Court Opinion

ID: 9881342
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-01 05:00:35.991514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:08:24.813990
License: Public Domain

In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                 For the Seventh Circuit
                     ____________________

No. 22-3222
MAURICE J. SALEM,
                                                  Plaintiff-Appellant,

                                 v.

ATTORNEY REGISTRATION AND DISCIPLINARY COMMISSION OF
THE SUPREME COURT OF ILLINOIS and JEROME LARKIN, its Ad-
ministrator, in official and individual capacities,
                                           Defendants-Appellees.
                     ____________________

         Appeal from the United States District Court for the
           Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
           No. 20-CV-06531 — John J. Tharp, Jr., Judge.
                     ____________________

 ARGUED SEPTEMBER 21, 2023 — DECIDED SEPTEMBER 28, 2023
                ____________________

   Before EASTERBROOK, ROVNER, and PRYOR, Circuit Judges.
    EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. In 2003 Maurice J. Salem re-
ceived a license to practice law in New York. He applied for
admission in Illinois too but was turned down. Yet between
2004 and 2019 he maintained an active practice in Illinois,
where he resides, through permission to appear pro hac vice—
2                                                         No. 22-3222

Latin meaning “for this event” or “on this occasion”—based
on his license to practice in New York. The AUorney Registra-
tion and Disciplinary Commission charged him with miscon-
duct for representing that he was licensed to practice law in
Illinois. A hearing board received evidence, found that he had
made such a representation inadvertently, and recommended
censure. A review board agreed. But Jerome Larkin, the
ARDC’s Administrator, asked the Supreme Court of Illinois
to go further and forbid any state court from allowing Salem
to proceed pro hac vice for at least 90 days.
    Larkin argued that Salem’s representation had been a de-
liberate aUempt to mislead. The Supreme Court of Illinois
likely agreed with that view, because it imposed the discipline
Larkin sought—though it did not issue an opinion. The
court’s order states:
    Petition by the Administrator of the AIorney Registration and
    Disciplinary Commission for leave to ﬁle exceptions to the report
    and recommendation of the Review Board. Allowed. Respondent
    Maurice James Salem is suspended from the practice of law for
    ninety (90) days and until further order of the Court.

Salem, who now asks the federal judiciary to disagree with
the state court’s disposition, did not do himself any favors
when he ignored the petition and allowed Larkin’s arguments
to go unanswered in the state’s highest court. The lack of op-
position may explain the court’s belief that it did not need to
write an opinion resolving a contested maUer.
    Salem’s federal suit, based on 42 U.S.C. §1983, asks for
money damages to compensate him for both the suspension
order (which remains in force) and how the ARDC has de-
scribed that suspension. Its website states:
No. 22-3222                                                                3

   Mr. Salem is licensed in New York but was never licensed in Illi-
   nois. He has, however, maintained a law oﬃce in Cook County,
   Illinois, for several years. The Supreme Court of Illinois sus-
   pended him for ninety days and until further order of the Court
   for dishonestly holding himself out to the public as an Illinois law-
   yer.

Salem contends that the word “dishonestly” in this descrip-
tion is false and maintains that principles of equal protection
and substantive due process entitle him to relief. He does not
present any claim under state tort law, nor has he asked a state
court to direct the ARDC to change the website’s language.
    The federal suit did not go well for Salem. The judge dis-
missed it on the pleadings, ruling that the district court lacks
jurisdiction to review the state Supreme Court’s decision and
that the state court’s decision supplies all the basis needed for
the ARDC’s choice of language. 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 212408
(N.D. Ill. Nov. 23, 2022).
    Salem devotes the bulk of his appellate brief to contending
that the federal district judge in Illinois should not have re-
solved the suit that Salem himself ﬁled in Illinois. According
to Salem, every district judge in Illinois is disqualiﬁed because
he or she has a law license and so is potentially subject to the
authority that the Supreme Court of Illinois and its agency the
ARDC exercise over the bar. Salem proposed that the judge
“transfer venue” to Michigan to put it before a federal judge
who does not have any potential conﬂict.
   A statute, 28 U.S.C. §1404(a), permits a district court to
change venue “to any other district or division where it might
have been brought or to any district or division to which all
parties have consented.” The ARDC and Larkin have not con-
sented to litigate this suit in Michigan, and Illinois is the only
4                                                     No. 22-3222

