F I L E D

United States Court of Appeals

Tenth Circuit

DEC 27 2004

PATRICK FISHER

Clerk

PUBLISH

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

TENTH CIRCUIT

D.L., individually and as next friend

of J.L., a minor; ESTATE OF R.L.;

and P.P.,

Plaintiffs - Appellants,

v. No. 03-3268

THE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

NO. 497; DR. DOUGLAS EICHER,

School Administrator, individually and

in his official capacity,

Defendants - Appellees.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS

(D.C. NO. 00-CV-2439-CM)

Gregory P. Goheen of McAnany, Van Cleve & Phillips, P.A., Kansas City,

Kansas, for Plaintiffs - Appellants. 

W. Joseph Hatley of Lathrop & Gage, L.C., Overland Park, Kansas, for

Defendants - Appellees. 

Before KELLY , HENRY , and HARTZ , Circuit Judges. 

HARTZ , Circuit Judge. 
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The suit before us on appeal arises out of a dispute concerning the

eligibility of J.L. and R.L. (the children) for special-education services provided

by Unified School District No. 497, Douglas County, Kansas (the District). 

Plaintiffs are J. L; the Estate of R.L., who died after the suit was filed; their

mother D.L. (Mother); and her cohabiting boyfriend P.P. Defendants are the

District and Dr. Douglas Eicher, its former director of special education. 

Before this suit was filed, the District brought a state-court action (which is

still pending) to require Mother and P.P. to pay for special-education services

provided the children during a period when, according to the District, the children

were not residents of the District and therefore were ineligible for those services.

Plaintiffs then sued in federal district court, claiming that denial of the specialeducation services received by the children from the District would have violated

the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq.;

the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq.; the

Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794 et seq.; the Family Educational Rights and

Privacy Act (FERPA), 20 U.S.C. § 1232g; and the Fourteenth Amendment. 

We exercise jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We affirm the judgment

in favor of Defendants on one part of the IDEA claim. As for the other claims

before us, we hold that the district court should have stayed proceedings on the

claims for damages and lacked jurisdiction to resolve the remaining claims
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because of the pending state action. See Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 54

(1971). 

I. Background

R.L. was autistic and his brother J.L. suffers from a milder learning

disability. In August 1997 Mother enrolled the children in the District. During

that school year an anonymous informant told the District that the children were

nonresidents. When asked, Mother assured the District that she and the children

were residents. In November 1999 an anonymous informant again told the

District that the children were nonresidents. The District hired an investigator

who discovered that they were being driven from Kansas City, Kansas, outside the

District, to Lawrence, Kansas, inside the District, to attend school. 

On January 4, 2000, the District wrote Mother saying that the children

would not be permitted to return to school after January 13, 2000, the end of the

semester. Plaintiffs requested a due-process hearing under the IDEA, but the

District denied the request. On January 24, 2000, after negotiations between the

District and counsel for Mother, Mother provided an affidavit of residency stating

that R.L. was living with her within the District. The children were readmitted

that day. In March 2000, however, the District again engaged an investigator who

discovered that the children were commuting to school from Kansas City. 
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The District maintained a nonresident-admission policy under which

nonresidents were admitted so long as there was space available in the District’s

schools. They were not admitted, however, if doing so would require the District

to hire additional staff. Because each autistic student was assigned his own

paraprofessional (and, apparently, the staff included no extra paraprofessionals

for autistic students), autistic students were unable to obtain nonresident

admission. 

On April 18, 2000, the District sued Mother and P.P. in Kansas state court,

seeking damages to compensate it for the cost of educating the children while

they were nonresidents and an injunction prohibiting the children from attending

District schools in the future. The crux of the suit is whether the children were

entitled to the education they received from the District. 

On September 29, 2000, Mother, P.P., and the children countered by filing

suit in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas against the

District, Dr. Eicher, and the members of the District’s school board. They alleged

that (1) the District violated the IDEA by denying the requested due-process

hearing and by expelling the children from January 13 until January 24, 2000,

when Mother provided the affidavit of residency; (2) the District violated the

ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Fourteenth Amendment by discriminating

against Plaintiffs because of the children’s residence and disabilities; (3) the
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District violated the FERPA by disclosing the disabilities of the children in the

state-court suit; and (4) the District violated Plaintiffs’ common-law right to

privacy by placing them under surveillance and making public statements about,

among other things, their residency outside the district. Plaintiffs sought a variety

of forms of relief: declaratory judgments (on their IDEA, ADA, Rehabilitation

Act, and Fourteenth Amendment claims); “compensatory education” for wrongful

expulsion of the children (on their IDEA claim); compensatory and punitive

damages (on their Rehabilitation Act, ADA, FERPA, and common-law right-toprivacy claims); attorney and expert-witness fees (on their Rehabilitation Act,

