546 US 459 Lance v. Dennis

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Case TextSyllabus

LANCE et al. v. DENNIS, COLORADO SECRETARY
OF STATE

on appeal from the united states district court for
the district of colorado

No. 05—555. Decided February 21, 2006

Several rounds of state-court litigation following the 2000 census culminated
in a Colorado Supreme Court holding that the state legislature’s
congressional redistricting plan violated the State Constitution. Subsequently,
plaintiffs, Colorado voters, filed a federal-court suit, seeking
to require the secretary of state to use the legislature’s plan because
the State Constitution, as interpreted by the State Supreme Court, violated,
inter alia, the Elections Clause of the U. S. Constitution. A
three-judge District Court ruled that it had no jurisdiction to hear the
claim because the Rooker-Feldman doctrine–which prevents lower federal
courts from exercising jurisdiction over cases brought by “statecourt
losers” challenging “state-court judgments rendered before the
district court proceedings commenced,” Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi
Basic Industries Corp., 544 U. S. 280, 284–applied to plaintiffs, who
were in privity with the Colorado General Assembly, a losing party in
the state case. In finding privity, the court reasoned that the preclusion
principle that a State’s citizens are deemed to be in privity with a
state government that litigates a matter of public concern, see, e. g.,
Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel
Assn., 443 U. S. 658, applied equally in the Rooker-Feldman context.

Held: The Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not bar plaintiffs from proceeding.
The District Court erroneously conflated preclusion law with
Rooker-Feldman. Whatever the impact of privity principles on preclusion
rules, Rooker-Feldman is not simply preclusion by another name.
It applies only in limited circumstances where a party in effect seeks to
take an appeal of an unfavorable state-court decision to a lower federal
court. Incorporation of preclusion principles into Rooker-Feldman
risks turning that limited doctrine into a uniform federal rule governing
the preclusive effect of state-court judgments, contrary to the Full Faith
and Credit Act.

Jurisdiction noted; 379 F. Supp. 2d 1117, vacated and remanded.

Per Curiam

Per Curiam.

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine prevents the lower federal
courts from exercising jurisdiction over cases brought by
“state-court losers” challenging “state-court judgments rendered
before the district court proceedings commenced.”
Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Industries Corp., 544

U. S. 280, 284 (2005). In this case, the District Court dismissed
the plaintiffs’ suit on the ground that they were in
privity with a state-court loser. We hold that the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine does not bar the plaintiffs from proceeding,
and vacate the District Court’s judgment.

I

This is the latest of several rounds of litigation involving
the State of Colorado’s congressional redistricting after the
2000 census, under which the State gained a seat in the
House of Representatives. Lance v. Davidson, 379 F. Supp.
2d 1117, 1121 (2005). The first round began in May 2001.
When the Colorado General Assembly failed to pass a redistricting
plan for the 2002 congressional elections by the close
of its regular session, a group of Colorado voters asked the
state courts to create a plan. The courts agreed, drawing a
new map reflecting the additional district. See Beauprez v.
Avalos, 42 P. 3d 642 (Colo. 2002) (en banc). The 2002 elections
were held using this court-ordered plan.

The General Assembly passed its own redistricting plan in
the spring of 2003, prompting further litigation–this time
about which electoral map was to govern, the legislature’s
or the courts’. Two suits were filed seeking to enjoin the
legislature’s plan: an original action in the Colorado Supreme
Court by the state attorney general seeking to require the
secretary of state to use the court-ordered plan, and a similar
action brought in a lower state court by several proponents
of the court-ordered plan. 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1121. After
the Colorado General Assembly intervened to defend its plan
in the first case, the Colorado Supreme Court held that the

Per Curiam

plan violated Article V, § 44, of the State Constitution, which
the court construed to limit congressional redistricting to
“once per decade.” People ex rel. Salazar v. Davidson, 79

P. 3d 1221, 1231 (2003) (en banc). It therefore ordered the
secretary of state to use the court-created plan. We denied
certiorari. 541 U. S. 1093 (2004).

