In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

Nos. 14-1822, 14-1888, 14-1899, 14-2006, 14-2012, 14-2023 & 

14-2585

ERIC O’KEEFE and WISCONSIN CLUB FOR GROWTH, INC.,

Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v.

JOHN T. CHISHOLM, et al.,

Defendants-Appellants.

FRANCIS SCHMITZ,

Defendant-Appellant / Cross-Appellee.

REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS, et al.,

Intervenors-Appellants.

UNNAMED INTERVENORS NO. 1 AND NO. 2,

Intervenors-Appellees.

____________________

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 14-C-139 — Rudolph T. Randa, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 9, 2014 — DECIDED SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

____________________
2 Nos. 14-1822 et al.

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and BAUER and EASTERBROOK,

Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. A federal district judge issued an injunction that blocks the State of Wisconsin from 

conducting a judicially supervised criminal investigation into the question whether certain persons have violated the 

state’s campaign-finance laws. The court did this despite 28 

U.S.C. §2283, the Anti-Injunction Act, which provides: “A

court of the United States may not grant an injunction to stay 

proceedings in a State court except as expressly authorized 

by Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments.” Mitchum v. 

Foster, 407 U.S. 225 (1972), holds that 42 U.S.C. §1983 authorizes anti-suit injunctions but adds that principles of “equity, 

comity, and federalism” (407 U.S. at 243) determine whether

they are appropriate. Cf. Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971). 

We hold that this case does not present a situation in which 

state proceedings may be displaced.

The ongoing criminal investigation is being supervised 

by a judge, in lieu of a grand jury. Wis. Stat. §968.26. Prosecutors in Wisconsin can ask the state’s courts to conduct these inquiries, which go by the name “John Doe proceedings” 

because they may begin without any particular target. The 

District Attorney for Milwaukee County made such a request after concluding that the campaign committee for a 

political official may have been coordinating fund-raising 

and expenditures with an “independent” group that was 

raising and spending money to speak about particular issues. (We put “independent” in quotation marks, which we 

drop from now on, because the prosecutor suspected that 

the group’s independence is ostensible rather than real. 
Nos. 14-1822 et al. 3

Whether, and if so how, this group and the campaign committee have coordinated their activities is a subject we need 

not consider.) Wisconsin’s Government Accountability 

Board, which supervises campaigns and conducts elections, 

likewise called for an investigation. District Attorneys in 

four other counties made similar requests. Eventually a single John Doe proceeding was established, with Gregory Peterson as the judge and Francis Schmitz as the special prosecutor. Judge Peterson has been recalled to service following 

his retirement from a post on the state’s court of appeals; 

Schmitz, an attorney in private practice, used to be an Assistant United States Attorney in Milwaukee.

At the behest of special prosecutor Schmitz, the court issued subpoenas requiring their recipients to produce documents. One came to Eric O’Keefe, who manages Wisconsin 

Club for Growth, Inc., an advocacy group that raises money 

and engages in speech on issues such as whether Wisconsin 

should limit collective bargaining in public employment, a 

subject that has received considerable legislative attention 

and sparked a recall election for the Governor. (Both the Supreme Court of Wisconsin and this court have held that the 

legislation promoted by the Club for Growth is valid. Madison Teachers, Inc. v. Walker, 2014 WI 99 (July 31, 2014); Laborers Local 236 v. Walker, 749 F.3d 628 (7th Cir. 2014).) The subpoena issued to O’Keefe is extraordinarily broad, covering 

essentially all of the group’s records for several years—

including records of contributors that O’Keefe believes are 

covered by a constitutional right of anonymity.

O’Keefe moved to quash the subpoena, which he maintains is designed to punish his, and the Club’s, support for 

controversial legislation, rather than to investigate a viola-
4 Nos. 14-1822 et al.

tion of state law. He contended that revealing to the state 

lists of contributors would harm the organization’s ability to 

raise funds—and this even though all information is covered 

by a broad secrecy order. Judge Peterson quashed the subpoena, ruling that the evidence is not necessary to the investigation. One of his reasons is that Schmitz has not established any solid reason to believe that a violation of state law 

has occurred.

