In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 08-3678

ROBERT GILBERT,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

ILLINOIS STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 05 C 4699—Robert M. Dow, Jr., Judge.

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 11, 2009—DECIDED JANUARY 11, 2010

Before EASTERBROOK,Chief Judge, and POSNER and WOOD,

Circuit Judges.

WOOD, Circuit Judge. From 1978 until July 1995, Robert

Gilbert worked as a social studies teacher at Palatine

High School, which was run by the Board of Education of

Township High School District 211 (the “District”). While

Gilbert was widely regarded for his skills in the

classroom, he continually sparred with colleagues and

school officials. Tired of the conflicts, the District discharged Gilbert on July 12, 1995, citing his insubordination,
2 No. 08-3678

his acrimonious relationship with his colleagues, and his

failure to complete a remediation plan.

Gilbert was convinced that the District lacked adequate

cause to end his employment, and he fought to save his

tenured position at a state administrative hearing. In the

end, however, he was unsuccessful, first before the state

administrative agency, then in state court, and finally

in the district court. In dismissing or rejecting each complaint, the district court (acting first through Judge

Guzmán and later through Judge Dow) relied on the

Rooker-Feldman doctrine, absolute immunity, and a lack

of standing. See Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413,

415-16 (1923); District of Columbia Ct. of App. v. Feldman,

460 U.S. 462, 486 (1983). Gilbert appeals to this court and

contests the issue of standing and the applicability

of Rooker-Feldman. We affirm.

I

After the District discharged Gilbert on July 12, 1995,

Gilbert invoked his right as a tenured teacher to an administrative hearing convened by the Illinois State Board of

Education (“ISBE”). Pursuant to the Illinois School Code,

Gilbert was entitled to present witnesses and any other

relevant evidence on his behalf. 105 ILCS 5/24-12 (2006). At

the hearing, the school district proceeded first and presented its evidence over the course of 40 days. After the

District rested its case, Gilbert filed a motion for “judgment

in his favor.” He understood this to be analogous to a

motion in federal court for judgment as a matter of law.

See FED. R. CIV. PRO. 50(a). On April 2, 2001, the hearing
No. 08-3678 3

officer granted Gilbert’s motion on two alternative grounds

and ordered his reinstatement.

The District filed a complaint seeking administrative

review of the hearing officer’s order in the Circuit Court of

Cook County. On April 17, 2002, the circuit court rejected

one of the bases for reinstatement, but it affirmed the

decision on the alternate ground offered by the hearing

officer. Proceeding up the chain of review, the District

appealed to the Illinois Appellate Court. That court

reversed and remanded “with directions to reinstate the

District’s termination of Gilbert from his employment.”

Concerned that these remand instructions left no room for

reconvening his administrative hearing, Gilbert petitioned

the appellate court for rehearing and clarification of the

order. He argued that further proceedings were necessary

before a final judgment was possible, and that an immediate order confirming the end of his employment would

violate his due process rights under the United States

Constitution. The appellate court denied Gilbert’s petition.

Gilbert then filed a petition for leave to appeal with

the Illinois Supreme Court, invoking Illinois Supreme

Court Rule 315, which spells out the way to request

discretionary review from that court. This petition was

denied on March 24, 2004. Curiously, Gilbert did not try

to use Illinois Supreme Court Rule 317, which permits

appeals as a matter of right when a constitutional claim

arises for the first time as a result of an appellate court

decision. Nor did Gilbert ever file a petition for a writ of

certiorari with the United States Supreme Court.

Instead, the case returned to the circuit court. On September 7, 2004, that court issued an order reinstating
4 No. 08-3678

the District’s discharge of Gilbert. Believing that the Illinois

Appellate Court’s order foreclosed any further administrative proceedings, the judge denied Gilbert’s request to

remand to the hearing officer. The court suggested, however, that the ISBE might reconvene the hearing if it

concluded that it possessed the authority to do so. Gilbert

followed up on the suggestion, but the ISBE rebuffed him,

stating that it no longer retained jurisdiction over the

case. Gilbert did not file an appeal from the circuit court’s

order on remand, and so the Illinois Appellate Court

was never asked whether the circuit court had properly

construed the scope of the remand.

