United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted January 5, 2021*

Decided January 22, 2021 

Before 

DIANE S. SYKES, Chief Judge 

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge

No. 20-1489 

CHRISTINA G. LYONS, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

GENE B. GLICK COMPANY, INC., 

 Defendant-Appellee. 

 

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Southern District of Indiana, 

Indianapolis Division. 

No. 1:19-cv-04221-TWP-MJD 

Tanya Walton Pratt, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

 After a state court evicted her from her apartment, Christina Lyons sued her 

former landlord in federal court for violating the Fair Housing Act. The district court 

ruled that Rooker-Feldman blocked subject-matter jurisdiction over all of Lyons’s federal 

claims and relinquished jurisdiction over her state-law claims. See Rooker v. Fidelity Tr. 

Co., 263 U.S. 413, 415–16 (1923); D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 482 (1983). 

Because one set of Lyons’s federal claims is barred by Rooker-Feldman and another 

*

 We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and 

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not 

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 20-1489 Page 2 

partially barred by the applicable statute of limitations, we affirm in part. But Lyons 

also alleges a small subset of claims not barred by Rooker-Feldman and within the 

limitations period, so for this subset we otherwise vacate and remand. 

The Gene B. Glick Company sued Lyons for possession of her apartment in 

January 2018 in the Monroe Circuit Court of Monroe County, Indiana. After a hearing, 

the state court granted Glick possession of Lyons’s apartment and ordered Lyons to 

vacate it by the next month. Lyons lost her appeal before the Court of Appeals of 

Indiana, and in May 2019 the Indiana Supreme Court declined review. 

After losing in state court, Lyons sued in federal court in October 2019, raising 

three sets of claims. The first set, based on the Fair Housing Act, see 42 U.S.C. §§ 3604(f), 

3613, 3617, concerns events separate from the eviction suit. Lyons alleges that when she 

moved into Glick’s apartment in 2015, she asked Glick to install in-unit laundry 

machines to accommodate an unspecified disability, but Glick unlawfully delayed 

installation until January 2017. From February through September 2017, more than two 

years before Lyons sued in federal court, Glick retaliated by ignoring her maintenance 

requests and other complaints. Lyons alleged that later, from October to 

December 2017, Glick’s lease consultant and construction subcontractor retaliated 

against her by denying requests for maintenance, entering her unit unannounced, and 

completing construction projects around her apartment in a hostile and unprofessional 

manner. 

The second set of claims, also under the Fair Housing Act, is based on the 

eviction suit. Lyons alleges that, to retaliate for her requests and complaints, Glick 

ended Lyons’s lease and obtained a court order to evict her in February 2018. As a result 

of the eviction, Lyons suffered “loss of housing, loss of federal financial rental 

assistance, loss of good/excellent credit rating, loss of economic stability,” “loss of 

established community,” and “mental and physical duress.” To address those injuries, 

Lyons asked the federal court to use Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 

to overturn the state court’s judgment. In her third set of claims, brought under 

supplemental jurisdiction, Lyons alleges negligence, nuisance, breach of contract, unfair 

business practices, and defamation under state law. 

 Glick moved to dismiss Lyons’s federal complaint, and the district court granted 

the motion. The court ruled that under Rooker-Feldman it lacked subject-matter 

jurisdiction over the Fair Housing Act claims (and Lyons’s request to overturn the state 

court’s judgment) because they were intertwined with the Indiana court’s judgment. 

The court also ruled that these claims were barred by the applicable statute of 
No. 20-1489 Page 3 

limitations. It then declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Lyons’s state-law 

claims. 

 On appeal, Lyons argues that Rooker-Feldman does not apply because her federal 

claims are independent from the state court’s judgment. But under Rooker-Feldman, 

district courts lack jurisdiction over “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.” Exxon 

Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005). Lyons does not dispute 

that she filed her federal complaint five months after losing in state court. Therefore, the 

only issue is whether her injuries were caused by the state court’s judgment. 

