Opinion ID: 3032694
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: congressional grants of authority to review

Text: STATE COURT JUDGMENTS [3] The Constitution does not command the Rooker- Feldman doctrine. In re Gruntz, 202 F.3d 1074, 1078 (9th Cir. 2000) (en banc) (“Rooker-Feldman is not a constitutional doctrine. Rather, the doctrine arises out of a pair of negative inferences drawn from two statutes. . . . .”). As a result, Congress may authorize federal district courts to review state court judgments. Id. at 1079 (Rooker-Feldman must be considered in the context of “the entire federal jurisdictional constellation,” including congressional grants of authority to review state-court decisions in certain cases). Federal statutes that permit federal courts to review state court judgments are rare but obvious.7 Two examples, habeas corpus and bank- 7 Courts have been loath to recognize statutory authorizations to review state court judgments. See, e.g., Dale v. Moore, 121 F.3d 624, 627 (11th Cir. 1997) (holding the Americans With Disabilities Act “does not provide DOE v. MANN 8425 ruptcy jurisdiction, are often referred to as “exceptions” to Rooker-Feldman. As we explained in Noel, the principle that there should be no appellate review of state court judgments by federal trial courts has two particularly notable statutory exceptions: First, a federal district court has original jurisdiction to entertain petitions for habeas corpus brought by state prisoners who claim that the state court has made an error of federal law. Second, a federal bankruptcy court has original jurisdiction under which it is empowered to avoid state judgments, to modify them, and to discharge them. 341 F.3d at 1155 (internal citations and quotations omitted). In both instances, the statutes reflect clear congressional grants of authority. Another useful example of an explicit grant of authority for federal courts to invalidate state court judgments is the implementing legislation of the Hague Convention. The statute, the International Child Abduction Remedies Act (“ICARA”), provides that state and federal courts have concurrent original an independent source of federal court jurisdiction that overrides the application of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine” even though the ADA subjects state public entities to the terms of the act); Ritter v. Ross, 992 F.2d 750, 753, 755 (7th Cir. 1993) (applying Rooker-Feldman to bar § 1983 suit claiming state foreclosure proceeding was a deprivation of property without due process, but noting that Rooker-Feldman “ ‘simply forbids federal district court appellate review of state court judgments in the guise of collateral attacks when no federal statute authorizes such review’ ” (quoting James S. Liebman, Apocalypse Next Time?: The Anachronistic Attack on Habeas Corpus/Direct Review Parity, 92 Colum. L. Rev. 1997, 2008 n.46 (1992)); Johnson v. Kansas, 888 F. Supp. 1073, 1080 (D. Kan. 1995), aff’d, 1996 U.S. App. LEXIS 6598 (10th Cir. 1996) (“The only exception to . . . the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, is where a federal statute authorizes federal appellate review of final state court decisions.”) (alteration in original) (internal quotations and citations omitted). 8426 DOE v. MANN jurisdiction over actions arising under the Hague Convention. 42 U.S.C. § 11603(a). We have interpreted this provision of ICARA to provide federal district courts the authority to vacate state custodial decrees that violate the Hague Convention: In this case, Congress has expressly granted the federal courts jurisdiction to vindicate rights arising under the Convention. See 42 U.S.C. § 11603(a). Thus, federal courts must have the power to vacate state custody determinations and other state court orders that contravene the treaty. Mozes v. Mozes, 239 F.3d 1067, 1085 n.55 (9th Cir. 2001). [4] Whether characterized as exceptions to RookerFeldman or as specific grants of authority, these three examples underscore that Congress may by statute grant federal courts authority to review certain state court judgments.