Gilbert turned instead to the federal courts and initiated

the present case. After voluntarily dismissing his initial

complaint, he filed a two-count amended complaint on

May 23, 2005. The complaint named as defendants the

ISBE, the individual members of the ISBE, the legal

advisor to the ISBE, the District, the State of Illinois, the

Illinois Circuit Court judge, and the two surviving Illinois

Appellate Court judges. Count I asserted a due process

claim and sought an injunction to reconvene the administrative hearing. Count II requested similar injunctive relief

plus a declaration that the Illinois School Code and

the Illinois administrative review laws in Gilbert’s case

violated his due process rights. On March 30, 2007, the

district court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss except

with regard to Gilbert’s claim for declaratory relief

against the District. In addition to resolving some issues

relating to the amenability of various defendants to suit,

the court held that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine barred

it from exercising jurisdiction over Gilbert’s claim for

injunctive relief.
No. 08-3678 5

A month later, Gilbert sought leave to file a four-count

second amended complaint. This time Gilbert added the

individual defendants in their official capacity and inserted

a claim for damages. Concluding that the Rooker-Feldman

doctrine barred Gilbert’s claims no matter what form of

relief he sought, the court denied Gilbert’s motion on

October 30, 2007. Nonetheless, it gave Gilbert one last

chance by granting him leave to file a one-count third

amended complaint to seek a declaratory judgment.

Gilbert took another bite at the apple and filed his third

amended complaint requesting declaratory relief, damages,

attorneys’ fees, and any other form of relief the court found

appropriate. (This was the point at which the case was

moved from Judge Guzmán to Judge Dow.) Defendants

filed a supplemental motion to dismiss, which the court

granted on September 24, 2008. It concluded that Gilbert

did not have standing to seek declaratory relief and

rejected Gilbert’s argument that the “law of the case”

doctrine prevented it from deciding this jurisdictional

question.

II

On appeal, Gilbert challenges the dismissal of his

complaints. Gilbert also attacks Judge Guzmán’s denial

of his motion for leave to file a second amended complaint.

We review the former de novo, and the latter only for

an abuse of discretion. Tamayo v. Blagojevich, 526 F.3d 1074,

1081 (7th Cir. 2008); St. John’s United Church of Christ v.

City of Chicago, 502 F.3d 616, 625 (7th Cir. 2007).
6 No. 08-3678

A

 For the most part, this case turns on the Rooker-Feldman

doctrine. See Rooker, 263 U.S. at 415-16; Feldman, 460 U.S.

at 486. These two decisions establish the proposition that the lower federal courts lack jurisdiction to

review the decisions of state courts in civil cases. See

Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 283-84

(2005); Johnson v. Orr, 551 F.3d 564, 568 (7th Cir. 2008).

Congress has granted the power to engage in appellate

review of state court judgments only to the Supreme Court.

See 28 U.S.C. § 1257; Hemmer v. Indiana State Bd. of

Animal Health, 532 F.3d 610, 613 (7th Cir. 2008). The RookerFeldman principle prevents a state-court loser from bringing suit in federal court in order effectively to set aside

the state-court judgment. See Exxon Mobil, 544 U.S. at 284.

This jurisdictional bar applies even though “the state

court judgment might be erroneous or even unconstitutional.” Kamilewicz v. Bank of Boston Corp., 92 F.3d 506, 510

(7th Cir. 1996). There are limits, however, to the reach of

the doctrine. Though a lower federal court may not sit

in review over a state court judgment, a federal court is

free to entertain claims that are independent of any

state court proceedings. See Long v. Shorebank Dev. Corp.,

182 F.3d 548, 555 (7th Cir. 1999) (noting that Rooker-Feldman

does not bar “a federal claim alleging a prior injury that

a state court failed to remedy”). Moreover, because

the Rooker-Feldman doctrine is concerned only with state

court determinations, it presents no jurisdictional obstacle

to judicial review of executive action, including decisions

made by state administrative agencies. See Verizon Mary-
No. 08-3678 7

land, Inc. v. Public Service Com’n of Maryland, 535 U.S. 635,

644 n.3 (2002).

Relying on Rooker-Feldman, the district court dismissed

the due process claim in Gilbert’s amended complaint

for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Recall that Gilbert

had alleged that this wide group of defendants had

deprived him of his due process rights by failing to reconvene his hearing so that he could present his side of

the case. The injury Gilbert claimed to have suffered,

the court explained, flowed directly from the Illinois

Appellate Court’s decision. That court had ruled that the

order ending Gilbert’s employment was to be reinstated

without any further administrative proceedings. With that

in mind, the district court reasoned that granting Gilbert

relief on his due process claim would require the

federal court as a practical matter to reverse the Illinois

Appellate Court’s judgment. That is precisely what is

forbidden by Rooker-Feldman. This rationale also lay

behind the court’s decision to deny Gilbert leave to file

a second amended complaint raising essentially the

same claims.