state in which “it might have been brought”. The ARDC is
part of the state of Illinois; it does not do business in Michigan
and has never had dealings with Salem there. Salem, who
does not mention §1404 in his opening brief (and does not dis-
cuss the relevant language in his reply brief), lacks any legal
support for the proposition that a district judge can order the
ARDC to defend itself in Michigan.
    Apparently Salem believes that a disqualiﬁed district
judge can send the litigation anywhere. He does not supply
either authority or argument for this novel proposition. He
did not bother to do the legal research to discover how federal
courts proceed when all of a district’s judges are disqualiﬁed.
When none of the judges is available, the Chief Judge of the
Court of Appeals will designate a judge from another district
within the circuit to resolve the case. 28 U.S.C. §292(b). If
every judge in the circuit is disqualiﬁed, the Chief Justice of
the United States can designate a judge from outside the cir-
cuit. 28 U.S.C. §292(d). In neither event will a disqualiﬁed dis-
trict judge “transfer venue” as Salem proposes.
    So we must ask: are all district judges in Illinois disquali-
ﬁed? The answer is no. Although a judge “shall disqualify
himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might rea-
sonably be questioned”, 28 U.S.C. §455(a), the impartiality of
the district judges in Illinois cannot be questioned “reasona-
bly” in a case of this nature. The standard is objective, as-
sessed from the perspective of an observer who possesses all
material facts. Liteky v. United States, 510 U.S. 540, 548 (1994);
Liljeberg v. Health Services Acquisition Corp., 486 U.S. 847 (1988);
United States v. Herrera-Valdez, 826 F.3d 912, 917 (7th Cir. 2016);
In re National Union Fire Insurance Co., 839 F.2d 1226, 1228–29
(7th Cir. 1988). And the ﬁrst material fact that any reasonable
No. 22-3222                                                  5

observer will possess is that federal judges do not need law
licenses. They hold oﬃce by virtue of the President’s appoint-
ment (following advice and consent of the Senate), not by vir-
tue of anything any state does. As far as the Constitution is
concerned, law licenses are unnecessary—indeed, the Consti-
tution was adopted long before states began to license the
practice of law. (Until the twentieth century, most legal prac-
tice was court-speciﬁc rather than a privilege conferred by a
state-issued license. See Benjamin H. Barton, An Institutional
Analysis of Lawyer Regulation: Who Should Control Lawyer Reg-
ulation—Courts, Legislatures, or the Market?, 37 Ga. L. Rev.
1167, 1172 & n.17 (2003).)
    We appreciate that some federal judges may want to retain
law licenses should they decide to return to practice. Perhaps
such a judge’s impartiality could be questioned “reasonably”
if a given state had developed a reputation for commencing
disciplinary proceedings against judges who issue adverse
rulings. But Salem does not contend that the ARDC ever has
done so for any federal judge—and our own research did not
turn up any example, though federal judges in Illinois (and in
other states) regularly resolve suits in which state licensing
oﬃcials are parties. A fully informed observer therefore
would not believe that a federal judge would favor the state
licensing oﬃcials to protect his own interests.
    An informed observer also would know that none of the
language in the Code of Conduct for United States Judges—
or any of the advisory opinions issued under that Code—sug-
gests that federal judges recuse in suits against oﬃcials re-
sponsible for the regulation of the state bar. Salem’s argument
to the contrary is unsupported. He does not cite any language
in the Code of Conduct, any statute beyond §455, or any
6                                                    No. 22-3222

