IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 18-50719

MARY LOUISE SERAFINE, 

 Plaintiff - Appellant

v.

KARIN CRUMP, In her Individual and Official Capacities as Presiding Judge 

of the 250th Civil District Court of Travis County, Texas; DAVID PURYEAR, 

In his Individual and Official Capacities as Justice of the Third Court of 

Appeals at Austin, Texas; MELISSA GOODWIN, In her Individual and 

Official Capacities as Justice of the Third Court of Appeals at Austin, Texas; 

BOB PEMBERTON, In his Individual and Official Capacities as Justice of 

the Third Court of Appeals at Austin, Texas, 

 Defendants - Appellees

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Texas 

USDC No. 1:17-CV-1123

Before OWEN, Chief Judge, and BARKSDALE and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:*

For this action filed pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Mary Louise Serafine, 

a lawyer proceeding pro se, lacks standing to seek prospective declaratory and

* Pursuant to 5th Cir. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not 

be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5th Cir. 

R. 47.5.4.

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

February 6, 2020

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

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injunctive relief against a judge and three justices who presided over statecourt proceedings in which she was a party. DISMISSED.

I.

Serafine first appeared before Appellee Travis County district-court 

Judge Crump in 2012, in her case which alleged her neighbors: removed a 

chain-link fence separating her and their properties, and replaced it with a 

wooden one, which encroached upon her property; and trespassed upon, and 

damaged, her property in the course of digging a drainage system. See Serafine 

v. Blunt, No. 03–16–00131–CV, 2017 WL 2224528, at *1 (Tex. App. 19 May 

2017). After an appeal from the denial of a motion to dismiss various 

counterclaims, “Serafine’s claims were tried to a jury in 2015, after which the 

jury unanimously decided against Serafine on every claim”. Id. Following 

trial, Judge Crump “determined the boundary line between the properties, 

granted [a defendant’s] motion for sanctions, and rendered final judgment 

denying Serafine relief on all her claims”. Id. 

Serafine challenged the final judgment in the Texas Third Court of 

Appeals. See id. Justices Goodwin, Pemberton, and Puryear, the other 

Appellees, affirmed the final judgment, but reversed and remanded for the 

limited purpose of the trial court’s determining the amount, and then entering 

an award, of sanctions and attorney’s fees to Serafine regarding defendants’ 

dismissed counterclaims. Id. at *8. The Texas Supreme Court denied 

Serafine’s petition for discretionary review. 

In this action, Serafine, proceeding pro se, filed her operative “First 

Amended Complaint” in December 2017, seeking prospective declaratory and

injunctive relief against Appellees, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 28 U.S.C. 

§§ 2201 and 2202. Serafine alleged they repeatedly violated, and will continue 

to violate, her rights by, inter alia: knowingly creating false orders, judgments, 

and opinions; and acting in bad faith. She requested the district court, inter 

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alia: “[i]ssue a declaratory judgment [stating Appellees’] policy, practice, and 

custom of denying and affirming denial of procedural due process . . . violate 

the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution”; and “[d]etermine that 

[Appellees’] judicial oath[s], as a matter of law, constitute[] a declaratory 

decree to which [they] consented, and that [their] violation of th[ose] oath[s] 

entitles [her] to injunctive relief”. (Regarding Serafine’s requested 

categorization of Appellees’ judicial oaths as declaratory decrees, 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1983 provides: “in any action brought [pursuant to that statute] against a 

judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, 

injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated 

or declaratory relief was unavailable”.) 

Appellees moved to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 

12(b)(1) (requesting dismissal based, inter alia, on sovereign immunity and 

lack of standing) and 12(b)(6) (requesting dismissal for failure to state a claim). 

A magistrate judge’s report and recommendation (R&R) recommended, inter 

alia, that the action be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. 

Adopting the R&R, the district court dismissed the action on that jurisdictional 

basis. 

II.

“We review de novo a district court’s dismissal . . . for lack of subject 

matter jurisdiction.” Richard v. Hoechst Celanese Chem. Grp., Inc., 355 F.3d 

345, 349 (5th Cir. 2003) (citation omitted). Along that line, it goes without 

saying that we may sua sponte consider Article III standing, e.g., Bauer v. 