That was in January 2014. Schmitz asked the Wisconsin 

Court of Appeals for a supervisory writ. Two other people

involved in the investigation asked the Supreme Court of 

Wisconsin to grant review, bypassing the Court of Appeals. 

Before either the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court 

could act, however, O’Keefe and the Club filed this federal 

suit, asking for an injunction that would halt the investigation permanently, whether or not the prosecutor could establish a violation of Wisconsin law. O’Keefe also requested

damages against five defendants: Schmitz plus the District 

Attorney for Milwaukee County, two of his assistants, and 

an investigator. (Judge Peterson is the sixth defendant.)

The district court held that the First Amendment to the 

Constitution (applied to the states through the Fourteenth) 

forbids not only penalties for coordination between political

committees and groups that engage in issue advocacy, but 

also any attempt by the state to learn just what kind of coordination has occurred. 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63066 (E.D. Wis. 

May 6, 2014). It issued this injunction:

The Defendants must cease all activities related to the investigation, return all property seized in the investigation from any individual or organization, and permanently destroy all copies of 

information and other materials obtained through the investigation. Plaintiffs and others are hereby relieved of any and every 
Nos. 14-1822 et al. 5

duty under Wisconsin law to cooperate further with Defendants’

investigation. Any attempt to obtain compliance by any Defendant or John Doe Judge Gregory Peterson is grounds for a contempt finding by this Court.

Id. at *36–37. The court scheduled proceedings on plaintiffs’

request for damages and rejected defendants’ argument that 

they enjoy qualified, if not absolute, immunity. We immediately stayed the portion of the injunction requiring documents to be returned or destroyed and set the case for expedited briefing and argument.

The issuance of injunctive relief directly against Judge 

Peterson is hard to justify in light of the Anti-Injunction Act, 

and the district court did not try to do so. The AntiInjunction Act embodies a fundamental principle of federalism: state courts are free to conduct their own litigation, 

without ongoing supervision by federal judges, let alone 

threats by federal judges to hold state judges in contempt. 

The scope given to state litigation is especially great in the 

realm of criminal investigations and prosecutions, a principle that led to Younger, which requires a federal court to abstain even if an injunction would be justified under normal 

principles, except in rare situations. See Sprint Communications, Inc. v. Jacobs, 134 S. Ct. 584 (2013), which discusses the 

current state of Younger’s abstention doctrine.

Courts of appeals have disagreed about the extent to 

which Younger compels abstention when states are conducting grand-jury investigations (which John Doe proceedings 

are like). Compare Craig v. Barney, 678 F.2d 1200, 1202 (4th 

Cir. 1982), and Texas Association of Business v. Earle, 388 F.3d 

515, 519–20 (5th Cir. 2004), with Monaghan v. Deakins, 798 

F.2d 632, 637–38 (3d Cir. 1986), vacated in part on other 

grounds, 484 U.S. 193 (1988), and with Kaylor v. Fields, 661 
6 Nos. 14-1822 et al.

F.2d 1177, 1182 (8th Cir. 1981). We need not take sides, because principles of equity, comity, and federalism (Mitchum, 

407 U.S. at 243) counsel against a federal role here. See also

Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7 

(2008) (standards for preliminary injunction).

One important question is whether the plaintiff suffers 

irreparable injury. O’Keefe and the Club say yes, because 

donations have dried up, but that’s not the right temporal 

perspective. We must ask whether the injury would be irreparable if the federal court were to stay its hand. And it is 

hard to see that kind of injury, because plaintiffs obtained 

effective relief from Judge Peterson before the federal judge 

acted—indeed, before filing this suit. True, uncertainty will 

continue pending appellate review within the Wisconsin judiciary, and this may well affect donations, but the commencement of this federal suit also produces uncertainty, 

because it entails review by a district judge, three or more 

appellate judges, and potentially the Supreme Court of the 

United States. The state case might be over today had the 

district judge allowed it to take its course.

A second important question is whether the plaintiff has 

adequate remedies at law (which is to say, without the need 

for an injunction). That Judge Peterson entertained and 

granted the motion to quash shows that the answer is yes.