The second suit was removed to federal court by the defendants
on the basis of the plaintiffs’ federal-law claims.
See Keller v. Davidson, 299 F. Supp. 2d 1171, 1175 (Colo.
2004). Once Salazar was decided by the Colorado Supreme
Court, the viability of the defendants’ counterclaims was the
only remaining issue. A three-judge District Court held
that the defendants were barred by the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine from amending their counterclaims to assert additional
challenges to the decision in Salazar. It also held
that the defendants’ original counterclaims, while not barred
by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, were precluded under Colorado
law by the judgment in Salazar. Accordingly, the
court dismissed the case.

Finally, this suit: Before the dismissal in Keller, several
Colorado citizens unhappy with Salazar filed an action in the
District Court seeking to require the secretary of state to
use the legislature’s plan.1 The plaintiffs argued that Article
V, § 44, of the Colorado Constitution, as interpreted by
the Colorado Supreme Court, violated the Elections Clause
of Article I, § 4, of the U. S. Constitution (“The Times, Places
and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives,
shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature
thereof”), and the First Amendment’s Petition Clause
(“Congress shall make no law...abridging...the right of
the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances”). The defendants filed a motion to dismiss, ar

1 Although the secretary of state defended the legislature’s plan in Salazar,
following that decision she agreed to defend the court-ordered plan in
this litigation and to allow the state attorney general to represent her.
379 F. Supp. 2d 1117, 1122, n. 3 (Colo. 2005).

Per Curiam

guing that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and Colorado preclusion
law barred any attack on the Colorado Supreme
Court’s judgment in Salazar and that the plaintiffs had failed
to state a valid Petition Clause claim.

The three-judge District Court ruled that under the
Rooker-Feldman doctrine, it had no jurisdiction to hear the
Elections Clause claim. 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1127. The
Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the court explained, includes
three requirements: (1) “[T]he party against whom the doctrine
is invoked must have actually been a party to the prior
state-court judgment or have been in privity with such a
party”; (2) “the claim raised in the federal suit must have
been actually raised or inextricably intertwined with the
state-court judgment”; and (3) “the federal claim must not
be parallel to the state-court claim.” 379 F. Supp. 2d, at
1124. The District Court found the first requirement satisfied
on the ground that the citizen-plaintiffs were in privity
with the Colorado General Assembly–a losing party in
Salazar. Relying on our decisions in Washington v. Washington
State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Assn.,
443 U. S. 658 (1979), and Tacoma v. Taxpayers of Tacoma,
357 U. S. 320 (1958), the court stated that “when a state government
litigates a matter of public concern, that state’s citizens
will be deemed to be in privity with the government
for preclusion purposes.” 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1125. This
principle, the court reasoned, applies “with equal force in
the Rooker-Feldman context.” Ibid. The court went on to
conclude that the Elections Clause claim was actually raised
in Salazar, or inextricably intertwined with that decision,
and was not parallel to the claims presented in Salazar. As
to the Petition Clause claim, the court ruled that neither
Rooker-Feldman nor Colorado preclusion law prevented the
court from proceeding to the merits, but that the plaintiffs
failed to state a claim. 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1132; see Fed.
Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6).

The plaintiffs appealed. See 28 U. S. C. § 1253. We now
note jurisdiction, and address whether the Rooker-Feldman

Per Curiam

doctrine bars the plaintiffs from proceeding because they
were in privity with a party in Salazar. We conclude it does
not, and vacate the judgment of the District Court.

II

This Court is vested, under 28 U. S. C. § 1257, with jurisdiction
over appeals from final state-court judgments. We
have held that this grant of jurisdiction is exclusive: “Review
of such judgments may be had only in this Court.” District
of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U. S. 462, 482
(1983) (emphasis added); see also Atlantic Coast Line R. Co.

v. Locomotive Engineers, 398 U. S. 281, 286 (1970); Rooker
v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U. S. 413, 416 (1923). Accordingly,
under what has come to be known as the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine, lower federal courts are precluded from exercising
appellate jurisdiction over final state-court judgments.

