Amicus Curiae Brief — T. M., Petitioner v. University of Maryland Medical System Corporation, et al.

No. 25-197

In the Supreme Court of the United States

________________________________________

T.M.,

Petitioner,

v.

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND MEDICAL SYSTEM

CORPORATION, ET AL.,

Respondents.

________________________________________

On Writ of Certiorari to the

United States Court of Appeals

for the Fourth Circuit

________________________________________

BRIEF OF FEDERAL COURTS SCHOLARS AS

AMICI CURIAE SUPPORTING PETITIONER

________________________________________

Robert A. Long

Counsel of Record

Thomas R. Brugato

Eli Nachmany

Benjamin Rolsma

COVINGTON & BURLING LLP

One CityCenter

850 Tenth Street, NW

Washington, DC 20001

rlong@cov.com

(202) 662-6000

Counsel for Amici Curiae

i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ....................................... ii

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE ................................1

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT ............................2

ARGUMENT ...............................................................3

I.

Rooker-Feldman’s purported statutory

justification is flawed. ...........................................3

II. Rooker-Feldman is duplicative and

unnecessary. ..........................................................7

A. Rooker-Feldman is unnecessary in criminal

cases. .................................................................8

B. Rooker-Feldman is also unnecessary in

civil cases. .......................................................10

C. There is no need for Rooker-Feldman in

the context of judicial review of state

administrative proceedings. ...........................15

III. Rooker-Feldman wastes judicial resources

and disrupts orderly litigation. ..........................16

CONCLUSION ..........................................................20

ii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Page(s)

Cases

In re Athens/Alpha Gas Corp.,

715 F.3d 230 (8th Cir. 2013) ............................. 17

Brownback v. King,

592 U.S. 209 (2021) ..................................... 13, 14

Burford v. Sun Oil Co.,

319 U.S. 315 (1943) ........................................... 12

Butcher v. Wendt,

975 F.3d 236 (2d Cir. 2020) .............................. 17

Cohens v. Virginia,

19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264 (1821) ............................. 4

Colo. River Water Conservation Dist. v.

United States,

424 U.S. 800 (1976) ................................. 4, 10, 12

D.C. Ct. of Appeals v. Feldman,

460 U.S. 462 (1983) ............................................. 3

Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus.