A third important question is whether federal relief is 

appropriate in light of normal jurisprudential principles, 

such as the rule against unnecessary constitutional adjudication. Courts must strive to resolve cases on statutory rather 

than constitutional grounds. See, e.g., New York City Transit 

Authority v. Beazer, 440 U.S. 568, 582 (1979). Yet the district 

court waded into a vexed field of constitutional law need-
Nos. 14-1822 et al. 7

lessly. Judge Peterson had already concluded that the investigation should end as a matter of state law, because prosecutor Schmitz lacks evidence that state law has been violated. The result is an injunction unnecessary at best, advisory 

at worst.

Declaring “X violates the Constitution” is advisory if the 

state does not use rule X to begin with. The Supreme Court 

of Wisconsin may disagree with Judge Peterson, and prosecutor Schmitz argues that state law is on his side, see Wisconsin Coalition for Voter Participation, Inc. v. Wisconsin Elections 

Board, 231 Wis. 2d 670 (Wis. App. 1999), so we cannot yet 

know whether the federal injunction is advisory, but we are 

confident that it is imprudent. Sometimes district judges 

must abstain to allow state courts to resolve issues of state 

law, see Texas Railroad Commission v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 

496 (1941), but as with Younger we are not invoking a mandatory-abstention command but instead are asking whether 

normal principles of equity support the district court’s approach.

Younger and its successors, including Sprint Communications, do show, however, that the policy against federal interference in state litigation is especially strong when the state 

proceedings are criminal in nature. That’s a fourth important 

subject militating against a federal injunction.

Mitchum held that a judge may use §1983 to support an 

anti-suit injunction, notwithstanding §2283, only when justified in light of “the principles of equity, comity, and federalism that must restrain a federal court when asked to enjoin a 

state court proceeding.” 407 U.S. at 243. Yet the district court 

gave those principles no weight. The court did say that an 

injunction is appropriate because the defendants have acted 
8 Nos. 14-1822 et al.

“in bad faith” but did not hold a hearing, so that the court 

must have meant bad faith objectively rather than subjectively—in other words, the federal judge must have thought that 

no reasonable person could have believed that the John Doe 

proceeding could lead to a valid conviction. See Mitchum, 

407 U.S. at 230–31, relying on Younger, 401 U.S. at 53, and Perez v. Ledesma, 401 U.S. 82, 85 (1971).

One version of objective bad faith was the one on which 

we relied in Mulholland v. Marion County Election Board, 746 

F.3d 811 (7th Cir. 2014), when holding that a district judge 

properly issued an injunction to prevent state lawenforcement personnel from prosecuting a supposed violation of Indiana’s election laws. No reasonable person could 

have thought that the proceeding would lead to a valid conviction, because the defendants were prohibited by a federal 

injunction, issued a decade earlier, from penalizing those 

very tactics. That injunction had been issued when no state 

prosecution was pending; that’s the right time for federal 

courts to determine the validity of state campaign regulations. See, e.g., Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 134 S. Ct. 

2334 (2014); Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. Barland, 751 F.3d 

804 (7th Cir. 2014); Center for Individual Freedom v. Madigan, 

697 F.3d 464 (7th Cir. 2012). We held that defendants could 

not shelter behind Younger to avoid an outstanding federal 

resolution. Nothing of the kind happened in this investigation; until the district court’s opinion in this case, neither a 

state nor a federal court had held that Wisconsin’s (or any 

other state’s) regulation of coordinated fund-raising and issue advocacy violates the First Amendment.

Starting with Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 46–47, 78 (1976), 

the Supreme Court has stated repeatedly that, although the 
Nos. 14-1822 et al. 9

First Amendment protects truly independent expenditures 

for political speech, the government is entitled to regulate 

coordination between candidates’ campaigns and purportedly independent groups. See also, e.g., FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, 533 U.S. 431, 447 (2001);

McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93, 202–03, 219–23 (2003), overruled in part on other grounds by Citizens United v. FEC, 558 

U.S. 310 (2010). This is so because Buckley held that the Constitution allows limits on how much one person can contribute to a politician’s campaign. If campaigns tell potential 

contributors to divert money to nominally independent 

groups that have agreed to do the campaigns’ bidding, these 

contribution limits become porous, and the requirement that 

politicians’ campaign committees disclose the donors and 

amounts becomes useless.