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine takes its name from the
only two cases in which we have applied this rule to find that
a Federal District Court lacked jurisdiction. In Rooker, a
party who had lost in the Indiana Supreme Court, and failed
to obtain review in this Court, filed an action in Federal District
Court challenging the constitutionality of the statecourt
judgment. We viewed the action as tantamount to an
appeal of the Indiana Supreme Court decision, over which
only this Court had jurisdiction, and said that the “aggrieved
litigant cannot be permitted to do indirectly what he no
longer can do directly.” 263 U. S., at 416. Feldman, decided
60 years later, concerned slightly different circumstances,
with similar results. The plaintiffs there had been
refused admission to the District of Columbia bar by the District
of Columbia Court of Appeals, and sought review of
these decisions in Federal District Court. Our decision held
that to the extent plaintiffs challenged the Court of Appeals
decisions themselves–as opposed to the bar admission rules
promulgated nonjudicially by the Court of Appeals–their
sole avenue of review was with this Court. 460 U. S., at 476.

Per Curiam

Neither Rooker nor Feldman elaborated a rationale for a
wide-reaching bar on the jurisdiction of lower federal courts,
and our cases since Feldman have tended to emphasize
the narrowness of the Rooker-Feldman rule. See Exxon
Mobil, 544 U.S., at 292 (Rooker-Feldman does not apply to
parallel state and federal litigation); Verizon Md. Inc. v. Public
Serv. Comm’n of Md., 535 U. S. 635, 644, n. 3 (2002)
(Rooker-Feldman “has no application to judicial review of
executive action, including determinations made by a state
administrative agency”); Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S.
997, 1005—1006 (1994) (Rooker-Feldman does not bar actions
by a nonparty to the earlier state suit). Indeed, during that
period, “this Court has never applied Rooker-Feldman to
dismiss an action for want of jurisdiction.” Exxon Mobil,
supra, at 287.

In Exxon Mobil, decided last Term, we warned that the
lower courts have at times extended Rooker-Feldman “far
beyond the contours of the Rooker and Feldman cases,
overriding Congress’ conferral of federal-court jurisdiction
concurrent with jurisdiction exercised by state courts, and
superseding the ordinary application of preclusion law
pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 1738.” 544 U. S., at 283. Rooker-
Feldman, we explained, is a narrow doctrine, confined to
“cases brought by state-court losers complaining of injuries
caused by state-court judgments rendered before the district
court proceedings commenced and inviting district court review
and rejection of those judgments.” 544 U. S., at 284.

Although we have never addressed the precise question
before us, we have held Rooker-Feldman inapplicable where
the party against whom the doctrine is invoked was not a
party to the underlying state-court proceeding. See De
Grandy, supra, at 1006. In De Grandy, the State of Florida
sought, using Rooker-Feldman, to prevent the United States
from bringing a challenge under § 2 of the Voting Rights Act
of 1965 to the reapportionment of state electoral districts.
The Florida Supreme Court, in an action initiated by the

Per Curiam

state attorney general, had already declared the law valid
under state and federal law. We held that Rooker-Feldman
did not bar the United States from bringing its own action
in federal court because the United States “was not a party
in the state court,” and “was in no position to ask this Court
to review the state court’s judgment and has not directly
attacked it in this proceeding.” 512 U. S., at 1006.

In the case before us, the plaintiffs were plainly not parties
to the underlying state-court proceeding in Salazar. Salazar
was an action brought by the state attorney general
against the secretary of state, in which the Colorado General
Assembly intervened. 79 P. 3d, at 1227. The four citizenplaintiffs
here did not participate in Salazar, and were not
in a “position to ask this Court to review the state court’s
judgment.” De Grandy, supra, at 1006; see Karcher v. May,
484 U. S. 72, 77 (1987) (“[T]he general rule [is] that one who
is not a party or has not been treated as a party to a judgment
has no right to appeal therefrom”).

Although the District Court recognized the “general rule”
that “Rooker-Feldman may not be invoked against a
federal-court plaintiff who was not actually a party to the
prior state-court judgment,” 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1123, it nevertheless
followed Tenth Circuit precedent in allowing application
of Rooker-Feldman against parties who were in
privity with a party to the earlier state-court action, 379

F. Supp. 2d, at 1123 (citing Kenmen Eng. v. Union, 314 F. 3d
468, 481 (2002)). In determining whether privity existed,
the court looked to cases concerning the preclusive effect
that state courts are required to give federal-court judgments.
379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1125 (citing Washington, 443

U. S., at 693, n. 32; Taxpayers of Tacoma, 357 U. S., at 340—
341). It concluded that–for Rooker-Feldman as well as
preclusion purposes–“the outcome of the government’s litigation
over a matter of public concern binds its citizens.”
379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1125.