Corp.,

544 U.S. 280 (2005) ..................................... 2, 3, 6

Fort Bend Cnty. v. Davis,

587 U.S. 541 (2019) ........................................... 18

iii

Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd.,

420 U.S. 592 (1975) ........................................... 11

Hunter v. McMahon,

75 F.4th 62 (2d Cir. 2023) ................................. 18

Kline v. Burke Constr. Co.,

260 U.S. 226 (1922) ............................................. 8

Lance v. Dennis,

546 U.S. 459 (2006) ....................................... 2, 19

Mains v. Citibank, N.A.,

852 F.3d 669 (7th Cir. 2017) ............................. 17

Marshall v. Holmes,

141 U.S. 589 (1891) ............................................. 7

Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee,

14 U.S. (1 Wheat.) 304 (1816) ............................. 5

Migra v. Warren City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ.,

465 U.S. 75 (1984) ............................................. 14

Mitchum v. Foster,

407 U.S. 225 (1972) ........................................... 13

Murdock v. City of Memphis,

87 U.S. (20 Wall.) 590 (1874) .............................. 5

New Orleans Pub. Serv., Inc. v. Council of

City of New Orleans (NOPSI),

491 U.S. 350 (1989) ........................................... 10

iv

Ohio Civ. Rights Comm’n v. Dayton

Christian Schs.,

477 U.S. 619 (1986) ........................................... 15

Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co.,

517 U.S. 706 (1996) ........................................... 12

R.R. Comm’n of Tex. v. Pullman Co.,

312 U.S. 496 (1941) ........................................... 12

Rooker v. Fid. Tr. Co.,

263 U.S. 413 (1923) ..................................... 3, 5, 6

Sprint Commc’ns, Inc. v. Jacobs,

571 U.S. 69 (2013) ............................................. 11

Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t,

523 U.S. 83 (1998) ....................................... 16, 19

Toucey v. N.Y. Life Ins. Co.,

314 U.S. 118 (1941) ....................................... 7, 13

Trainor v. Hernandez,

431 U.S. 434 (1977) ........................................... 11

Univ. of Tenn. v. Elliott,

478 U.S. 788 (1986) ........................................... 16

Wilkins v. United States,

598 U.S. 152 (2023) ..................................... 18, 19

Younger v. Harris,

401 U.S. 37 (1971) ........................................... 8, 9

v

Statutes

28 U.S.C. § 1257 ............................................... 3, 5, 6

28 U.S.C. § 1331 ................................................... 3, 4

28 U.S.C. § 1738 ..................................................... 14

28 U.S.C. § 2201 ..................................................... 13

28 U.S.C. § 2254 ....................................................... 9

28 U.S.C. § 2283 ..................................................... 13

Other Authorities

Akhil Reed Amar, Two-Tiered Structure of

the Judiciary Act of 1789, 138 U. Pa. L.

Rev. 1499 (1990) .................................................. 5

Jack M. Beermann, Comments on RookerFeldman or Let State Law Be Our Guide,

74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1209 (1999) ....... 2, 3, 4, 5

Jack M. Beermann, Government Official

Torts and the Takings Clause:

Federalism and State Sovereign

Immunity, 68 B.U. L. Rev. 277 (1988) ............. 15

Samuel Bray, Rooker Feldman (1923-2006),

9 Green Bag 317 (2006) ...................................... 2

vi

Hayden Davis, Note, Reining in RookerFeldman: The Harmful Effects of Lower

Courts’ Overextension of the RookerFeldman Doctrine and What Can Be

Done About It, 44 Rev. Litig. 107 (2024) .......... 18

Richard H. Fallon, Jr., The Ideologies of

Federal Courts Law, 74 Va. L. Rev. 1141

(1988) ................................................................. 11

Barry Friedman & James E. Gaylord,

Rooker-Feldman, From the Ground Up,

74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1129 (1999) ......... 6, 9, 14

Raphael Graybill, Comment, The Rook That

Would Be King: Rooker-Feldman

Abstention Analysis After Saudi Basic,

32 Yale J. on Regul. 591 (2015) .................. 15, 19

Meredith Johnson Harbach, Is the Family a

Federal Question?, 66 Wash. & Lee L.

Rev. 131 (2009) .................................................. 12

F. Andrew Hessick III, The Common Law of

Federal Question Jurisdiction, 60 Ala. L.

Rev. 895 (2009) .................................................... 5

Brian M. Hoffstadt, The Deconstruction and

Reconstruction of Habeas, 78 S. Cal. L.

Rev. 1125 (2005) ................................................ 14

vii

James E. Pfander & Nassim Nazemi, The

Anti-Injunction Act and the Problem of

Federal-State Jurisdiction Overlap,

92 Tex. L. Rev. 1 (2013) .......................... 7, 13, 14

Thomas D. Rowe, Jr., Rooker-Feldman:

Worth Only the Powder to Blow It Up?,

74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1081 (1999) ................. 14

Robert A. Schapiro, Interjurisdictional

Enforcement of Rights in a Post-Erie

World, 46 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1399

(2005) ................................................................. 12

Louis J. Virelli III, Administrative

Abstention, 67 Ala. L. Rev. 1019 (2016) ........... 15

18B Wright & Miller’s Federal Practice &

Procedure § 4469.1 (3d ed. Sep. 2025

update)........................................................... 6, 17

18B Wright & Miller’s Federal Practice &

Procedure § 4469.3 (3d ed. Sep. 2025

update)............................................................... 17

1

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE

The amici curiae are scholars who teach and write

about federal courts and civil procedure.1 Jack

Beermann is the Philip S. Beck Professor of Law at

the Boston University School of Law. Barry Friedman

is the Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law at the New

York University School of Law. James Pfander is the

Owen L. Coon Professor of Law at the Northwestern

Pritzker School of Law and an editor of Hart &

Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal

System (8th ed. 2025). Adam Steinman is a Professor

of Law at the Texas A&M University School of Law.