The Supreme Court has yet to determine what “coordination” means. Is the scope of permissible regulation limited to 

groups that advocate the election of particular candidates, or 

can government also regulate coordination of contributions 

and speech about political issues, when the speakers do not 

expressly advocate any person’s election? What if the speech

implies, rather than expresses, a preference for a particular 

candidate’s election? If regulation of coordination about 

pure issue advocacy is permissible, how tight must the link 

be between the politician’s committee and the advocacy 

group? Uncertainty is a powerful reason to leave this litigation in state court, where it may meet its end as a matter of 

state law without any need to resolve these constitutional 

questions.

The district court thought that the Supreme Court will 

overrule what remains of Buckley, as some Justices have pro-
10 Nos. 14-1822 et al.

posed. See, e.g., Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC, 518 U.S. 604, 635–40 (1996) (Thomas, J., dissenting in part). If the Constitution forbids all regulation of campaign contributions, there is no basis for regulating coordination either. After all, the rationale for regulating coordination has been to prevent evasion of contribution limits and

ensure the public identification of persons who contribute to 

politicians’ war chests. Yet although the Court’s views about 

the proper limits of campaign-finance regulation continue to 

change, see Citizens United (overruling part of McConnell) 

and McCutcheon v. FEC, 134 S. Ct. 1434 (2014) (overruling a 

portion of Buckley that dealt with aggregate contribution limits across multiple candidates), it has yet to disapprove the 

portion of Buckley holding that some regulation of contributions to candidates is permissible. Justice Thomas wrote separately in McCutcheon, 134 S. Ct. at 1462–65 (concurring in 

the judgment), precisely because a majority was unwilling to 

revisit that aspect of Buckley.

The district court’s belief that a majority of the Court 

eventually will see things Justice Thomas’s way may or may 

not prove correct, but as the Supreme Court’s doctrine 

stands it is not possible to treat as “bad faith” a criminal investigation that reflects Buckley’s interpretation of the First 

Amendment. Nor does it help plaintiffs to accuse defendants 

of “retaliation”. That just restates the point that campaignfinance regulation concerns speech; it does not help to decide whether a particular kind of regulation is forbidden. Cf. 

Fairley v. Andrews, 578 F.3d 518, 525 (7th Cir. 2009).

What we have said shows not only that an injunction was

an abuse of discretion but also that all defendants possess 

qualified immunity from liability in damages. Public officials 
Nos. 14-1822 et al. 11

can be held liable for violating clearly established law, but 

not for choosing sides on a debatable issue. See, e.g., Wilson 

v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 618 (1999) (“If judges ... disagree on a 

constitutional question, it is unfair to subject police to money 

damages for picking the losing side of the controversy.”). 

The district court thought the law clearly established because, after all, the First Amendment has been with us since 

1791. But the right question is what the Constitution means,

concretely, applied to a dispute such as this. The Justices forbid the use of a high level of generality and insist that law is 

not “clearly established” until “existing precedent [has]

placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2083 (2011). See also, e.g., Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012 (2014); Wood v. 

Moss, 134 S. Ct. 2056 (2014).

Plaintiffs’ claim to constitutional protection for raising 

funds to engage in issue advocacy coordinated with a politician’s campaign committee has not been established “beyond debate.” To the contrary, there is a lively debate among 

judges and academic analysts. The Supreme Court regularly 

decides campaign-finance issues by closely divided votes. 

No opinion issued by the Supreme Court, or by any court of 

appeals, establishes (“clearly” or otherwise) that the First 

Amendment forbids regulation of coordination between 

campaign committees and issue-advocacy groups—let alone 

that the First Amendment forbids even an inquiry into that

topic. The district court broke new ground. Its views may be 

vindicated, but until that day public officials enjoy the benefit of qualified immunity from liability in damages. This 

makes it unnecessary for us to consider whether any defendant also enjoys the benefit of absolute prosecutorial immunity, which depends on the capacities in which they may 
12 Nos. 14-1822 et al.

have acted at different times. See Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 

U.S. 259 (1993).