judicial opinion holding that recusal is required in this cir-
cumstance. (Salem does mention §455(b)(1) as well as §455(a).
Subsection (b)(1) is transparently irrelevant. It says that a
judge is disqualiﬁed if “he has a personal bias or prejudice
concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evi-
dentiary facts concerning the proceeding”. None of those
things applies just because a judge is licensed to practice law.)
It follows that the district judge is not disqualiﬁed.
    Now for Salem’s substantive contentions. The decision of
the Supreme Court of Illinois suspending Salem from the
practice of law cannot be collaterally aUacked in civil litiga-
tion. It could have been reviewed by the Supreme Court of the
United States but cannot be reviewed by a district court.
That’s the holding of District of Columbia Court of Appeals v.
Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983), which like this suit arose from a
state court’s order regulating its bar.
    Salem contends that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not
apply because he seeks damages from the ARDC and Larkin
rather than an order seUing aside the Supreme Court’s deci-
sion. We need not decide when, if ever, a request for damages
is outside the scope of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, because
the ARDC is a state agency and this suit rests on 42 U.S.C.
§1983. States and their agencies are not “persons” for the pur-
pose of §1983 and therefore cannot be sued for damages un-
der that statute. Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491
U.S. 58 (1989). State oﬃcials sued in their oﬃcial capacities are
treated as states. Ibid. Salem has sued Larkin in his personal
as well as his oﬃcial capacity, but Larkin cannot be personally
liable for decisions made by the Supreme Court of Illinois.
  This leaves the argument that the statement on the
ARDC’s website entitles Salem to damages. The fact that the
No. 22-3222                                                      7

ARDC and Larkin in his oﬃcial capacity are “the state”
knocks out any §1983 damages remedy against them, but Lar-
kin in his personal capacity might be deemed liable for the
language to which Salem objects, for Larkin could tell his sub-
ordinates to change it. But liable under the Constitution? The
word “dishonestly” is defamatory and could support a tort
claim—to which Larkin could interpose the defense of truth
or a privilege to report the Supreme Court’s decision—but Sa-
lem does not invoke state law. He relies instead on equal pro-
tection and substantive due process.
    Let us start with the laUer. Substantive due process pro-
tects fundamental rights with deep historical provenance. See
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 142 S. Ct. 2228
(2022); Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997). Freedom
from being described as “dishonest” (or the equivalent) by a
state actor is not a fundamental right. Indeed, we know from
Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693 (1976), that it is not a constitutional
right of any kind.
    Public oﬃcials distributed posters describing Davis as an
“active shoplifter”, and he sought a remedy under §1983. The
Court held, however, that defamation is a subject for state tort
law and does not deprive a person of either “liberty” or
“property” for the purpose of the Due Process Clause in the
Fourteenth Amendment. Paul added that stigma leading to
the deprivation of some other interest, such as employment,
might entail liberty or property and require a hearing—but
Salem does not contend that the statement on the ARDC’s site
has caused such a loss. It is the decision by the Supreme Court
of Illinois, not what the ARDC said about that decision, that
ended Salem’s opportunity to seek pro hac vice status. And Sa-
lem received a hearing before that judicial decision was
8                                                    No. 22-3222

reached. (Salem also had but did not use an opportunity to
present his arguments to the Supreme Court of Illinois.)
    As for the equal-protection theory: Salem describes him-
self as a “class of one” who has been victimized by the
ARDC’s malice. This appears to be just artful pleading of a
defamation theory, which is no sounder under the Equal Pro-
tection Clause than under the Due Process Clause. At all
events, a rational basis suﬃces for public acts challenged un-
der the Equal Protection Clause, see Willowbrook v. Olech, 528
U.S. 562 (2000), and we agree with the district judge that the
decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois, read against the
background of Larkin’s application for Salem’s suspension,
supplies a rational basis for the ARDC’s summary. In equal-
protection law, it is enough if a rational basis may be conceived;
the basis need not be proved by evidence. See, e.g., FCC v.
Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 313 (1993); National
Paint & Coatings Association v. Chicago, 45 F.3d 1124, 1127–28
(7th Cir. 1995). Conceiving a rational basis for calling Salem’s
conduct “dishonest” does not require mental gymnastics.
    This has been frivolous and vexatious litigation, an at-
tempt by a disappointed party to strike back at his adversaries
after losing in court. The aUempt was doomed by inaUention
to basic legal rules. Salem makes assertions about venue with-
out analyzing the language of §1404, about how to handle
recusals without mentioning §292, and about judicial ethics
without mentioning the Code of Conduct. He seeks damages
against a state agency and its administrator under §1983 with-
out mentioning Will, relies on the Due Process Clause without
mentioning Paul, and seeks a trial on an equal-protection the-
ory without mentioning the rule that the rational-basis ap-
proach asks what is conceivable, not what a trier of fact
No. 22-3222                                                    9

