¶1*436Paul A. Clark, Esq. [ARGUED], Suite IN, 10 Huron Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, 07306, Attorney for Appellants
¶2Daniel J. Kelly, Esq., Eric S. Paster-nack, Esq., Akeel A. Qureshi, Esq., Benjamin H. Zieman, Esq. [ARGUED], Office of Attorney General, of New Jersey, P.O. Box 112, 25 Market Street, Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex, Trenton, NJ 08625, Attorneys for Appellees
¶3Before: AMBRO, SHWARTZ, and FUENTES, Circuit Judges
¶4OPINION OF THE COURT
¶6In this case, Plaintiffs, fathers of minor children in New Jersey, challenge the state law governing child custody proceedings between New Jersey parents. Seeking dramatic changes in the way New Jersey conducts these proceedings, Plaintiffs contend, among other things, that the “best interests of the child” standard that New Jersey courts use to determine custody in a dispute between two fit parents is unconstitutional. To bring about their desired changes, Plaintiffs bring suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Declaratory Judgment Act against state court judges who presided over their custody disputes, and seek declaratory and injunctive relief: a declaration that the challenged standards and practices are unconstitutional and unlawful, and an enforceable injunction against their use. But before reaching the merits of Plaintiffs’ arguments, we first answer a threshold question: whether these state court judges are proper defendants in this Section 1983 suit.
¶7I. Factual Background
¶8A. Plaintiffs’ Allegations
¶9Plaintiffs allege that New Jersey’s family courts have unconstitutionally deprived them of custody of their children and have unconstitutionally interfered "with their fundamental rights to the care, custody and control of their children without a full hearing, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
¶10In addition to raising the “best interests of the child” point identified above,1 Plaintiffs allege that their parental rights were restricted, or that they were permanently or temporarily separated from their children, by order of the New Jersey family courts without adequate notice, the right to counsel, or a plenary hearing, ie. without an opportunity to present evidence or cross-examine. They allege that New Jersey state court policy, authorized by the New Jersey Supreme Court and Appellate Division, denies parents a plenary hearing when one parent loses custody to the other parent. Plaintiffs further assert that although mothers and fathers are, in theory, treated equally in custody disputes under New Jersey law, in practice courts favor mothers. Additionally, they assert that New Jersey discriminates against indigent parents by failing to provide them with counsel in a divorce proceeding or other inter-parent dispute that results in a loss *437of custody. In short, as the District Court explained,
Plaintiffs interpret the United States Constitution as requiring that when parents divorce or separate, each parent has a fundamental right to automatically receive 50-50 custody of his or her children, and that courts are limited to ordering a different custody arrangement only upon a finding, by clear and convincing evidence, in a plenary hearing (and with a right to counsel for both parents), that one of the parents abuses or neglects the child of is otherwise an unfit parent.2
¶11This interpretation would, in the words of the District Court, “dramatically change the legal landscape of New Jersey and the laws governing child custody proceedings between parents.”3
¶12Plaintiffs bring suit under Section 1983 and the Declaratory Judgment Act4 against New Jersey state court judges.5 They seek declaratory and injunctive relief requiring Defendants to, among other things, provide a plenary hearing within ten days to any parent who has his right to the care, custody, and control of his children reduced through state action.
¶13B. New Jersey’s Custody Regime
¶14Plaintiffs challenge the New Jersey state statute instituting the best interests of the child standard6 and the New Jersey courts’ policy on plenary hearings in custody disputes, which has not been codified by statute but instead developed in the state case law.7 Under this case law, a plenary hearing is not required in every contested motion in New Jersey state court; a trial judge has discretion to decide such a motion without a hearing.8 “It is only where the affidavits show that there is a genuine issue as to a material fact, and that the trial judge determines that a plenary hearing would be helpful in deciding such factual issues, that a plenary hearing is required.” 9
¶15II. Jurisdiction and Standards of Review
¶16We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. “Because this ease comes to us upon a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, we accept the factual allegations contained in the Complaint as true, but we disregard rote recitals of the elements of a cause of *438action, legal conclusions, and mere conclu-sory statements.”10 Our review of the grant of a motion to dismiss is plenary.11 However, to the extent the denial of declaratory relief was discretionary, we review for abuse of discretion.12
¶17Before the District Court, the state defendants asserted that Plaintiffs’ suit improperly attempts to appeal concluded and pending state court proceedings — their final and ongoing divorce and custody proceedings — and that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.13 The District Court found that Rooker-Feldman did not apply, because Plaintiffs do not challenge the state court custody decisions themselves, but instead the policies underlying those decisions. Defendants do not raise this doctrine on appeal, but because we have a continuing obligation to determine for ourselves whether subject matter jurisdiction is or was in question,14 wé consider the doctrine’s application to this suit.