The amici have a strong interest in the sound

development of the law governing the federal courts

and federal procedure.

1 No counsel for a party authored any part of this brief and no

person other than amici or their counsel made any monetary

contribution intended to fund its preparation or submission.

2

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine “lacks both a clear

role and a clear justification.”2 The doctrine rests on

a flawed reading of federal jurisdictional statutes.

Moreover, the doctrine serves no meaningful purpose

because the “vast majority of cases that could be

barred under Rooker-Feldman are already barred by

other, more firmly established doctrines.”3

In

addition, Rooker-Feldman imposes unnecessary costs

on the judicial system. Because the doctrine limits the

subject matter jurisdiction of federal courts, it has the

potential to disrupt litigation and waste judicial

resources. In short, there are no good reasons to

reaffirm the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.

This Court has already taken steps to end RookerFeldman’s period of “minor celebrity.”4 In this case,

the Court should at a minimum decline to extend the

doctrine beyond the narrow circumstances of the

Rooker and Feldman cases.5

2 Jack M. Beermann, Comments on Rooker-Feldman or Let State

Law Be Our Guide, 74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1209, 1209 (1999).

3 Id.

4 Samuel Bray, Rooker Feldman (1923-2006), 9 Green Bag 317,

317–18 (2006); see also Lance v. Dennis, 546 U.S. 459, 468 (2006)

(Stevens, J., dissenting) (expressing the view that the Court

“finally interred the so-called ‘Rooker-Feldman doctrine’” in

Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Industries Corp., 544 U.S. 280

(2005)).

5 The amici take no position on whether this case would be

properly subject to dismissal on other grounds on remand,

including those discussed in this brief. Although the amici

believe Rooker and Feldman should, at a minimum, be limited to

their facts, they take no position on whether the doctrine of stare

decisis supports overruling those decisions.

3

ARGUMENT

I. Rooker-Feldman’s purported statutory

justification is flawed.

In Rooker, the Court drew inferences from two

jurisdictional statutes. The Court looked first to

Section 237 of the Judicial Code (now codified as

amended at 28 U.S.C. § 1257), which grants this

Court jurisdiction over final judgments rendered by

the highest available state court. It also looked to

Section 24 of the Judicial Code (now codified as

amended at 28 U.S.C. § 1331 et seq.), which the Court

described as granting “strictly original” jurisdiction to

the district courts. Rooker v. Fid. Tr. Co., 263 U.S.

413, 416 (1923); see also D.C. Ct. of Appeals v.

Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 476 (1983). Rooker drew “two

negative inferences” from these statutes.6 First, the

Court reasoned that because Congress assigned

“appellate jurisdiction to reverse or modify a statecourt judgment” to the Supreme Court, that

assignment is “exclusive[].” Exxon Mobil Corp. v.

Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 283 (2005).

Second, the Court determined that because Congress

allocated “original” jurisdiction to the district courts,

those courts do not possess “appellate[] jurisdiction.”

Id. On the basis of these inferences, the Court

concluded that federal district courts lack jurisdiction

over “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.” Id. at 284.

6 Beermann, Comments, supra, at 1228.

4

The language of these jurisdictional statutes does

not justify the negative inferences that the Court drew

in Rooker. Each statute makes an affirmative grant

of jurisdiction and imposes no express limitation on

the jurisdiction it confers. Because the jurisdictional

statutes “are permissive, not restrictive,” they “have

much less meaning than the Rooker-Feldman doctrine

ascribes to them.”7 Reading unexpressed limitations

into jurisdictional statutes risks violating the cardinal

principle that federal courts have a “virtually

unflagging obligation … to exercise the jurisdiction

given them.” Colo. River Water Conservation Dist. v.

