissed if defendants are immune from suit under the doctrine of qualified immunity.
Once the defense of qualified immunity is asserted, the plaintiff “bears the burden
of defeating it either by identifying a closely analogous case or by persuading the court that
the conduct is so egregious and unreasonable that, notwithstanding the lack of an
analogous decision, no reasonable officer could have thought he was acting lawfully.”
Abbott v. Sangamon Cty., 705 F.3d 706, 723–724 (7th Cir. 2013). Public officials cannot
be said to have violated a clearly established right “unless the right’s contours were
sufficiently definite that any reasonable official in the defendant’s shoes would have
understood that he was violating it.” Id. at 778–779. A right is clearly established when
existing case law is tailored to the facts of the case at hand enough to place the “the
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statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Ashcroft v. Al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731,
741 (2011).
Plaintiff first argues that defendants cannot assert a qualified immunity defense
because their error in classifying him as a Level One offender was not a “discretionary act.”
However, an official has acted within the scope of his discretionary authority when “based
on objective circumstances at the time he acted, his actions were undertaken pursuant to
the performance of his duties and within the scope of his authority.” Coleman v. Frantz, 754
F.2d 719, 728 (7th Cir. 1985). Here, according to plaintiff’s allegations, defendants were
acting within the scope of their employment with the DOC when they reviewed his
placement on lifetime GPS monitoring. (Dkt. #1 at 2–3.) Therefore, even if mistaken
under Wisconsin law, defendants are not barred from asserting a claim of qualified
immunity.
Turning to the merits of the defense, plaintiff cites no analogous case law that would
put defendants on notice that they were violating a clearly established Fourth Amendment
right by continuing to subject plaintiff to GPS monitoring after being notified that he was
not a Level One offender. Rather, the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Belleau held the
opposite. Further, it is not clearly established that DOC staff have a constitutional duty
to correct known errors of state law that could implicate an offender’s constitutional rights.
Sabo, 128 F.4th at 846–848 (Easterbrook, concurring) (“it is black letter law that the
Constitution does not require state employees to implement state rules correctly”).
Because defendants cannot be said to have violated a “clearly established” right, they are
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immune from this suit under the doctrine of qualified immunity, providing an independent
ground to dismiss plaintiff’s complaint.
ORDER
IT IS ORDERED that defendants’ motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim
(dkt. #7) is GRANTED. Accordingly, the clerk of court is directed to enter judgment and
close this case.
Entered this 17th day of February, 2026.
BY THE COURT:
/s/
__________________________________
WILLIAM M. CONLEY
District Judge
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