Betraying a fundamental misunderstanding about the

structure of the parallel judicial systems in the United

States, Gilbert argues that his case is independent of the

state court actions and thus not barred by Rooker-Feldman,

because the due process rights on which he relies are

a creature of federal law and (he thinks) must be adjudicated in federal court. But that is not how the system

works. Unless Congress has chosen to confer exclusive

jurisdiction on the federal courts for a particular set of
8 No. 08-3678

cases—and it has not done that here—either the federal or

the state courts are competent to adjudicate questions

of federal law, including questions of constitutional law.

State courts possess not only the authority but also the

duty to enforce federal law. U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2. The

Supreme Court has held that state-court judgments in

§ 1983 cases are subject, by virtue of the full faith and

credit statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1738, to the ordinary rules of

claim and issue preclusion in later federal-court cases.

See Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90 (1980). Such a holding

would be impossible if Gilbert’s position were correct.

The remainder of Gilbert’s arguments turn on the

proper interpretation of the Illinois Appellate Court’s

decision and the way that the circuit court implemented it

on remand. As Gilbert reads the appellate decision, that

court did not mean to preclude further proceedings on

remand, and both the state-court judge and the federal

district court erred by assuming that it did. Properly

read, Gilbert asserts (relying on Coalfield Coal Co. v. Peck,

105 Ill. 529 (1883)), it is apparent that the Illinois

Appellate Court meant only to return matters to the

status quo ante, before his hearing ever began.

The problem is that neither the district court nor this

court is the proper tribunal to entertain that argument. A

state court—the Circuit Court of Cook County—has

already interpreted the appellate court’s ruling, and

that court concluded that the appellate court meant to

rule on the merits of the District’s decision to fire Gilbert.

The circuit court had before it Gilbert’s argument that

the proceedings should be reopened, and it rejected
No. 08-3678 9

that position, finding that it would conflict with the

mandate the court had been given from the appellate court.

Though the circuit court left open the possibility for

Gilbert to address his request to the ISBE, the judge made

it clear that judicial review of the original order was at

an end. This may have been an erroneous interpretation

of the Illinois Appellate Court’s remand instructions. But

Gilbert’s remedy was to seek further clarification from the

appellate court itself, not to go down the street to

the federal court. Courts review judgments, not opinions,

and there is no way that a federal court in the present

case could accept Gilbert’s due process claim and issue an

injunction to reconvene his hearing without effectively

reversing the appellate court’s decision that further

proceedings were not legally required. See Orr, 551 F.3d at

568. Therefore, even though Gilbert’s injury stems ultimately from the District’s decision, his immediate

problem is the circuit court’s order implementing the

appellate court’s mandate that the ISBE was “to reinstate

the District’s termination of Gilbert from his employment.”

Gilbert finds this result harsh, because his evidence was

not presented at the agency hearing, and the state

courts (he asserts) did not squarely address his argument

that this amounted to a denial of due process. There is

an exception to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine that allows

plaintiffs to litigate in the federal system if they were

not afforded a “reasonable opportunity” to raise their

claims in state court. See Kelly v. Med-1 Solutions, 548 F.3d

600, 605-06 (7th Cir. 2008); Lynk v. LaPorte Superior

Court No. 2, 789 F.2d 554, 564–65 (7th Cir.1986). This
10 No. 08-3678

exception, however, cannot help him. He presented his due

process claim, albeit unsuccessfully, in his petition to

the Illinois Appellate Court for rehearing and clarification

of its order and in his petition for leave to appeal with

the Illinois Supreme Court. Although both of these petitions were cursorily denied, Gilbert passed up his opportunity to appeal as a matter of right to the Illinois Supreme

Court. See Ill. Sup. Ct. R. 317 (providing for appeals as a

matter of right if a constitutional claim arises for the first

time as a result of an appellate court decision). This is

enough to demonstrate that Gilbert did have a

“reasonable opportunity” to pursue his due process claim

in Illinois state court. Cf. Kelly, 548 F.3d at 606-07; Beth-El

All Nations Church v. City of Chicago, 486 F.3d 286, 292-94

(7th Cir. 2007).