United States, 424 U.S. 800, 817–18 (1976). Indeed,

the Court has described “declin[ing] the exercise of

jurisdiction which is given” as “treason to the

Constitution.” Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.)

264, 404 (1821).

Take § 1331 as an example.

The statutory

language “that should be understood as establishing

the limits on federal jurisdiction is the limitation of

the original jurisdiction to ‘all civil actions arising

under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United

States.’”8 The straightforward rule is that “a civil

action arising under federal law” “is within the

district court’s jurisdiction, although other legal

doctrines (such as preclusion and abstention) may

prevent the action from proceeding to a judgment on

the merits in federal court.”9 Moreover, the better

view is that “a separate suit in federal courts

7 Beermann, Comments, supra, at 1229.

Beermann, Comments, supra, at 1229 (quoting 28 U.S.C.

§ 1331) (emphasis omitted).

9 Id. As explained infra Part II, that will often be the case.

8

5

challenging a state court decision is not an appeal.”10

Instead, it is “an original suit,” i.e., “a collateral

attack, resting on a new cause of action.”11 For this

reason, Rooker was mistaken to conclude that such

suits fall outside of the district courts’ “strictly

original” jurisdiction. Rooker, 263 U.S. at 416. A

“similar analysis applies” to § 1332.12

In addition, Rooker-Feldman’s reading of the

jurisdictional statutes is both overinclusive and

underinclusive. Beginning with overinclusion, this

Court’s jurisdiction over appeals from state courts is

limited: (1) the appeals must be taken from “the

highest court of a State in which a decision could be

had,” and (2) those appeals must involve a federal

question. 28 U.S.C. § 1257(a); see also Murdock v. City

of Memphis, 87 U.S. (20 Wall.) 590, 626 (1874). At

most, this permits a narrow negative inference about

district-court jurisdiction: district courts lack

jurisdiction over direct appeals from state apex courts.

But Rooker-Feldman has been extended well beyond

10 F. Andrew Hessick III, The Common Law of Federal Question

Jurisdiction, 60 Ala. L. Rev. 895, 924 (2009).

11 Id. Even if one were to accept the view that the federal courts

were asked to exercise a form of appellate, rather than original,

jurisdiction in Rooker and Feldman, that would not support the

view that federal district courts exercise only “strictly original”

jurisdiction. As Justice “Story’s opinion in Martin makes clear,

lower federal courts have from the very beginning exercised

appellate jurisdiction, strictly speaking, over state courts.” Akhil

Reed Amar, Two-Tiered Structure of the Judiciary Act of 1789,

138 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1499, 1536 (1990); see also Martin v. Hunter’s

Lessee, 14 U.S. (1 Wheat.) 304, 349 (1816) (observing that the

“power of removal” has been “deemed” an “exercise of appellate,

and not of original jurisdiction”).

12 Beermann, Comments, supra, at 1229 n.70.

6

that narrow circumstance. The doctrine has been

applied to state-court judgments that have not been

appealed, not just the judgments of “the highest Court

of a State,” 28 U.S.C. § 1257(a). That has happened

even though “[b]oth the rationale and the facts of

Rooker and Feldman preclude review by the lower

federal courts of the final decisions of the states’

highest courts, not the lower state courts,”13 In this

very case, the state-court action remains pending in

the Appellate Court of Maryland (the state’s

intermediate appellate court)—yet the Fourth Circuit

held that Rooker-Feldman applied.

