Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-95-07211/USCOURTS-caDC-95-07211-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 950
Nature of Suit: Contitutionality of State Statutes
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 7, 1996 Decided May 24, 1996

No. 95-7211

T. CARLTON RICHARDSON,

APPELLANT

v.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 95cv01272)

T. Carlton Richardson, appearing pro se, argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant.

Martin B. White, Assistant CorporationCounsel, with whom Charles F. Ruff, Corporation Counsel,

and Charles L. Reischel, Deputy Corporation Counsel, were on the brief, argued the cause for

appellee.

Before: WILLIAMS, HENDERSON and RANDOLPH, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge WILLIAMS.

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge: Faced with disbarment proceedings in Florida, T. Carlton

Richardson petitioned the Supreme Court of Florida for permission to resign, with leave to reapply

in three years. The court granted the petition and deemed Richardson to have resigned.

TheDistrict ofColumbiaCourt ofAppealsthereupon temporarily suspended Richardson from

the practice oflaw in the District, to enable the D.C. Board on ProfessionalResponsibility to conduct

reciprocal disciplinary proceedings against him. See In the Matter of T. Carlton Richardson, No. 95-

BG-639 (D.C. App. 1993). Richardson filed suit in federal district court alleging that his temporary

suspension, and the D.C. Bar rule that permits it, see D.C. App. Rule XI § 11(d), unconstitutionally

deprive him, without due process, of his liberty interest in practicing law.

The district court dismissed Richardson's claimagainst hissuspension for want ofjurisdiction

under District of Columbia v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 476 (1983), and abstained from hearing his

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claim against the D.C. Bar rule itself under Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 43-54 (1971).

Richardson appealed. Because the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear either of Richardson's

claims, we affirm without reaching the issue of Younger abstention.

Richardson's complaint to the district court about the D.C. Court of Appeals's order falls

squarely within the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, under which federal district courtslack jurisdiction to

review judicial decisions by state and District of Columbia courts. See Feldman; Rooker v. Fidelity

Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 415 (1923). Congress has vested federal court review of such decisions in

the Supreme Court, see 28 U.S.C. § 1257, and Rooker-Feldman makes clear that that jurisdiction is

exclusive.

Richardson does not deny that the order effecting his suspension was a judicial decision.

Rather, he saysthat the order is merely interlocutory, and that Rooker-Feldman's bar against district

court jurisdiction was meant to apply only coextensively with the set of "final judgments or decrees

rendered by the highest court of a State" reviewable by the Supreme Court under § 1257.

The District argues that the order of the D.C. Court of Appeals temporarily suspending

Richardson is clearly a "final" decision for purposes of § 1257, much asthe Georgia Supreme Court's

reversal of the lower court's denial of a temporary injunction was final in Construction Laborers v.

Curry, 371 U.S. 542, 548-552 (1963). See also Nat'l Socialist Party v. Skokie, 432 U.S. 43, 44

(1977) (reviewing as final a state supreme court's refusal to stay trial court's injunction pending

appeal). Richardson's complaint is that his temporary suspension violates the Constitution, and its

rejection by the D.C. Court of Appeals appearsto be amenable to treatment as a final order: the issue

is legally entirely separate from any claims to be resolved in the substantive disciplinary proceedings

that appear destined to follow; it has been finally resolved by the D.C. Court of Appeals; and it

cannot be cured by any remedy given at the end ofthe substantive proceedings. See Curry, 371 U.S.

at 549; Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Co., 337 U.S. 541, 546-47 (1949) (setting out the

elements ofthistest); cf. Board of Education v. Illinois State Board of Education, 79 F.3d 654, 656-

59 (7th Cir. 1996) (finding an order appealable both as an appealable interlocutory order under 28

U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) and as a "final" order under Cohen).

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Even if the suspension were not final for purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 1257, the district court

would have lacked jurisdiction. We cannot imagine how one could reconcile Feldman's reasoning,

based as it is on allowing state courts to arrive at decisions free from collateral federal attack, with

the idea that the district court would be free to review Richardson'ssuspension so long asthe decision

wasinterlocutory. Indeed, other circuits have persuasively concluded that the boundaries of § 1257's

grant of Supreme Court jurisdiction do not prevent the application of Rooker-Feldman to the final

decisions of lower state courts, or to state courts' interlocutory decisions. As the Fifth Circuit

explained, discussing Feldman,

[w]e hold no warrant to review even final judgments of state courts, let alone those

which may never take final effect because they remain subject to revision in the state

appellate system.