Texas, 341 F.3d 352, 357 (5th Cir. 2003) (citation omitted), and similarly may 

dismiss for lack of standing regardless of whether the district court addressed 

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that basis, e.g., Friends of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church v. FEMA, 658 

F.3d 460, 466 (5th Cir. 2011) (per curiam) (citation omitted).

It also goes without saying that, to establish Article III standing, a party 

must demonstrate a case or controversy. Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Ams.

United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 471–76 (1982). To 

do so, a party must “show that he personally has suffered some actual or 

threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant” 

that “fairly can be traced to the challenged action and is likely to be redressed 

by a favorable decision”. Id. at 472 (internal quotation marks and citations 

omitted).

“[T]he Supreme Court made clear [in City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 

U.S. 95, 101–03 (1983),] that plaintiffs may lack standing to seek prospective 

relief even though they have standing to sue for damages”. Soc’y of 

Separationists, Inc. v. Herman, 959 F.2d 1283, 1285 (5th Cir. 1992) (en banc). 

In Lyons, the Supreme Court explained: “[p]ast exposure to illegal conduct 

does not in itself show a present case or controversy regarding injunctive relief 

. . . if unaccompanied by any continuing, present adverse effects”. Lyons, 461 

U.S. at 102 (alteration and omission in original) (quoting O’Shea v. Littleton, 

414 U.S. 488, 495–96 (1974)). (Although Lyons dealt with injunctive relief, this 

reasoning applies equally to declaratory relief. See Herman, 959 F.2d at 1285 

(citations omitted).) 

Along that line, our court has held: “To obtain equitable relief for past 

wrongs, a plaintiff must demonstrate either continuing harm or a real and 

immediate threat of repeated injury in the future”. Id. To have standing when

“seeking injunctive or declaratory relief”, plaintiff must allege: facts “from 

which it appears there is a substantial likelihood that he will suffer injury in 

the future”, demonstrating “a substantial and continuing controversy between 

two adverse parties”; “facts from which the continuation of the dispute may be 

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reasonably inferred”; and the controversy is “real and immediate, . . . creat[ing]

a definite, rather than speculative threat of future injury”. Bauer, 341 F.3d at 

358 (citations omitted). 

Our court has addressed standing in the context of an action seeking 

prospective relief against a state-court judge on three occasions. See id. at 354; 

Herman, 959 F.2d at 1284; Adams v. McIlhany, 764 F.2d 294, 295 (5th Cir. 

1985). Collectively, as discussed below, our decisions establish: a plaintiff’s

suing a state-court judge and seeking prospective declaratory or injunctive

relief must show a significant likelihood she will encounter the same judge in 

the future, under similar circumstances, with a likelihood the same 

complained-of harm will recur. 

In Adams, filed pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the state-court judge had

sentenced plaintiff to 30-days’ imprisonment for contempt, after she 

questioned his integrity in a letter. Adams, 764 F.2d at 295. After affirming 

dismissal of plaintiff’s claim for monetary damages on absolute-judicialimmunity grounds, id. at 297, our court addressed her claims for declaratory 

and injunctive relief, which the district court had dismissed for lack of

standing, id. at 299. Because plaintiff had been released from jail, our court 

held the contempt citation and period of incarceration were insufficient to 

establish the requisite case or controversy. Id. Regarding declaratory relief, 

our court held: “The fact that it is most unlikely that [plaintiff] will again come 

into conflict with [the judge] in circumstances similar to the ones presented 

here, and with the same results, precludes a finding that there was sufficient 

immediacy and reality here to warrant an action for declaratory relief”. Id.

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

In Herman, also filed pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, plaintiffs, including 

Murray-O’Hair, requested declaratory and injunctive relief and damages from 

numerous defendants, including two state-court judges, after Murray-O’Hair

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was held in contempt for refusing, as a prospective juror, to make an 

affirmation. Herman, 959 F.2d at 1284–85. Our court held she lacked standing 

to obtain prospective relief, reasoning: she “suffer[ed] no continuing harm”; 

she could not “show a real and immediate threat that she will again appear 

before [the judge] as a prospective juror and that [the judge] will again exclude 

her from jury service and jail her for contempt”; and “[t]here are over half a 

million residents in Travis [C]ounty[, Texas,] and twenty trial judges[, making] 

[t]he chance that [she] will be selected again for jury service and that [the 

judge] will be assigned again to oversee her selection as a juror . . . slim”. Id.

at 1285. Finally, our court noted: “Even if [she] were likely to appear before 

[the judge] in the future, there is little indication that they would interact in 

the same fashion.” Id. at 1285–86. 