Per Curiam

The District Court erroneously conflated preclusion law
with Rooker-Feldman. Whatever the impact of privity
principles on preclusion rules, Rooker-Feldman is not simply
preclusion by another name. The doctrine applies only in
“limited circumstances,” Exxon Mobil, supra, at 291, where
a party in effect seeks to take an appeal of an unfavorable
state-court decision to a lower federal court. The Rooker-
Feldman doctrine does not bar actions by nonparties to the
earlier state-court judgment simply because, for purposes of
preclusion law, they could be considered in privity with a
party to the judgment.2

A more expansive Rooker-Feldman rule would tend to
supplant Congress’ mandate, under the Full Faith and Credit
Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1738, that federal courts “ ‘give the same
preclusive effect to state court judgments that those judgments
would be given in the courts of the State from which
the judgments emerged.’ ” Baker v. General Motors Corp.,
522 U. S. 222, 246 (1998) (quoting Kremer v. Chemical Constr.
Corp., 456 U. S. 461, 466 (1982)); see Exxon Mobil, supra,
at 293. Congress has directed federal courts to look principally
to state law in deciding what effect to give statecourt
judgments. Incorporation of preclusion principles
into Rooker-Feldman risks turning that limited doctrine
into a uniform federal rule governing the preclusive effect
of state-court judgments, contrary to the Full Faith and
Credit Act.3

2 In holding that Rooker-Feldman does not bar the plaintiffs here from
proceeding, we need not address whether there are any circumstances,
however limited, in which Rooker-Feldman may be applied against a party
not named in an earlier state proceeding–e. g., where an estate takes a
de facto appeal in a district court of an earlier state decision involving
the decedent.

3 Our holding also disposes of the claim, which the District Court did not
reach, that plaintiffs were barred by Rooker-Feldman because they were
in privity with the secretary of state, the other losing party in People ex
rel. Salazar v. Davidson, 79 P. 3d 1221 (Colo. 2003) (en banc). We do not
pass on the District Court’s resolution of the merits of the plaintiffs’ Petition
Clause claim.

Stevens, J., dissenting

***

The judgment of the District Court is vacated, and the
case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with
this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Souter joins,
concurring.

I agree in full with the Court’s correction of the District
Court’s Rooker-Feldman error, and therefore join the
Court’s opinion. Although Justice Stevens has persuasively
urged that issue preclusion warrants affirmance, see
post, at 468—469 (dissenting opinion), that question of Colorado
law seems to me best left for full airing and decision
on remand.

Justice Stevens, dissenting.

Rooker and Feldman are strange bedfellows. Rooker, a
unanimous, three-page opinion written by Justice Van Devanter
in 1923, correctly applied the simple legal proposition
that only this Court may exercise appellate jurisdiction over
state-court judgments. See Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co.,
263 U. S. 413, 416. Feldman, a nonunanimous, 25-page opinion
written by Justice Brennan in 1983, was incorrectly decided
and generated a plethora of confusion and debate
among scholars and judges.* See District of Columbia

*See, e. g., Comment, Collateral Estoppel and the Rooker-Feldman Doctrine:
The Problematic Effect These Preclusion and Jurisdictional Principles
Have on Bankruptcy Law, 21 Emory Bankr. Dev. J. 579 (2005); Comment,
The Rooker-Feldman Doctrine: Toward a Workable Role, 149 U. Pa.

L. Rev. 1555 (2001); Proctor, Wirth, & Spencer, Rooker-Feldman and the
Jurisdictional Quandary, 2 Fla. Coastal L. J. 113 (2000); Rowley, Tenth
Circuit Survey, The Rooker-Feldman Doctrine: A Mere Superfluous Nuance
or a Vital Civil Procedure Doctrine? An Analysis of the Tenth Circuit’s
Decision in Johnson v. Rodrigues, 78 Denver U. L. Rev. 321 (2000);
Symposium, The Rooker-Feldman Doctrine, 74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1081
(1999); Pfander, An Intermediate Solution to State Sovereign Immunity:
Federal Appellate Court Review of State-Court Judgments After Semi

Stevens, J., dissenting

Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U. S. 462; id., at 488 (Stevens,
J., dissenting). Last Term, in Justice Ginsburg’s
lucid opinion in Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Industries
Corp., 544 U. S. 280 (2005), the Court finally interred
the so-called “Rooker-Feldman doctrine.” And today, the
Court quite properly disapproves of the District Court’s resuscitation
of a doctrine that has produced nothing but mischief
for 23 years.