Hale v. Harney, 786 F.2d 688, 691 (5th Cir. 1986) (refusing to entertain constitutional challenge to

state court divorce decree). See also Keene Corp. v. Cass, 908 F.2d 293, 297 & n.2 (8th Cir. 1990)

(Feldman bars federal district court from hearing constitutional challenge to state court's discovery

order); cf. Port Auth. PBA v. Port Auth. of N.Y. & N.J., 973 F.2d 169, 177 (3rd Cir. 1992) (RookerFeldman's bar applies to decisions of lower state courts in addition to those of the highest one).

Despite Rooker-Feldman, a federal district court may sometimes have jurisdiction to hear a

challenge to a general bar rule promulgated by a state or District of Columbia court in a nonjudicial

capacity. Feldman, 460 U.S. at 482-86 & n.16. We thus turn to consider the district court's possible

jurisdiction over Richardson's purportedly independent claims as to the constitutionality of the rule

that the D.C. Court of Appeals applied. D.C. App. Rule XI § 11(d) provides:

Upon receipt of a certified copy of an order demonstrating that an attorney ... has

been suspended ... by a disciplining court outside the District of Columbia ..., the

[D.C.] Court [ofAppeals]shallforthwith enter an ordersuspending the attorney from

the practice of law in the District of Columbia pending final disposition of any

reciprocal disciplinary proceeding, and directing the attorney to show cause within

thirty days from the date of the order why the identical discipline should not be

imposed.

The principle allowing federal district court adjudication of attacks on bar rules would, of

course, thoroughly undermine Rooker-Feldman if it encompassed claims that are "inextricably

intertwined"withthe judicial actionsimmunized under Rooker-Feldman. Feldman, 460 U.S. at 483-

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84 n.16. In Feldman itself, attorneys who had not graduated from ABA-accredited law schools

challenged both the District's refusal to waive the accreditation requirement (when, it was claimed,

the District had done so for similarly situated applicants) and the rule under which the District

generally refused to admit such applicants. The plaintiffs' attacks on the District rule were found to

be extricable from the District'srefusal to grant a waiver, as the former did not even contemplate the

granting of a waiver. Thus, the core of plaintiffs' generalized challenge was independent of the

specific decision to deny a waiver and the unequal treatment that it was claimed to demonstrate. Id.

at 487-88 & n.18.

Richardson's attacks on § 11(d)'s constitutionality, however, are not merely intertwined with

his attack on the decision to suspend him but are one and the samenamely, that application of §

11(d)'s procedures (or lack of procedures) deprives him of his liberty interest in the practice of law

without due process. His attack on the rule cannot be contemplated without his attack on his

suspension. Absent any actual or imminent application to Richardson, it is doubtful that he would

have standing to secure adjudication of his general due process claim. See Levin v. Attorney

Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Ill., 74 F.3d 763, 766-68 (7th

Cir. 1996) (after plaintiffwas disbarred, hewould lack the "personalstake" needed for an independent

constitutional attack on state's rules concerning disbarment); see also City of Los Angeles v. Lyons,

461 U.S. 95, 105 (1983) (plaintiff has no standing to seek injunctive relief against police chokehold

practice without showing imminent application to himself); Facio v. Jones, 929 F.2d 541, 544-45

(10th Cir. 1991) (plaintiff lacks standing to challenge state rules on default judgments, under which

he lost a case, independent of his attempt to have the judgment against him undone). The actual

application of § 11(d) is obviously encompassed in the Court of Appeals's order and review barred

under Feldman; imminent application is not in the cards, as Richardson has already been suspended.

By contrast, if the Feldman plaintiffs lost their attack on the court's denial of waivers of the

accreditation rule, they might still be positioned to attack the rule itself.

The district court therefore lacked jurisdiction over Richardson's claims. Richardson is

entitled to have his claims heard through the course of proceedingsin the District of Columbia courts

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and, if unsatisfied, through petition for certiorari under 28 U.S.C. § 1257. The decision of the district

court to dismiss his claims is therefore

Affirmed.

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