Sherri Jefferson v. State Bar of Georgia

USCA11 Case: 22-12835 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 01/27/2023 Page: 1 of 9

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-12835

Non-Argument Calendar

____________________

SHERRI JEFFERSON,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

STATE BAR OF GEORGIA,

SHARON L. BRYANT,

in her official capacity,

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, STATE BAR OF GEORGIA,

WILLIAM COBB,

in his official capacity as Bar Counsel,

PATRICK LONGAN,

in his official capacity as review panel

chairman, et al.,

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2 Opinion of the Court 22-12835

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Georgia

D.C. Docket No. 1:22-cv-01883-TCB

____________________

Before JORDAN, BRASHER, and HULL, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Plaintiff Sherri Jefferson is a former member of the State Bar

of Georgia who was disbarred by the Georgia Supreme Court on

October 7, 2019. See In re Jefferson, 834 S.E.2d 73 (Ga. 2019).

Jefferson, proceeding pro se, sued the State Bar of Georgia and

certain officials (collectively, “State Bar”) alleging, inter alia, that

they acted improperly when they disciplined and ultimately

disbarred her (and other African American lawyers).

The district court denied Jefferson’s motion to recuse,

granted the State Bar’s motion to stay discovery pending resolution

of its motion to dismiss, and later granted the State Bar’s motion to

dismiss. Jefferson appeals these three rulings. After careful review,

we affirm the district court’s denial of the recusal motion, its

staying of the discovery, and its dismissal of Jefferson’s claims.

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I. MOTION TO RECUSE

On appeal, Jefferson challenges the district court’s denial of

Jefferson’s motion to recuse. We review a denial of a motion for

recusal for abuse of discretion. In re Walker, 532 F.3d 1304, 1308

(11th Cir. 2008).

Under 28 U.S.C. § 455, a judge “shall disqualify himself in

any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be

questioned.” 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). A judge shall also disqualify

himself if “he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party,

or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the

proceeding.” Id. § 455(b). “[T]he general rule is that bias sufficient

to disqualify a judge must stem from extrajudicial sources.”

Thomas v. Tenneco Packaging Co., 293 F.3d 1306, 1329 (11th Cir.

2002) (quotation marks omitted). “The exception to this rule is

when a judge’s remarks in a judicial context demonstrate such

pervasive bias and prejudice that it constitutes bias against a party.”

Id. (quotation marks omitted).

Here, Jefferson moved to recuse the district court judge

because he previously had presided over two of her cases.1 The

district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Jefferson’s

1 In Jefferson v. Deal, Case No. 1:15-cv-02069-TCB (N.D. Ga. June 9, 2015),

Jefferson challenged the constitutionality of several Georgia criminal statutes

without success. In Doe v. Deal, Case No. 1:15-cv-02226-TCB (N.D. Ga. June

19, 2015), Jefferson initially listed herself as the attorney representing “Jane

Doe” but later sought to be the plaintiff, and she again challenged the

constitutionality of certain Georgia statutes without success.

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motion to recuse for three reasons. First, the alleged bias raised by

Jefferson pertained to the district court judge’s capacity as a judge

and was not extrajudicial in nature. 28 U.S.C. § 455(b); Thomas,

293 F.3d at 1329. Second, there was no evidence of remarks

suggesting, much less constituting, bias. Third, Jefferson provided

no other reason to suggest the district court judge’s impartiality

could reasonably be questioned. 28 U.S.C. § 455(a).

II. STAY OF DISCOVERY

On appeal, Jefferson also challenges the district court’s

staying of discovery pending the resolution of the State Bar’s

motion to dismiss. We review matters pertaining to discovery

under an abuse of discretion standard. Josendis v. Wall to Wall

Residence Repairs, Inc., 662 F.3d 1292, 1306 (11th Cir. 2011).

District courts have “broad discretion to stay discovery

pending a decision on a dispositive motion.” See Panola Land

Buyers Ass’n v. Shuman, 762 F.2d 1550, 1560 (11th Cir. 1985); see

also Chudasama v. Mazda Motor Corp., 123 F.3d 1353, 1366 (11th

Cir. 1997) (“[D]istrict courts enjoy broad discretion in deciding how

best to manage the cases before them.”). As outlined later, the

State Bar’s motion to dismiss raised numerous legal reasons why

Jefferson’s case must be dismissed. Jefferson has shown no abuse

of discretion in the district court’s staying discovery pending a

ruling on the State Bar’s motion to dismiss.

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III. MOTION TO DISMISS

The district court granted the State Bar’s motion to dismiss

on many grounds including: (1) the Rooker-Feldman doctrine; (2) a

lack of subject matter jurisdiction; (3) the statute of limitations;

(4) judicial, prosecutorial, and qualified immunity; (5) collateral

estoppel; and (6) failure to state a claim.

On appeal, Jefferson challenges both a procedural aspect and

the substantive merits of the district court’s order on the State Bar’s

motion to dismiss. We begin with Jefferson’s procedural

argument.

A. Procedural

In its order granting the State Bar’s motion to dismiss, the

district court noted—in a footnote—Jefferson’s prior actions

regarding her disbarment ruled on by the United States Supreme

Court and the Georgia Supreme Court:

Jefferson petitioned the Supreme Court of the United

States for a writ of certiorari, which was denied on

February 24, 2020. Jefferson v. Sup. Ct. of Ga., 140 S.