¶18Rooker-Feldman prohibits a federal court from exercising subject matter jurisdiction in “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.”15 As both we and the Supreme Court have explained, the doctrine has narrow applicability. Rooker-Feldman does not bar suits that challenge actions or injuries underlying state court decisions — and especially those that predate entry of a state court decision — rather than the decisions themselves.16 Four requirements must be met in order for Rooker-Feldman to bar suit: “(1) the federal plaintiff lost in state court; (2) the plaintiff complains of injuries caused by the state-court judgments; (3) those judgments were rendered before the federal suit was filed; and (4) the plaintiff is inviting the district court to review and reject the state judgments.”17
¶19In line with these decisions, our Circuit previously found that Rooker-Feldman did not bar suit in B.S. v. Somerset County, whose facts were similar to those in the present case.18 In B.S., a mother sued after *439Somerset County Children and Youth Services obtained an order from a Pennsylvania state court judge transferring custody of her daughter to her father. We held that “[bjecause the injury Mother claims is likewise traceable to [the defendants’] actions, as opposed to the state court orders those actions allegedly caused, we reject [the defendants’] contention that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine precludes federal subject matter jurisdiction.”19
¶20Like in B.S., Plaintiffs here are not challenging the state court judgments, but the underlying policy that governed those judgments: the alleged policy of the New Jersey state courts of stripping parents of custody, in favor of the other parents, without a plenary hearing and employing an allegedly improper best-interests-of-the-child standard in such proceedings. Thus, Rooker-Feldman does not bar suit.20
¶21III. Discussion
¶22Plaintiffs challenge the two orders of the District Court granting the Defendants’ successive motions to dismiss on two bases.21 First, they appeal the District Court’s decision that Defendants were not proper parties to a suit brought under Section 1983. Second, they argue that the District Court should have granted them declaratory relief under the Declaratory Judgment Act, arguing that jurisdiction under the Act is co-extensive with jurisdiction under Article III.22
¶23A. Are Defendant Judges Properly Sued under Section 1983?
¶24“It is a well-settled principle of law that judges are generally ‘immune from a suit for money damages.’ ”23 Although the Supreme Court in Pulliam v. Allen held that judicial immunity was not a bar to claims for injunctive or declaratory relief under Section 1983,24 following this decision, in 1996, Congress passed the Federal Courts Improvement Act, amending Section 1983 with the intent to overrule Pulliam.25 The amended Section 1983 clarifies that “in-junctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable.” The amended language “does not expressly authorize suits for declaratory relief against judges. Instead, it implicitly recognizes that declaratory relief is available in some circumstances, and then limits the availability of injunctive relief to circumstances in which declaratory relief is unavailable or inadequate.” 26
¶25*440Two key Third Circuit cases address whether judges are proper parties to a Section 1983 suit: Reynolds27 and Georgevich.28 These eases apply a test borrowed from the First Circuit’s seminal case on this subject, In re Justices.29Under the In re Justices test, a judge who acts as a neutral and impartial arbiter of a statute is not a proper defendant to a Section 1983 suit challenging the constitutionality of the statute. This is because “[jludges sit as arbiters without a personal or institutional stake on either side of [a] ... controversy” and they “have played no role in [a] statute’s enactment, they have not initiated its enforcement, and they do not even have an institutional interest in following their, prior decisions (if any) concerning its constitutionality if an authoritative contrary legal determination has subsequently been made.”30 However, a judge who acts as an enforcer or administrator of a statute can be sued under Section 1983 for declaratory or (if declaratory relief is unavailable) injunctive relief.31
¶26In Georgevich and Reynolds, we have twice applied the In re Justices test to determine whether state court judges could face suit under Section 1983, coming to two different outcomes based on the role and authority of the state court judges. In Georgevich, we held that state court judges who were administrators of the parole power under state statutes were proper parties to a Section 1983 suit challenging the constitutionality of those statutes.32 In so holding, we observed that *441“[t]he Pennsylvania statutory arrangement divides the authority to make parole decisions between the sentencing judges and the Board.”33 Thus, there was “no basis for distinguishing the role of the sentencing judges from that of the Board” and “no reason why the Board, but not the judges, may be sued on a similar challenge.”34
¶27In Reynolds, on the other hand, we found state court judges who had committed minors to involuntary drug and alcohol treatment services, as set forth by a state statute authorizing this commitment, to be improper defendants to a suit for declaratory relief challenging the constitutionality of the statute. We considered these judges to be neutral adjudicators, not enforcers or administrators of the statute.35 As the judges did not initiate the proceedings under the statute and were required to appoint counsel for the minors and order an assessment of each minor’s alleged drug and/or alcohol dependency, we held that “[t]he judge’s position in the ... proceeding is simply not adverse to that of the minor.”36 We further explained that the informality of the process “[did] not alter the position of the judges as neutral arbiters.” 37 We explicitly distinguished Georgevich: “although in Georgevich we held the judges amenable to suit under § 1983, our decision nevertheless recognized the impropriety of such suits where the judge acted as an adjudicator rather than an enforcer or administrator of a statute.”38
¶28Thus, the question here is whether, as the District Court found, the state court judges sued here are neutral arbiters of the New Jersey custody statute and its policies like the judges in Reynolds, or if instead they have enough latitude under the statute and policies that they become enforcers like the judge defendants - in Georgevich. The answer is not clearly decided by our case law, as the proceedings at issue here do not have all of the same protections as those in Reynolds — mainly, the mandatory appointment of counsel.