Finally, we must address a dispute between the litigants 

and several intervenors, who asked the district judge to disclose (the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 

among others) or conceal (Unnamed Intervenors No. 1 and 

No. 2) documents that have been gathered during the John 

Doe proceeding and filed in federal court. The district judge 

ordered eight particular documents to remain under seal 

and reserved decision on others. 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83456 

(E.D. Wis. June 19, 2014). The Reporters Committee appealed. Our jurisdiction, based on the collateral-order doctrine, see United States v. Blagojevich, 612 F.3d 558, 560 (7th 

Cir. 2010); Grove Fresh Distributors, Inc. v. Everfresh Juice Co., 

24 F.3d 893, 895–96 (7th Cir. 1994), is limited to those eight 

documents.

The Reporters Committee invokes the presumption of 

public access to all documents that may have influenced a 

federal court’s decision. See, e.g., Greenville v. Syngenta Crop 

Protection, LLC, No. 13-1626 (7th Cir. Aug. 20, 2014); Baxter 

International, Inc. v. Abbott Laboratories, 297 F.3d 544 (7th Cir. 

2002). The Unnamed Intervenors, who are subjects of the 

John Doe inquiry, invoke the presumption that documents 

gathered as part of a grand jury investigation remain confidential, see United States v. Sells Engineering, Inc., 463 U.S. 418 

(1983); Douglas Oil Co. of California v. Petrol Stops Northwest, 

441 U.S. 211 (1979), and with good reason they treat a John 

Doe proceeding as functionally equivalent to a federal grand 

jury investigation. Plaintiffs O’Keefe and Club for Growth 

invoke the rule that private advocacy organizations and 

their contributors often are entitled to anonymity, lest public 
Nos. 14-1822 et al. 13

disfavor unduly raise the cost of speech. See NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462–63 (1958); Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 591 

F.3d 1147, 1160 (9th Cir. 2009).

The analogy to grand jury proceedings is the strongest of 

these three. The Supreme Court wrote in Sells Engineering: 

“We consistently have recognized that the proper functioning of our grand jury system depends upon the secrecy of 

grand jury proceedings. ... [I]f preindictment proceedings 

were made public, many prospective witnesses would be 

hesitant to come forward voluntarily, knowing that those 

against whom they testify would be aware of that testimony. 

Moreover, witnesses who appeared before the grand jury 

would be less likely to testify fully and frankly, as they 

would be open to retribution.” 463 U.S. at 424, quoting from 

Douglas Oil. But we do not think that any of the three analogies is dispositive.

Once again, federalism supplies the reason. The documents that the litigants want to disclose, or conceal, were 

gathered as part of a state proceeding. Wisconsin, not the 

federal judiciary, should determine whether, and to what 

extent, documents gathered in a John Doe proceeding are 

disclosed to the public. See Socialist Workers Party v. Grubisic, 

619 F.2d 641, 643 (7th Cir. 1980) (“federal common law ... 

accords at least a qualified privilege to the records of state 

grand jury proceedings”). Otherwise the very fact that 

someone chose to complain, in federal court, about the conduct of an ongoing state investigation would defeat the state 

interest in secrecy, even if the federal court concludes—as 

we have done in this opinion—that the controversy does not 

belong in federal court. It is easy to file complaints and drop 

documents into the federal record, but overcoming a state-
14 Nos. 14-1822 et al.

law privilege for investigative documents requires more 

than that. Otherwise state rules would be at every litigant’s 

mercy.

The state court entered a comprehensive order regulating 

disclosure of documents in the John Doe proceeding. (It also 

issued a gag order, forbidding subpoenaed parties to talk 

about what was happening, but no one has challenged that 

order, and we do not address its propriety.) Wisconsin’s judiciary must decide whether particular documents gathered 

in the investigation should be disclosed. The district court 

should ensure that sealed documents in the federal record 

stay sealed, as long as documents containing the same information remain sealed in the state-court record.

The injunction is reversed. The district court’s order rejecting the immunity defense is reversed. The district court’s 

order maintaining eight documents under seal is affirmed. 

The case is remanded with instructions to dismiss the suit, 

leaving all further proceedings to the courts of Wisconsin.