My disagreement with the majority arises not from what
it actually decides, but from what it fails to address. Even
though the District Court mistakenly believed it had no jurisdiction
to hear this matter, its judgment dismissing the
cause with prejudice was correct and should be affirmed.
See Lance v. Davidson, 379 F. Supp. 2d 1117, 1132 (Colo.
2005). The Elections Clause claim advanced by citizenappellants
in this case is the same as that advanced by
their official representatives and decided by the Colorado
Supreme Court in People ex rel. Salazar v. Davidson, 79

P. 3d 1221, 1231—1232 (2003). See 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1126.
As appellee points out, appellants’ second question presented
“is literally the same question presented by the General
Assembly on certiorari review (and denied) in Salazar.”
Motion to Affirm 12. And, as a matter of Colorado law,
appellants are clearly in privity with both then-Colorado
Attorney General Salazar, who brought the suit on behalf
of the people of Colorado, and the Colorado General Assem

nole Tribe, 46 UCLA L. Rev. 161 (1998); Recent Case, Ninth Circuit Ignores
Principles of Federalism and the Rooker-Feldman Doctrine: Bates

v. Jones, 131 F. 3d 843 (9th Cir. 1997) (en banc), 21 Harv. J. L. & Pub.
Pol’y 881 (1998); Schmucker, Possible Application of the Rooker-Feldman
Doctrine to State Agency Decisions: The Seventh Circuit’s Opinion in Van
Harken v. City of Chicago, 17 J. Nat. Assn. Admin. L. Judges 333 (1997);
Casenote, Texaco, Inc. v. Pennzoil Co.: Beyond a Crude Analysis of the
Rooker-Feldman Doctrine’s Preclusion of Federal Jurisdiction, 41 U.
Miami L. Rev. 627 (1987); Comment, Texaco, Inc. v. Pennzoil Co.: Some
Thoughts on the Limits of Federal Court Power Over State Court Proceedings,
54 Ford. L. Rev. 767 (1986).

Stevens, J., dissenting

bly, which was also a party to the Salazar litigation. See
McNichols v. City & County of Denver, 101 Colo. 316, 322,
74 P. 2d 99, 102 (1937) (en banc) (finding privity between
taxpayers seeking to challenge the validity of a bond issue
and a public official “charged with ministerial and executive
duties in connection” with the issuance of the bonds who already
brought such a suit); Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co. v.
Board of County Comm’rs of County of Fremont, 95 Colo.
435, 441, 37 P. 2d 761, 764 (1934) (en banc) (explaining that
taxpayers are in privity with a political division of the State
or its official representative if the case involves “a matter of
general interest to all the people”). Thus, all of the requirements
under Colorado law for issue preclusion have been
met, and appellants’ Elections Clause claim should therefore
be dismissed. See generally 28 U. S. C. § 1738; Michaelson

v. Michaelson, 884 P. 2d 695, 700—701 (Colo. 1994) (en banc)
(setting forth requirements for issue preclusion under Colorado
law).

Appellants’ spurious Petition Clause claim was also properly
dismissed by the District Court. See 379 F. Supp. 2d,
at 1130—1132. Nothing in the Colorado Constitution prevents
appellants from petitioning the Colorado General Assembly
with their grievances, id., at 1131; nothing in the
United States Constitution guarantees that such a petition
will be effective, Smith v. Highway Employees, 441 U. S.
463, 465 (1979) (per curiam); see also Minnesota State Bd.
for Community Colleges v. Knight, 465 U. S. 271, 285 (1984).
Moreover, as the District Court recognized, appellants’ interpretation
of the Petition Clause would lead to absurd results.
See 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1131—1132. As such, appellants’
Petition Clause claim was correctly dismissed because
it fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.
See generally Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6).

For the foregoing reasons I respectfully dissent.

546 U.S. 459 - Lance v. Dennis

546 US 459 Lance v. Dennis