In Hunter v. MacMahon, No. 21-1473 (2d Cir. July 21, 2023), the Second Circuit joins the First, Third, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits in holding that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not extend to a federal lawsuit challenging the effects of a state-court judgment when a state-court appeal from that judgment remains pending.
The Rooker-Feldman doctrine bars lower federal courts from hearing direct appeals of state court judgments; jurisdiction over state-court judgments is expressly reserved in the federal system to the Supreme Court of the United States pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1257.
Here, “[t]he Child Protective Services division of the Niagara County Department of Social Services (‘CPS’) determined that Dominique Hunter was unfit to retain parental rights over her minor son C.W. CPS successfully petitioned in state family court to terminate Hunter’s parental rights. Hunter appealed. While Hunter’s appeal was pending, she brought suit in federal court against CPS employees and other public officials and entities.”
The district court dismissed the civil-rights action based on the Rooker–Feldman doctrine. “In the district court’s view, Rooker–Feldman barred the action because ‘Hunter ‘lost’ in Family Court … before Hunter filed the instant lawsuit’ and ‘[t]he remedies Hunter seeks—C.W.’s return, expungement of records, and money damages—would require this Court to review and reject the merits underlying the Family Court judgments.’”
The Second Circuit reverses. “Here, we conclude that Rooker-Feldman does not bar Hunter’s lawsuit for two reasons. First, the state-court judgment was not ‘rendered’ for Rooker-Feldman purposes ‘before the district court proceedings commenced’ because an appeal remained pending in the state case when Hunter filed her federal suit. Second, at least some of Hunter’s claims would not implicate Rooker-Feldman even if the state proceedings had ended before Hunter filed her federal suit.”
Regarding the first point, the panel notes that the issue is one of first impression in the Second Circuit. Nevertheless, the panel observes that the other circuits that have ruled on the issue have held that cases that are still on appeal in state court are not finally decided and thus outside the four-corners of Rooker-Feldman.
“If the rule were otherwise, it would not be possible to tell whether the plaintiff in federal court was the loser in state court. In this case, for example, two months after the district court dismissed Hunter’s complaint, a New York appellate court reversed the state-court order terminating Hunter’s parental rights . . . . While the state proceedings were ongoing, the district court could not conclusively determine that Hunter was ‘the losing party in state court.’”
On the second point, the panel holds that Hunter’s federal lawsuit did not constitute a collateral attack on the state judgment. “For example, Hunter alleges that some of the defendants conspired—before any decisions were issued by the family court—to discriminate against her on the basis of race, to conduct unlawful searches and seizures, and to defame her, among other claims . . . . The state-court judgment did not produce this alleged earlier-in-time conduct, though it may have adjudicated the legitimacy of the conduct after the fact. The district court therefore did not lack subject matter jurisdiction to evaluate Hunter’s claim. “
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