¶29Decisions from our sister Circuits applying the In re Justices test help to clarify. In Grant v. Johnson;39the Ninth Circuit found that a judge had acted in his adjudicative capacity by appointing a guardian for a person deemed mentally incompetent. Although the proceeding did not require notice or hearing, it was initiated by a third party (in this case, the plaintiffs former husband) and was not initiated by the judge himself. Because the judge had acted in his adjudicative capacity, he was not a proper party to the suit.
¶30In Bauer v. Texas,40the plaintiff sued the presiding judge of a probate court in his official capacity, seeking declaratory judgment under Section 1983 that Section 875 of the Texas Probate Code was unconstitutional. That Texas statute permitted the court to appoint a temporary guardian for an incapacitated person after three conditions were satisfied: 1) there was substantial evidence establishing probable cause, 2) an attorney was appointed to represent the incapacitated person, and 3) *442notice was given and a hearing was held. The Fifth Circuit found that “judicial determinations [under] section 875 are ... clearly within a judge’s adjudicatory capacity, as this statute requires notice and a hearing, among other safeguards and limitations.” 41 Like in Grant, the Fifth Circuit further noted that the Texas court did not initiate the request for temporary guardianship.42 Thus, it'found that the state court judge was not a proper party to the suit.43
¶31The First Circuit has affirmed the dismissal of a suit even more similar to the present case, Nollet v. Justices of the Trial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.44In Nollet, men who were litigants in domestic relations and/or abuse prevention matters in the trial courts of Massachusetts sued state court judges under Section 1983, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. They objected to state statutes that permitted the granting of temporary restraining orders at ex parte hearings.45 In spite of the “wide latitude” the state statutes gave the state court judges “in fashioning the conditions of both temporary and permanent restraining orders,” the judges were found to have acted in their adjudicatory capacity, “because the statute neither confers upon them the power to initiate actions, nor does it delegate to them any administrative functions.”46
¶32In this case, because we conclude that the judicial defendants have acted in an adjudicatory capacity and not in an enforcement capacity, they are not proper defendants. To be sure, the best-interests-of-the-child standard statute gives state court judges broad discretion to determine a custody situation. State court judges also have broad discretion to decide motions on the papers under New Jersey Supreme Court and Appellate Division precedent. However, like in Reynolds, Grant, Bauer, and Nollet, the state court judges themselves do not have any right to initiate these actions. Instead, a parent must initiate a custody dispute. Nor were the state court judges here given any administrative function. Moreover, the state court judges did not promulgate either the statutes or the judicial standards to which the Plaintiffs object. Furthermore, where the judge determines that there is a genuine issue as to a material fact relating to the custody dispute, a plenary hearing must be held, providing Plaintiffs with additional procedural safeguards. Thus, this case is more similar to Reynolds than Georgevich. Accordingly, the Defendants here are not proper parties to this action under Section 1983 for declaratory or injunctive relief.47, 48
¶33*443B. Did the District Court Abuse its Discretion in Failing to Exercise Jurisdiction under the Declaratory Judgment Act?
¶34Plaintiffs argue that even if the District Court determined that declaratory relief was unavailable under Section 1983, the District Court should have separately determined whether declaratory relief was available under the Declaratory Judgment Act. Plaintiffs argue that their case presents an Article III case or controversy,49 and that Article III jurisdiction and Declaratory Judgment Act jurisdiction are coextensive.50 Thus, Plaintiffs argue that the In re Justices test does not apply to declaratory relief under the Act — that the Act offers declaratory relief that is broader than that available under Section 1983.51 Plaintiffs further argue that the District Court erred in not considering the required factors before declining to exercise jurisdiction under the Act.52
¶35The Declaratory Judgment Act states, in relevant part:
In a case of actual controversy within its jurisdiction ... any court of the United States, upon the filing of an appropriate pleading, may declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be sought. Any such declaration shall have the force and effect of a final judgment or decree and shall be reviewable as such.53
¶36Given “[t]he statute’s textual commitment to-discretion, and the breadth of leeway we have always understood it to suggest,” district courts “possess discretion in determining whether and when to entertain an action under the Declaratory Judgment Act, even when the suit otherwise satisfies subject matter jurisdictional prerequisites.” 54 Both the Supreme Court and our Court have established certain non-exhaustive factors that, in an ordinary case, guide a district court’s decision to exercise jurisdiction under the Act.55 Appellate courts review these discretionary determinations for abuse of discretion.56
¶37*444The Declaratory Judgment Act does not, however, provide an independent basis for subject-matter jurisdiction; it merely defines a remedy.57 The District Court thus properly understood that the Act does not render the state court judges appropriate defendants for declaratory relief, and the District Court properly applied the In re Justices test to Plaintiffs’ claims for declaratory relief. Because it correctly determined that the Defendants were not properly sued in this action, it did not need to consider whether to exercise its discretion using the factors we and the Supreme Court have articulated.
¶38IV. Conclusion
¶39For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court.