In Bauer, plaintiff’s action against a state probate judge, filed pursuant 

to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, sought a declaratory judgment that a statute related to 

guardianship was unconstitutional. Bauer, 341 F.3d at 354. Our court held 

plaintiff lacked standing because “there d[id] not exist a ‘substantial likelihood’ 

and a ‘real and immediate’ threat that [plaintiff] w[ould] face injury from 

[defendant] in the future”. Id. at 358. Citing Adams and Herman, our court 

stated it had “often held that plaintiffs lack standing to seek prospective relief 

against judges where the likelihood of future encounters is speculative”. Id. 

(citations omitted). 

Again, taken together, these decisions establish that, to have standing 

to seek prospective declaratory or injunctive relief against a state-court judge,

plaintiff must demonstrate a substantial likelihood she will encounter the 

same judge, in sufficiently similar circumstances, and with sufficiently similar 

results to establish an immediate, rather than speculative, threat of repeated 

injury. See Bauer, 341 F.3d at 358; Herman, 959 F.2d at 1285–86; Adams, 764 

F.2d at 299. 

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In her operative complaint, Serafine claims Appellees violated her 

Fourteenth Amendment rights by, inter alia: “knowingly creating orders, 

judgments, and opinions that made materially false statements of dispositive 

facts”; creating judicial documents that made statements in bad faith; 

repeatedly denying or affirming denial of her rights to notice, hearings, an 

opportunity to defend, and to appeal; ignoring motions; tampering with court 

records; and allowing incorporation of perjury. She alleges Appellees “appear[]

to have acted in concert”, or that Appellee Judge Crump knew she was 

“protected by” the Appellee Justices. In addition, Serafine alleges these actions 

are “part of a pattern complained of locally by other lawyers”. Finally, she

alleges: “unless deterred[, Appellees] will continue to violate[] [her] rights 

under the Fourteenth Amendment”; “[b]ecause the wrongful acts of [Appellees] 

were repeated and egregious, they demonstrate the necessity for . . . 

prospective relief”; “[her] underlying civil matters can be expected to continue 

in both courts”; and “[she] as a local attorney will appear in [Appellees’] courts 

in additional matters”. 

Although Serafine alleges many and varied violations, her allegations do 

not establish Article III standing. Regarding her seeking prospective 

declaratory and injunctive relief based on potential future litigation, two 

Appellees (Justices Pemberton and Puryear) no longer serve as judges. 

Moreover, this makes impossible Serafine’s again appearing before the panel 

(consisting of the three appellee justices) against which she levels charges in 

her operative complaint. As for Appellee Justice Goodwin, appellate panels 

are rotated, minimizing the chance Serafine will appear before her; and, 

similarly, because there are multiple trial judges in Travis County, Texas, 

there is little chance she will appear, again, as a similarly situated party before 

Judge Crump. See Herman, 959 F.2d at 1285–86; see also Tex. Gov’t Code 

§ 22.222(b). Taken together, these factors demonstrate there is not a 

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substantial likelihood Serafine “will again come into conflict with [Appellees] 

in circumstances similar to the ones presented here, and with the same 

results”. See Adams, 764 F.2d at 299.

Concerning the 2017 state-court remand, the record does not clarify the 

current state of the case. But even if it has not been resolved, the remand was 

solely for the purpose of awarding Serafine sanctions and attorney’s fees. 

Serafine v. Blunt, No. 03–16–00131–CV, 2017 WL 2224528, at *8 (Tex. App. 

19 May 2017). This does not provide an opportunity to treat Serafine as she 

alleges Appellees previously did. The remaining justice in service, Justice 

Goodwin, of course, will not be involved with this state district-court matter. 

And, even in the unlikely event Judge Crump remains assigned to the matter 

following Serafine’s suing her, there is no reasonable basis on which to assume 

Serafine will be subject to the sort of alleged conduct about which she 

complains. As such, Serafine has not established for the remand that she 

suffers a continuing harm or a substantial likelihood of a real and immediate 

threat of future injury by Appellees. See Herman, 959 F.2d at 1285–86.

III.

For the foregoing reasons, the appeal is DISMISSED.

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