NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

___________

No. 18-3049

__________

KENDRA O’BRYANT; BRIAN FLANDERS; ARTIE PEOPLES,

Appellants

v.

NEW JERSEY DIVISION OF CHILD PROTECTION AND 

PERMANENCY, (#DCP&P) formerly known as DIVISION OF YOUTH & 

FAMILY SERVICES; LISA VON PIER; ALLISON BLAKE; 

LISA CAPONE; CONCHITA VARGA; BRYANT ROLLS; SHERIFF 

GILBERT WILSON, “WHIP”; SHERIFF DEPUTY T. NICHOLS; 

ALICIA ASH; SHERIFF DEPUTY GURKIN; JONATHON GARRETT

____________________________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of New Jersey

(D.C. Civil Action No. 1-17-cv-07752)

District Judge: Honorable Jerome B. Simandle

____________________________________

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)

March 3, 2020

Before: SHWARTZ, RESTREPO, and NYGAARD, Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: June 16, 2020)

___________

OPINION*

___________

PER CURIAM

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not 

constitute binding precedent.
2

Plaintiffs Kindra O’Bryant, Brian Flanders and Artie Peoples appeal from the 

District Court’s order dismissing their complaint for lack of jurisdiction and, 

alternatively, abstaining under Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971). We will affirm in 

part, vacate in part, and remand for further proceedings.

I.

For present purposes, we accept plaintiffs’ factual allegations as true and liberally 

construe them in plaintiffs’ favor. O’Bryant is the mother of three minor children, the 

youngest of whom (K.F.) was born in August 2017. Flanders, who is K.F.’s father, lives 

or lived with O’Bryant and her two other children. Peoples is O’Bryant’s father and 

periodically cared for the children as well. 

Plaintiffs filed this suit1 pro se under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985 naming two 

groups of defendants to which we refer as the Child Protection Defendants and the 

Sheriff Defendants.2

 It is unnecessary for present purposes to recount all of plaintiffs’ 

allegations. In brief, however, plaintiffs alleged that defendants wrongfully seized 

O’Bryant’s two other children while she was in the hospital giving birth to K.F. and then 

immediately seized K.F. as well. Plaintiffs acknowledged that defendants did so at or 

1 The copies of plaintiffs’ complaint filed below and submitted on appeal are missing 

page five. Neither the District Court nor the parties have addressed that issue.

2 The Child Protection Defendants are the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and 

Permanency and certain of its officials and employees. The Sheriff Defendants are the 

Camden County Sheriff, two deputy sheriffs, and various John Doe defendants. Because 

our disposition does not require us to identify the alleged conduct of specific defendants, 

we refer at times to allegations against “defendants” or groups thereof without suggesting 

that any specific defendant engaged in or is responsible for the specific conduct alleged.
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near the time of filing a child abuse/neglect complaint against O’Bryant and Flanders in 

New Jersey state court (which, as far as the record reveals, remains pending). Plaintiffs, 

however, did not directly assert any claims regarding that proceeding. 

Instead, they alleged that defendants’ seizure of the children violated plaintiffs’ 

constitutional rights because the children were not in imminent danger of abuse or 

neglect and defendants had no lawful justification for believing otherwise. Plaintiffs also 

alleged that the seizure followed an abusive investigation during which defendants 

coerced O’Bryant into signing an unnecessary and unworkable family plan agreement 

under threat of removing her children but then removed her children anyway after 

breaching defendants’ own promise to help remedy various living conditions about which 

they expressed concern.

On the basis of these and other allegations, plaintiffs sought damages and 

injunctive relief, including an order requiring defendants to implement policies regarding 

the removal of children from their parents. The defendants filed motions to dismiss 

plaintiffs’ complaint under Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil 

Procedure. The District Court granted those motions and dismissed plaintiffs’ complaint 

for lack of jurisdiction. The District Court also concluded that, if it had jurisdiction, it 

would abstain from exercising it under Younger. Plaintiffs appeal.3

3 We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We exercise plenary review over the 

dismissal of a complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. See Susinno v. Work Out 

World, Inc., 862 F.3d 346, 348 (3d Cir. 2017). We also exercise plenary review over the 

legal requirements for abstention, but we review the District Court’s ultimate decision to 

abstain for abuse of discretion. See Addiction Specialists, Inc. v. Twp. of Hampton, 411 

F.3d 399, 408 (3d Cir. 2005).
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II.

The Due Process Clause places procedural and substantive limits on a State’s 

ability to interfere with parents’ rights “in the custody, care and management of their 

children.” Croft v. Westmoreland Cty. Children & Youth Servs., 103 F.3d 1123, 1125 

(3d Cir. 1997). Plaintiffs allege that defendants violated those rights in this case. None 

of the defendants argued below that the plaintiffs failed to state—or by amendment could 

not state—any plausible constitutional claim based on the removal of O’Bryant’s and 

Flanders’s children from their care. Nor did the District Court address that issue. 

Instead, the District Court concluded that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction under the 

“domestic relations” exception to federal jurisdiction and that, in the alternative, it would 

abstain from exercising such jurisdiction under Younger. Plaintiffs challenge both of 

those rulings on appeal, and we agree that those rulings require remand.