The

Rooker-Feldman

doctrine

is

also

underinclusive. If federal district courts exercise

“strictly original” jurisdiction, 263 U.S. at 416, then it

follows that those courts do not exercise “appellate[]

jurisdiction,” period, Exxon, 544 U.S. at 283. And yet

Rooker-Feldman’s remit “is confined” to “state-court”

cases, id. at 284, and “has not been extended to create

a parallel theory that a federal trial court lacks

subject-matter jurisdiction to consider the effects of a

prior federal-court judgment.”14 These gaps between

Rooker-Feldman and its rationale reveal that the

doctrine lacks a firm footing.

One way to understand Rooker is as an accident of

doctrinal history. During the period when Rooker was

decided, the Court recognized an extratextual “fraud”

13 Barry Friedman & James E. Gaylord, Rooker-Feldman, From

the Ground Up, 74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1129, 1132 (1999).

14 18B Wright & Miller’s Federal Practice & Procedure § 4469.1

(3d ed. Sep. 2025 update).

7

exception to the Anti-Injunction Act.15 The federal

plaintiff in Rooker alleged judicial misconduct in the

underlying state-court case, which may have been

“sufficient to trigger the fraud exception.”16 As a

result, the Anti-Injunction Act—which otherwise

would have prevented federal court interference in

Rooker—may have been unavailable. This situation

may have prompted the Court to look for another way

to dismiss the case.17 But the fraud exception to the

Anti-Injunction Act is no more. The Court described

its “foundation[s]” as “doubtful” long ago. Toucey v.

N.Y. Life Ins. Co., 314 U.S. 118, 136 (1941). And when

Congress revised the Act in 1948, it omitted the fraud

exception.18 Yet Rooker has lived on, even though the

exception to the Anti-Injunction Act that may have led

to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine is dead and buried.

II. Rooker-Feldman is duplicative and

unnecessary.

As a general rule, and subject to limited

exceptions, state and federal courts exercise

concurrent jurisdiction: The notion that both state

and federal courts are “free to proceed in [their] own

way and in [their] own time, without reference to the

proceedings in the other court,” is fundamental to our

15 See James E. Pfander & Nassim Nazemi, The Anti-Injunction

Act and the Problem of Federal-State Jurisdiction Overlap, 92

Tex. L. Rev. 1, 34–35 (2013) (discussing Marshall v. Holmes, 141

U.S. 589 (1891)).

16 Id. at 37.

17 See id. at 36–37.

18 See Pfander & Nazemi, supra, at 57.

8

federal system. Kline v. Burke Constr. Co., 260 U.S.

226, 230 (1922).

A system-wide view of the law of federal courts and

procedure reveals that there is no need for the RookerFeldman doctrine to exist in addition to other, betterestablished rules that govern the relationship

between state and federal courts. In criminal cases,

Younger abstention and habeas corpus doctrine are

fully adequate. And in civil matters, Younger and

other abstention doctrines, as well as the law of

preclusion, the Anti-Injunction Act, and full-faithand-credit rules cover the bases. Similar doctrines

governing federal-court review of state administrative

proceedings leave no legitimate work for RookerFeldman to do.

A. Rooker-Feldman

criminal cases.

is

unnecessary

in

In criminal cases, a combination of Younger

abstention and statutory provisions define the

relationship between federal and state courts, from

the state’s initiation of a prosecution to any follow-on

relitigation.

Under the doctrine of Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S.

37 (1971), federal courts may not interfere with

ongoing state criminal prosecutions except in the most

extraordinary circumstances. This Court has long

recognized that “the normal thing to do when federal

courts are asked to enjoin pending proceedings in

state courts is not to issue such injunctions.” Id. at

45. Thus, absent bad faith, harassment, or other

exceptional circumstances, federal courts must allow

state prosecutions to proceed even when federal

9

constitutional claims are raised. See id. at 44. As a

consequence, Younger abstention alone—without

resort to Rooker-Feldman—provides a broad bar to

federal interference.