ADA, and Fourteenth Amendment claims); an injunction requiring the District to

permit J.L. to attend school (on their Rehabilitation Act, ADA, and Fourteenth

Amendment claims); an injunction requiring the District to adopt

nondiscriminatory policies (on their Rehabilitation Act and ADA claims); and an

injunction requiring Defendants “to abide by the statutory requirements of IDEA,

specifically including the Procedural Safeguards which protect families from the

abuses perpetrated by defendants.” Aplt. App. at 6.

The district court dismissed all of P.P.’s claims for lack of standing,

dismissed the claims against the school-board members as redundant because of

the District’s presence as a defendant, held that Plaintiffs had failed to state a

claim under the FERPA, see Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273, 287 (2002),
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and granted summary judgment in favor of Defendants on the ADA,

Rehabilitation Act, Fourteenth Amendment, and invasion-of-privacy claims. The

court also held that Dr. Eicher enjoyed qualified immunity and granted summary

judgment in his favor on all claims. The court tried the IDEA claims on

deposition testimony and documentary evidence. It decided that even if there had

been a procedural violation, there had been no loss of substantive educational

benefits, and held that Plaintiffs hence had no right to recovery. 

Plaintiffs appeal the district court’s judgment in favor of Defendants on the

IDEA claims; the court’s grant of summary judgment on the ADA, Rehabilitation

Act, and constitutional claims; the court’s grant of summary judgment as to

Dr. Eicher; and the court’s ruling that P.P. lacked standing. 

II. Younger Abstention

Even when a federal court would otherwise have jurisdiction to hear a

claim, the court may be obliged to abstain when a federal-court judgment on the

claim would interfere with an ongoing state proceeding implicating important

state interests. The classic example of this proposition, generally referred to as

the Younger doctrine, is a federal suit to enjoin a pending state criminal

proceeding. See Younger; J.B. ex rel. Hart v. Valdez, 186 F.3d 1280 (10th Cir.

1999) (applying Younger). But the Younger doctrine also can apply to a statecourt civil proceeding, see Trainor v. Hernandez, 431 U.S. 434, 444 (1977) (civil
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suit by state administrative agency to collect fraudulently obtained welfare

benefits), including state-court suits between two private parties, see Pennzoil Co.

v. Texaco, Inc., 481 U.S. 1, 10 (1987). 

Moreover, although Younger involved a request for injunctive relief against

the ongoing state proceeding, such relief need not be explicitly sought in federal

court. In an opinion issued concurrently with Younger, the Supreme Court held

that “the same equitable principles relevant to the propriety of an injunction

[apply] to . . . a declaratory judgment . . . . [W]here an injunction would be

impermissible under these principles, declaratory relief should ordinarily be

denied as well.” Samuels v. Mackell, 401 U.S. 66, 73 (1971). The Court

expressed two reasons for treating declaratory relief essentially the same as

injunctive relief. First, even though a party seeks only declaratory relief, once a

declaratory judgment is obtained, the party may obtain an injunction to enforce

the declaratory judgment. Id. at 72. If, for example, the court’s declaratory

judgment states that a statute is unconstitutional, the court may then enjoin a

prosecution of the federal plaintiff under the statute. Second, a federal-court

declaratory judgment would ordinarily have preclusive effect in the state-court

proceeding. Id. Once the declaratory judgment is entered, the victorious party

could insist in state court that the legal proposition declared in federal court

cannot be disputed in the state proceeding. Thus, a state-court prosecution of the
1

In Weitzel v. Dep’t of Commerce of State of Utah, 240 F.3d 871, 874-75,

877-78 (10th Cir. 2001), we affirmed the dismissal of a damages claim under the

Younger doctrine. But that decision has no precedential value with respect to this

issue because the opinion did not address whether a stay would be the proper

disposition. 

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federal plaintiff may not be able to proceed under a statute declared

unconstitutional in the federal-court proceeding. 