believes. In other words, Salem’s contentions reﬂect igno-
rance of the law, indiﬀerence to the law, or both.
    This is not the ﬁrst time the federal judiciary has encoun-
tered inappropriate behavior from Salem. For example, in a
defamation suit that Salem ﬁled in federal court complaining
about statements an expert witness made during other litiga-
tion, Salem described himself as a citizen of New York in an
eﬀort to support jurisdiction based on diversity of citizenship.
A federal district judge concluded that Salem, who has lived
in Illinois since 2003, was untruthful; we aﬃrmed. Salem v.
Egan, No. 19-2477 (7th Cir. Mar. 10, 2020) (nonprecedential
disposition). In a similar case that a district court dismissed
for want of jurisdiction, Salem promptly reﬁled in another
district court, apparently believing that subject-maUer juris-
diction is district-court speciﬁc. A district judge deemed this
frivolous and ordered Salem to pay his adversary’s legal fees.
We aﬃrmed, agreeing with the district judge that Salem’s
conduct was sanctionable. Zausa v. Zausa (Pellin), No. 18-1896
(7th Cir. Nov. 1, 2018) (nonprecedential disposition). The at-
torneys’ fees awarded in Pellin remain unpaid.
    Salem’s preposterous arguments in a long-running bank-
ruptcy proceeding so frustrated the bankruptcy judge that she
barred him from continuing to represent any of the parties
and ﬁned him $20,000. The district court aﬃrmed, as did we.
Estate of WaXar v. Fox, 71 F.4th 547, 554–55 (7th Cir. 2023). The
bankruptcy court imposed that ﬁne years ago, but Salem has
yet to pay even one dollar of the award.
    The state courts of Illinois are not the only forum in which
Salem’s practice has been suspended. Following his suspen-
sion in state court, the Northern District of Illinois imposed
reciprocal discipline. After receiving that suspension order,
10                                                 No. 22-3222

Salem served discovery requests on opposing counsel in a
pending case. That led to a complaint and discipline for un-
authorized practice of law. (Salem asserted that he didn’t
know that serving discovery requests constitutes the practice
of law. The court didn’t believe him—nor was the excuse ad-
equate even if Salem was as ignorant as he professed.) We
have revoked his right to practice in the Seventh Circuit. And
oﬃcials in New York, having learned what was happening,
suspended Salem’s right to practice there. MaXer of Salem, 194
A.D.3d 20 (N.Y. 2021). That suspension remains in force. Up-
shot: Salem is not authorized to practice law in New York, in
Illinois, in the Seventh Circuit, or in the Northern District of
Illinois. But he continues to ﬁle pestiferous suits on his own
behalf, of which this one is an example.
    Salem’s cavalcade of frivolous suits must stop. The sanc-
tions imposed in Estate of WaXar and Pellin were designed to
discourage frivolous litigation by making this conduct costly,
but that does not work if Salem thumbs his nose at the court
and fails to pay. Litigation can require hefty outlays from de-
fendants, expenses that they should not be forced to bear un-
less a suit presents plausible claims. Salem must explain why
additional sanctions—including aUorneys’ fees and ﬁnancial
penalties—should not be imposed in this case. He must un-
derstand that, unless he pays all outstanding ﬁnes and awards
of fees, plus any additional award in this case, we will issue
an order under Support Systems International, Inc. v. Mack, 45
F.3d 185 (7th Cir. 1995), that protects other persons by pre-
venting him from ﬁling or pursuing any civil suit until all out-
standing awards have been satisﬁed.
   The district court’s judgment is aﬃrmed. Salem has 14
days to show cause why he should not be subject to sanctions,
No. 22-3222                                               11

including an order to pay the defendants’ aUorneys’ fees, un-
der Fed. R. App. P. 38.