Rooker-Feldman blocks Lyons’s second set of claims—those about the eviction. To 

determine whether an injury was caused by a state-court judgment, we look to “the 

actual injury claimed by the plaintiff.” Johnson v. Orr, 551 F.3d 564, 568 (7th Cir. 2008) 

(emphasis original). The nature of the injury does not depend on whether the plaintiff 

attributes it to a civil-rights violation. See Holt v. Lake Cty. Bd. of Comm’rs, 408 F.3d 335, 

336 (7th Cir. 2005). Lyons’s alleged injuries from this set of claims—losses of housing, 

federal financial rental assistance, credit, and economic stability—were complete only 

when the Indiana court ordered the eviction. Her very request that the district court 

overturn the Indiana judgment confirms that her injuries arise from the state-court 

judgment. See Brown v. Bowman, 668 F.3d 437, 442 (7th Cir. 2012). Because Lyons would 

not have suffered these injuries “absent the eviction order,” Rooker-Feldman blocks these 

claims. Long v. Shorebank Dev. Corp., 182 F.3d 548, 557 (7th Cir. 1999); see also Kelley v. 

Med-1 Solutions, LLC, 548 F.3d 600, 606–07 (7th Cir. 2008). 

Lyons’s first set of claims—about discrimination and retaliation preceding or 

separate from the state-court suit—are not barred by Rooker-Feldman. The alleged 

misconduct and injuries occurred outside of the Indiana proceedings, when Glick 

delayed accommodating Lyons’s disability and then, to retaliate against her, ignored 

her other requests. Because she seeks damages for “activity that ([s]he alleges) predates 

the state litigation and caused injury independently of it,” Iqbal v. Patel, 780 F.3d 728, 

730 (7th Cir. 2015), the district court had jurisdiction over these claims. 

Nevertheless, the district court’s decision to dismiss the first set of claims was 

partially correct. Under the Fair Housing Act, a plaintiff “may commence a civil 

action . . . not later than 2 years after the occurrence or the termination of an alleged 

discriminatory housing practice . . .” 42 U.S.C. § 3613(a)(1)(A). Lyons alleges that Glick 

unlawfully delayed her disability accommodation until January 2017, and then from 

February through September 2017, refused to address other requests from her in 
No. 20-1489 Page 4 

retaliation for seeking an accommodation. But she filed her federal suit more than two 

years later, in October 2019. So the claims based on these events are time-barred, and 

the district court correctly (and alternatively) dismissed them. 

But Lyons also alleges that some retaliatory acts—denials of maintenance 

requests, entries into her apartment, and “hostile” construction—occurred between 

October and December 2017. These dates fall just within the two-year limitations 

period, and so Lyons’s claims based on these events are not time-barred. Although 

Lyons attributes this misconduct to actors who may be independent contractors (rather 

than employees) of Glick—a lease consultant and construction subcontractor—Glick 

may be liable for their misconduct. The Fair Housing Act imposes liability “in 

accordance with traditional agency principles.” Meyer v. Holley, 537 U.S. 280, 282 (2003). 

And under those principles, in limited circumstances a principal may be liable for the 

wrongdoing of an independent contractor. See Aguirre v. Turner Constr. Co., 582 F.3d 

808, 810 (7th Cir. 2009); RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF AGENCY § 1.01 cmt. c (2006). Further 

fact development, therefore, is needed to determine whether Glick is liable for these 

acts. Consequently, the district court erred in dismissing this subset of timely claims. 

See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009); Schillinger v. Kiley, 954 F.3d 990, 994 

(7th Cir. 2020). 

We finally address Lyons’s third set of claims, brought under state law. When 

the district court dismissed her federal claims before trial, it reasonably relinquished 

supplemental jurisdiction over her remaining state-law claims. See Hagan v. Quinn,

867 F.3d 816, 830 (7th Cir. 2017); see also 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3). With some of her federal 

claims reinstated, however, her state-law claims are revived. See Neita v. City of Chicago, 

830 F.3d 494, 496, 499 (7th Cir. 2016).

We therefore AFFIRM the district court’s dismissal of Lyons’s federal claims 

regarding her eviction and events before October of 2017. We otherwise VACATE the 

judgment and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.