These same two reasons apply, of course, regardless of the relief initially

sought in the federal-court suit. For example, a plaintiff who seeks only monetary

damages could, once a money judgment is obtained, seek the additional relief of

an injunction and could argue in state court that the federal judgment has

preclusive effect. Accordingly, the Younger doctrine extends to federal claims for

monetary relief when a judgment for the plaintiff would have preclusive effects

on a pending state-court proceeding. See generally Gilbertson v. Albright, 381

F.3d 965, 978-80 (9th Cir. 2004) (en banc). The rationale for Younger abstention

can be satisfied, however, by just staying proceedings on the federal damages

claim until the state proceeding is final. See Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co.,

517 U.S.706, 730 (1996) (“we have permitted federal courts applying abstention

principles in damages actions to enter a stay, but we have not permitted them to

dismiss the action altogether); Gilbertson, 381 F.3d at 980-82.1

 

Younger abstention is jurisdictional. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better

Env., 523 U.S. 83, 100 n.3 (1998) (distinguishing case cited by dissent in support
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of hypothetical jurisdiction as decided on “Younger abstention, which we have

treated as jurisdictional”). We address it at the outset because a determination

that the district court lacked jurisdiction over a claim moots any other challenge

to the claim, including a different jurisdictional challenge. Indeed, we have no

power to decide an issue if we lack jurisdiction. See id. at 93-102. We may

address jurisdictional issues in any order we find convenient. See Ruhrgas AG v.

Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S. 574, 585 (1999) (deciding personal as against

subject-matter jurisdiction); Younger, 401 U.S. at 54 (“Because our holding rests

on the absence of the factors necessary . . . to justify federal intervention, we have

no occasion to consider whether [the Anti-Injunction Act] . . . would in and of

itself be controlling . . . .”). 

III. Younger Abstention Applied

We proceed to consider Plaintiffs’ claims to determine whether it is

appropriate to exercise federal jurisdiction over each. We examine only the

claims Plaintiffs continue to assert on appeal; we lack jurisdiction to inquire into

judgments not appealed, whether or not jurisdiction was properly exercised below.

See Snell v. Tunnell, 920 F.2d 673, 676 (10th Cir. 1990). We turn first to

Plaintiffs’ ADA, Rehabilitation Act, and Fourteenth Amendment claims, and hold

that Younger abstention is required. We then address Plaintiffs’ IDEA claim. We
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hold that part of this claim is subject to Younger abstention and that the remainder

was properly rejected by the district court on summary judgment. 

A. The ADA, Rehabilitation Act, and Fourteenth Amendment

Claims

Plaintiffs contend that the District’s nonresident-admission policy violates

the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act by treating disabled nonresident children

differently from nonresident children who are not disabled; that denying

admission to the children on the basis of residency would be a violation of their

Fourteenth Amendment right to travel; that equal-protection principles required

the District to admit them as nonresidents; and that the nonresident-admission

policy violates due process by denying their “property interest [in the children’s]

education and . . . fundamental liberty interest in having as many residences as

they desire.” Aplt. Br. at 24. 

The district court lacked jurisdiction over each of these claims. Each claim

asserts the entitlement of the children to the education they received from the

District. The court could not grant any relief—injunctive, declaratory, or

monetary—without concluding that the children were so entitled. If any claim

succeeds, then there is no merit to the District’s state-court suit, which seeks

reimbursement from Mother and P.P. for educational expenses of the children to

which they, as nonresidents, were not entitled. Therefore, a resolution favorable

to Plaintiffs in this case would foreclose that suit (and might even be enforced by
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a federal injunction against the suit), an interference with state-court litigation

that is impermissible under Younger. See Samuels, 401 U.S. at 72-73. 

Younger abstention is inappropriate when a federal plaintiff cannot pursue

its federal contentions in the ongoing state proceeding. See Middlesex County

Ethics Comm. v. Garden State Bar Ass’n, 457 U.S. 423, 435-37 (1982). But no

reason appears why Plaintiffs’ contentions here could not be interposed as

defenses in state court. See Lebbos v. Judges of Superior Court, 883 F.2d 810,

815 (9th Cir. 1989) (opportunity to raise federal contentions as defenses is

sufficient). 