A. Subject Matter Jurisdiction

None of the defendants invoked the “domestic relations” exception below, and 

none squarely defends the District Court’s reliance on that exception on appeal. That is 

for good reason. The domestic relations exception is “an exception to federal diversity

jurisdiction,” and it “encompasses only cases involving the issuance of a divorce, 

alimony, or child custody decree.” Matusow v. Trans-County Title Agency, LLC., 545 

F.3d 241, 245 (3d Cir. 2008) (emphasis added and quotation marks omitted). This 

exception does not apply to claims like the plaintiffs’ here that invoke federal question 

jurisdiction, see McLaughlin v. Pernsley, 876 F.2d 308, 312-13 (3d Cir. 1989), and 

plaintiffs’ claims do not involve any divorce, alimony or child custody decree.
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The Child Protection Defendants nevertheless argue that plaintiffs’ claims 

represent an unwarranted intrusion on their ability to investigate cases of child abuse and 

neglect. Relatedly, all defendants argue (either expressly or by analogy) that plaintiffs’ 

claims are barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Characterizing plaintiffs’ claims as 

relating solely to the State’s investigation, however, construes them too narrowly. 

Plaintiffs are not merely challenging defendants’ investigation. Instead, their allegations 

can be read to challenge specific instances of alleged misconduct, including the removal 

of O’Bryant’s and Flanders’s children from their custody.

For similar reasons, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not apply. That narrow 

doctrine divests federal courts of jurisdiction to hear what are in essence appeals from 

state-court judgments, and it applies only when (inter alia) the plaintiffs have lost in state 

court and seek to redress injuries allegedly caused by the state-court judgment. See B.S.

v. Somerset Cty., 704 F.3d 250, 259-60 (3d Cir. 2013). The doctrine does not apply here 

because the injuries of which plaintiffs complain are traceable to defendants’ alleged 

conduct rather than to any state-court judgment (which in this case apparently has yet to 

issue). See id. at 260. Thus, we will vacate the District Court’s ruling that it lacked 

subject matter jurisdiction over this dispute.

B. Abstention

The District Court alternatively concluded that it would abstain under Younger in 

favor of the New Jersey abuse/neglect proceeding. The District Court did so after 

accepting defendants’ invitation to apply a three-part test derived from Middlesex County 

Ethics Committee v. Garden States Bar Ass’n, 457 U.S. 423 (1982). As defendants now 
6

acknowledge, however, “the three Middlesex conditions are no longer the test for 

Younger abstention” following Sprint Communications, Inc. v. Jacobs, 571 U.S. 69 

(2013). Malhan v. Sec’y U.S. Dep’t of State, 938 F.3d 453, 462 (3d Cir. 2019) (quotation 

marks omitted). Instead, under Sprint, the three Middlesex factors come into play only 

after a District Court concludes that a civil action relates to an ongoing state-court 

proceeding that falls within one of three categories: “(1) ongoing state criminal 

prosecutions; (2) certain civil enforcement proceedings; and (3) pending civil 

proceedings involving certain orders uniquely in furtherance of the state courts’ ability to 

perform their judicial functions.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). 

Consistent with defendants’ arguments below, the District Court did not determine 

whether the New Jersey child abuse/neglect proceeding fits within any of these 

categories. The Sheriff Defendants now appear to argue that the proceeding fits within 

the second. The Child Protection Defendants, by contrast, argue that it fits within the 

third. We decline to resolve these issues in the first instance in part because the decision 

whether to abstain ultimately is committed to the District Court’s discretion. Thus, we 

will vacate the District Court’s decision to abstain under Younger as well. The District 

Court is free to revisit that issue under the proper legal framework.

C. Remaining Issues

Finally, the defendants argue that we should affirm on various alternate grounds 

specific to various categories of claims and defendants. We decline to address most of 

those issues in the first instance under the circumstances presented here. Among those

circumstances are the facts that none of the defendants’ alternative arguments would 
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appear to resolve this case in its entirety and that many of them, even if meritorious, 

might warrant leave to amend the complaint. As with abstention, the decision whether to 

permit amendment is within the discretion of the District Court (though District Courts 

generally must permit amendment, whether requested or not in civil rights cases like this, 

unless it would be inequitable or futile). See Mullin v. Balicki, 875 F.3d 140, 150-51 (3d 

Cir. 2017). Thus, we decline to address most of defendants’ alternative arguments, and 

the District Court is free to consider them on remand.

There is one exception. The Child Protection Defendants argue that the Division 

and its employees in their official capacities are entitled to Eleventh Amendment 

immunity from plaintiffs’ claims for monetary damages because the Division is an arm of 

the State of New Jersey. We agree. See Pa. Fed’n of Sportsmen’s Clubs, Inc. v. Hess, 

297 F.3d 310, 323 (3d Cir. 2002) (explaining that the Eleventh Amendment “render[s] 

states—and, by extension, state agencies and departments and officials when the state is 

the real party in interest—generally immune from suit by private parties in federal 

court”). Thus, we will affirm the dismissal of plaintiffs’ claims for monetary damages 

against these defendants on this alternate ground. We express no opinion on whether the 

immunity of the Division’s employees extends to plaintiffs’ claims for injunctive relief. 

See id.

III.

For these reasons, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court in part, vacate 

it in part, and remand for further proceedings. In doing so, we express no opinion on the 

truth of plaintiffs’ allegations, on the merits of their remaining claims, or on whether 
8

those claims are otherwise sufficient to proceed beyond the pleading stage. Plaintiffs’ 

request in their brief for appointment of counsel is denied because we perceive no need 

for counsel for this appeal.