Ct. 1148 (mem.), reh’g denied, 140 S. Ct. 2637 (2020)

(mem.). She has since filed two unsuccessful actions

with the Georgia Supreme Court seeking the

reinstatement of her law license. See In re Jefferson,

No. S22O0785 (Ga. Apr. 19, 2022); In re Jefferson, No.

S22Y0949 (Ga. June 1, 2022).

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Jefferson argues the district court erred by considering cases

outside the instant litigation without converting the motion to

dismiss into a motion for summary judgment. We disagree.

Generally, a district court must convert a motion to dismiss

into one for summary judgment if it considers materials outside the

complaint. SFM Holdings, Ltd. v. Banc of Am. Sec., LLC, 600 F.3d

1334, 1337 (11th Cir. 2010). But there are exceptions to this general

rule. For example, a district court may consider matters of which

a court may take judicial notice. Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues &

Rts., Ltd., 551 U.S. 308, 322, 127 S. Ct. 2499, 2509 (2007).

As relevant here, a district court may take judicial notice of

another lawsuit to establish the fact of such lawsuit and related

filings, but not for the truth of the matters asserted in the other

lawsuit. See United States v. Jones, 29 F.3d 1549, 1553 (11th Cir.

1994) (“[A] court may take notice of another court’s order only for

the limited purpose of recognizing the ‘judicial act’ that the order

represents or the subject matter of the litigation.”). Here, by

referring to cases outside the instant litigation, the district court

merely noted the existence of those cases and whether they were

successful. The district court did not reference those cases for the

truth of the matters asserted in those cases. We thus conclude the

district court did not err in this respect.

B. Merits of Motion to Dismiss

Jefferson also challenges each substantive ground given by

the district court for granting the State Bar’s motion to dismiss.

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We begin with the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which bars

federal district courts from reviewing state-court decisions. 2 Behr

v. Campbell, 8 F.4th 1206, 1208 (11th Cir. 2021). It applies to “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, 125 S. Ct. 1517, 1521–22 (2005).

On appeal, Jefferson does not appear to dispute that she

qualified as a “state-court loser” and her October 2019 disbarment

was “rendered before the district court proceedings commenced”

in May 2022 in the instant case. Id. Rather, Jefferson claims she

was not seeking to overturn the state court judgment. So the

question is whether or not her instant claims are “inviting district

court review and rejection of [the state court] judgment[].” Id.

A careful review of Jefferson’s amended complaint in this

case shows that she is seeking review and rejection of the state

2 This doctrine is named after two Supreme Court cases: Rooker v. Fidelity

Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S. Ct. 149 (1923), and District of Columbia Court

of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 103 S. Ct. 1303 (1983). In Rooker, the

Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs, who had lost in state court, could not

ask the federal district court to declare the state court judgment “null and

void.” 263 U.S. at 414–15, 44 S. Ct. at 149–50. Similarly, in Feldman, the

Supreme Court said that lower federal courts lacked jurisdiction to review a

decision by the District of Columbia’s highest court denying a waiver of a bar

admission rule that requires applicants to the District of Columbia Bar to have

graduated from an approved law school. 460 U.S. at 482, 103 S. Ct. at 1315.

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court judgment that disbarred her. Jefferson’s amended complaint

asked the district court to enjoin the State Bar from “[f]ailing or

refusing to take such steps as may be necessary to restore . . . the

victims of Defendants’ unlawful practices to the position they

would have been in but for the discriminatory conduct.” Jefferson

thus essentially asked the district court to overturn the state court

judgment and reinstate her law license. 3 See Feldman, 460 U.S. at

482 n.16, 103 S. Ct. at 1315 n.16 (“Orders of a state court relating to

the admission, discipline, and disbarment of members of its bar

may be reviewed only by the Supreme Court of the United States

on certiorari to the state court, and not by means of an original

action in a lower federal court.” (quotation marks omitted)).

Further, by claiming that during her disciplinary

proceedings the State Bar treated her unlike other similarly situated

individuals, Jefferson essentially asked the district court to reject

the state court judgment on the basis that it was rendered

incorrectly. That is akin to requesting a declaration that the state

3 Jefferson attempts to distinguish “restore” from “reinstate” by arguing that

restore means “to reestablish,” while reinstate means “to put somebody to a

former position or rank.” We are unpersuaded. There is little daylight

between restore and reinstate. Compare Restore, Merriam-Webster Online

Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/restore (last

visited Jan. 9, 2023) (defining restore as “to bring back to or put back into a

former or original state”), with Reinstate, Merriam-Webster Online

Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reinstate (last

visited Jan. 9, 2023) (defining reinstate as “to place again . . . in a former

position” or “to restore to a previous effective state”).

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court judgment was arbitrary and capricious, which this Court

recently held is barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See Behr,

8 F.4th at 1211. We thus affirm the district court’s dismissal of

Jefferson’s claims under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.

Because we affirm for this substantive reason, we need not,

and do not, address whether the other, alternate grounds relied on

by the district court for dismissal—lack of subject matter

jurisdiction; statute of limitations; judicial, prosecutorial, and

qualified immunity; collateral estoppel; and failure to state a

claim—were likewise correct.

AFFIRMED.