There remains, however, one further complication in this case. The parties

are not identical in the state and federal lawsuits. In state court the District is

plaintiff, and Mother and P.P. are defendants. In federal court Mother and P.P.

are joined as plaintiffs by J.L. and the Estate of R.L., who are not parties in the

state case. Likewise, the District is not the only defendant; an additional

defendant is Dr. Eicher, who is not a party in the District’s state suit to recover

the cost of the children’s education. Consequently, we must decide whether

Younger bars the claims of J.L. and the Estate of R.L. against either defendant,

and bars the claims of all plaintiffs against Dr. Eicher, even though J.L., the

Estate of R.L., and Dr. Eicher are not parties in the state case. As we proceed to

explain, we hold that the Younger bar does extend to these claims. 
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Two 1975 Supreme Court opinions provide guidance. In Doran v. Salem

Inn, Inc., 422 U.S. 922, 924 (1975), three bartenders faced with a local ordinance

prohibiting topless dancing filed federal challenges to the constitutionality of the

ordinance. One bartender violated the ordinance and was prosecuted. Id. at 925. 

The other two did not. Id. at 924-25. The Court held that Younger barred the

claim of the prosecuted bartender, but not the claims of the other bartenders. It

added, however, that “there plainly may be some circumstances in which legally

distinct parties are so closely related that they should all be subject to the Younger

considerations which govern any one of them.” Id. at 928. In the other case,

Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 334-35 (1975), a state prosecuted theater

employees for showing an obscene film, and seized several copies of the film. 

When the theater owners brought a federal-court challenge, the Court applied

Younger. The Court wrote, “Absent a clear showing that [the owners] . . . could

not seek the return of their property in the state proceedings and see to it that

their federal claims were presented there,” Younger abstention could not be

avoided. Id. at 349. The owners, it said, “had a substantial stake in the state

proceedings, so much so that they sought federal relief . . . . Obviously, their

interests and those of their employees were intertwined; and, as we have pointed

out, the federal action sought to interfere with the pending state prosecution. Id.

at 348-49. 
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Doran illustrates that it is proper for a federal court to exercise jurisdiction

over the claim of a genuine stranger to an ongoing state proceeding even though a

federal decision clearly could influence the state proceeding by resolving legal

issues identical to those raised in state court—for example, both proceedings may

involve challenges to the same ordinance as an unconstitutional restraint on

expressive activity. See Doran, 422 U.S. at 928. So long as the stranger has its

own distinct claim to pursue, it may even be aligned with the state-court litigant

in a common enterprise of vindicating the policy that gives rise to their individual

claims. See Federal Home Loan Bank Bd. v. Empie, 778 F.2d 1447, 1452 (10th

Cir. 1985); Robinson v. Stovall, 646 F.2d 1087, 1091 (5th Cir. 1987) (“neither a

common interest in the outcome of federal litigation nor a common effort in

pressing it requires abstention as to all plaintiffs”). But when in essence only one

claim is at stake and the legally distinct party to the federal proceeding is merely

an alter ego of a party in state court, Younger applies. See Cedar Rapids Cellular

Tel., L.P. v. Miller, 280 F.3d 874, 882 (8th Cir. 2002) (corporation cannot avoid

Younger by having subsidiaries sue in federal court when federal relief could

obstruct enforcement of any state-court remedy); Spargo v. N.Y. State Comm’n on

Jud. Conduct, 351 F.3d 65, 81-84 (2d Cir. 2003) (Younger applies to persons not

parties in state proceeding when free-speech right asserted is purely derivative of

free-speech rights of defendant in state proceeding). 
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J.L. and the Estate of R.L. seek to vindicate in federal court the right of the

children to the education they received from the District. The state-court defense

of Mother and P.P. that they do not have to pay the District for that education

necessarily derives from the entitlement of the children to that education. As

Judge Wisdom wrote in Robinson, “The federal plaintiffs and state defendants in

Hicks had much closer mutual interests than common membership in, or support

of, a large political organization: they were the owners and employees of the

same small business.” 646 F.2d at 1092. Here we are presented with a familial

relationship, even closer than the business relationship in Hicks, and with similar

preclusive consequences. Cf. Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 41(1)(c)

(person is bound by judgment binding “executor, administrator, guardian,

conservator, or similar fiduciary manager of an interest of which the person is a

beneficiary” (emphasis added)); id. § 51(1) (preclusive effect of judgment when

party in one case is vicariously liable for conduct of party in other case).

Accordingly, we hold it improper under Younger to exercise federal jurisdiction

over the claims of J.L. and the Estate of R.L. even though they are not parties to

the state-court suit. 