B

 All that remains is for us to address Gilbert’s argument

that the district court erred when it dismissed his

third amended complaint for declaratory relief. In order

to understand this issue, a little background is in order.

In his March 30, 2006, order dismissing most of Gilbert’s

amended complaint, Judge Guzmán chose not to dismiss

Gilbert’s claim for declaratory relief. Later, on October 20,

2007, Judge Guzmán denied Gilbert leave to file a second

amended complaint but granted him a chance to file a

third amended complaint limited solely to a claim for

a declaratory judgment. Gilbert took advantage of this

opportunity and filed a complaint alleging that certain

provisions of the Illinois School Code and the Illinois

Administrative Code are void for vagueness. After Gilbert
No. 08-3678 11

filed that iteration of the complaint, the case was transferred to Judge Dow. Defendants soon thereafter filed a

motion to dismiss in which they argued that Gilbert

lacked standing to seek declaratory relief. Judge Dow

granted that motion and dismissed the case.

Gilbert contends that Judge Dow’s ruling violated the

law-of-the-case doctrine. Looking at matters from the

perspective of the district court, law-of-the-case principles

are applicable when a case is transferred to a new judge

midway through litigation; in general, the successor judge

is discouraged from reconsidering the decisions of the

transferor judge. See Brengettcy v. Horton, 423 F.3d 674, 680

(7th Cir. 2005). The successor judge should depart from the

transferor judge’s decision only “if he has a conviction at

once strong and reasonable that the earlier ruling was

wrong, and if rescinding it would not cause undue harm

to the party that had benefitted from it.” HK Systems, Inc.

v. Eaton Corp., 553 F.3d 1086, 1089 (7th Cir. 2009)

(quoting Avitia v. Metropolitan Club of Chicago, Inc., 49

F.3d 1219, 1227 (7th Cir. 1995)). Since Judge Guzmán

specifically permitted Gilbert to file a complaint seeking

declaratory relief, Gilbert contends that Judge Guzmán

must have concluded that whatever Gilbert came up

with in the new complaint was necessarily justiciable.

Thus, Gilbert concludes, Judge Dow erred when he did

not defer to Judge Guzmán’s apparent decision.

But Gilbert’s argument loses sight of the critical shift

in perspective that occurs when it is the appellate court

reviewing what happened before the district court. As

we noted in Williams v. C.I.R., 1 F.3d 502 (7th Cir. 1993),
12 No. 08-3678

“[a]t that point, if rulings by the district court on issues of

law are challenged the question is not whether the second

judge should have deferred to the ruling of the first judge,

but whether that ruling was correct.” Id. at 503. The issues

before us are exclusively questions of law, and thus,

exercising de novo review, we must decide only whether

the ultimate result reached in the district court was the

right one. Since Gilbert has not challenged the correctness

of Judge Dow’s ruling, there is nothing more we need say

on the matter. 

For the sake of completeness, however, we note that

there is a second reason why Gilbert’s law-of-the-case

argument is doomed. Judge Dow correctly pointed out that

successor [district] judges are “significantly less constrained by the law of the case doctrine with respect to

jurisdictional questions.” O’Sullivan v. City of Chicago, 396

F.3d 843, 849-50 (7th Cir. 2005) (quoting Shakman v.

Dunne, 829 F.2d 1387, 1399 (7th Cir. 1987)). In addition to

that point (which flows from the fact that

jurisdictional questions must always be addressed), it is

also true that the law-of-the-case doctrine does not come

into play when the transferor judge never decided

the precise issue that is before the successor judge. See

FMS, Inc. v. Volvo Const. Equipment North America, Inc., 557

F.3d 758, 762-63 (7th Cir. 2009). Here, Judge Guzmán

neither approved Gilbert’s new complaint in advance

nor focused on justiciability. Nothing in the law-of-the-case

doctrine therefore barred Judge Dow from addressing

this fundamental objection to Gilbert’s complaint. Cf.

Jezierski v. Mukasey, 543 F.3d 886, 888 (7th Cir. 2008)

(noting that a court’s decision that addresses the merits
No. 08-3678 13

of a case without discussing jurisdiction does not bind

future courts’ jurisdictional analysis). Judge Dow concluded that Gilbert’s complaint failed to state an injury

that was redressable, since subsequent events had cured

whatever ambiguity there may have been in the state’s

procedures. He noted as well that a federal court cannot

issue a declaratory judgment “because someone may be

affected by the provisions, if that someone is not the

current Plaintiff.” 

* * *

We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

1-11-10