Plaintiffs’ claims against Dr. Eicher are similarly barred because of the

close connection of those claims to their claims in state court and the close

connection of Dr. Eicher to the District, which is the plaintiff in state court. 
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Plaintiffs’ allegation against Dr. Eicher is that he was the officer of the District 

responsible for many of its allegedly unlawful actions. Whether Dr. Eicher’s

actions were appropriate depends on whether the children were entitled to the

education they received. Plaintiffs’ claim against Dr. Eicher is derivative of, if

not the same as, their claim against the District. The relationship between

Dr. Eicher and his former employer, the District, is comparable to that between

the theater owners and their employees in Hicks. In the context of the claims on

appeal, Dr. Eicher is a mere alter ego of the District. 

B. The IDEA Claims

When Mother was informed of the District’s plan to expel the children as

nonresidents, she asked the District for a due-process hearing under the IDEA. 

Plaintiffs’ federal suit claims that the District’s denial of this request constitutes

an actionable violation of the IDEA. As we understand this claim, it does not

assert any right of the children to the education received from the District and

resolution of the claim would not interfere with the state-court litigation. Thus,

there is no Younger bar. 

Nevertheless, we are compelled by our decision in T.S. v. Ind. Sch. Dist.

No. 54, 265 F.3d 1090 (10th Cir. 2001), to affirm the district court’s decision

denying relief. In that case we held that “[f]or a claim based on deprivation of

[an IDEA] due process hearing . . . to be cognizable, [it] must be linked with a
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consequent loss of substantive benefits.” Id. at 1093. Here, there was no “loss of

substantive benefits.” Not only do Plaintiffs fail to allege any connection

between the denial of the due-process hearing and any substantive educational

harm, they fail to allege any substantive educational harm at all. Indeed they tell

us that “all parties agree that the school district provided [the children] an

‘appropriate public education’ . . . during the time they attended school in the

district.” Aplt. Br. at 10. Plaintiffs do not contend on appeal that expulsion of

the children between January 14 and January 21, 2000, constitutes a substantive

educational harm. (Apparently, Mother and P.P. were too ill to take the children

to school.) Thus, under T.S., we must affirm. 

Plaintiffs may, however, be contending that the substantive harm is the

state-court suit to recover the cost of educating the children; they say that the suit

was “the ultimate result” of the denial of the due-process hearing. Aplt. Reply

Br. at 7. But to the extent that Plaintiffs raised this contention below, Younger

deprived the district court of jurisdiction to resolve it. The state suit would

constitute an injury to Plaintiffs only if it lacked merit; and, as explained above,

Younger prohibits federal litigation that seeks to establish the lack of merit of

pending state litigation. 

So, too, for Plaintiffs’ remaining contention—that the state-court suit

violated the IDEA independently of the denial of the due-process hearing. A
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decision that the state-court suit violated the IDEA would necessarily imply that

the children were entitled to the education they received. Thus, it would preclude

the District’s state-court claim, contrary to Younger. 

Finally, we observe that P.P. lacks standing to raise the only claim not

barred by Younger. The constitutional mandate that federal courts can hear only a

Case or Controversy, U.S. Const. art. III § 2, requires “a plaintiff [to] show [that]

(1) it has suffered an ‘injury in fact’ that is (a) concrete and particularized and (b)

actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly

traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and (3) it is likely, as opposed

to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.” 

Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Env. Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 180-

81 (2000). Here P.P. fails to show a redressable injury in fact with respect to the

nonbarred claim. Although the denial of a right guaranteed by statute may

constitute an injury in fact, see Fed. Election Comm’n v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11, 21

(1998), P.P. does not (and could not) contend that the IDEA granted him the right

to a hearing, see 20 U.S.C. §§ 1415(a) (hearing provided for children and their

parents), 1401(19) (defining “parent”). The only injury alleged by P.P. is the

state-court litigation. That alleged injury may give him standing with respect to

the claims barred by Younger, but it is not an injury redressable through the one

nonbarred claim—which is not barred precisely because it does not question the
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state-court litigation. Therefore, the district court properly dismissed this claim

of P.P.’s for lack of standing, and we AFFIRM that dismissal. 

With respect to the other claims, we AFFIRM the judgment below as to the

IDEA claim based on alleged denial of a due-process hearing, VACATE the

judgment as to all other claims raised on appeal, and REMAND for the district

court to STAY proceedings on the claims for damages and DISMISS without

prejudice the remaining vacated claims.