As for concluded proceedings, the federal habeas

corpus statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2254, provides a carefully

calibrated mechanism for federal-court review of state

criminal convictions. Congress has authorized federal

courts to entertain habeas petitions only on the

ground that the petitioner is “in custody in violation

of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United

States.” Id. § 2254(a). That review is circumscribed.

Litigants must exhaust available state remedies

unless those remedies are absent or ineffective. See

id. § 2254(b).

Moreover, § 2254(d) imposes a

deferential standard: federal courts may not grant

relief on claims adjudicated on the merits in state

court unless the decision was contrary to, or an

unreasonable application of, clearly established

federal law, or rested on an unreasonable

determination of facts. In this domain, Congress has

spoken comprehensively.

Against this backdrop, the Rooker-Feldman

doctrine “does no work in criminal defense cases.”19

Younger establishes the boundaries of federal-court

litigation over deprivations of federal rights in

ongoing state criminal proceedings. And the federal

habeas statute channels collateral federal review of

state-court criminal adjudication into a tightly

regulated process. No meaningful gap remains.

19 Friedman & Gaylord, supra, at 1152.

10

B. Rooker-Feldman is also unnecessary in

civil cases.

Rooker-Feldman has resulted in significant

mischief in the civil context, where it is doctrinally

superfluous. It has been invoked when a litigant has

received an adverse judgment on an issue in a statecourt civil proceeding and then initiates a federalcourt lawsuit raising the same or substantially

similar issues.

In some cases, the state-court

litigation will have reached final judgment in the

state’s court of last resort. In other cases, as here, an

appeal will be pending in a state court.

As in the criminal context, several existing

doctrines and statutes govern the relationship

between state and federal courts and eliminate the

need for a separate jurisdictional limitation. When

federal courts apply these doctrines, they start with

the principle that overlapping state and federal

proceedings are usually acceptable. See New Orleans

Pub. Serv., Inc. v. Council of City of New Orleans

(NOPSI), 491 U.S. 350, 373 (1989) (“[T]here is no

doctrine that … the pendency of state judicial

proceedings excludes the federal courts.”). From this

starting point, federal courts determine whether an

action falls into one of the narrow exceptions to their

“virtually unflagging obligation,” Colo. River, 424 U.S.

at 817–18, to exercise jurisdiction conferred by

Congress. In some cases, federal courts may assert

jurisdiction but are bound by the result of another

court of competent jurisdiction as a matter of claim or

issue preclusion. The interlocking web of statutory

and jurisprudential rules maintains the relationship

between state and federal courts in civil cases without

11

any need to invoke Rooker-Feldman’s judicially

implied limitation on subject matter jurisdiction.

A key initial question for the federal court is

whether the underlying state-court proceeding is

final. When state-court civil proceedings remain

pending, either Younger, another abstention doctrine,

or the Anti-Injunction Act usually will prevent

federal-court interference. Once the state court

proceeding is final, claim and issue preclusion prevent

federal courts from entertaining relitigation of certain

matters already decided in state tribunals.

When a pending matter involves civil regulatory

enforcement in a state tribunal, abstention rules often

apply. Although “[o]riginally limited in application to

pending state criminal proceedings, the Younger

doctrine has been extended to encompass quasicriminal proceedings … [and] civil enforcement

actions to which the state is a party,” along with other

settings.20 The usual context is a state-court civil

enforcement proceeding that is “‘akin to a criminal

prosecution’ in ‘important respects’”—including

initiation “by ‘the State in its sovereign capacity.’”

Sprint Commc’ns, Inc. v. Jacobs, 571 U.S. 69, 79–80

(2013) (first quoting Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U.S.

592, 604 (1975); then quoting Trainor v. Hernandez,

431 U.S. 434, 444 (1977)). Accordingly, Younger

abstention plays a role in preventing federal-court

interference with state civil regulatory enforcement.

Other abstention doctrines shape the relationship

between federal and state courts in ongoing civil

20 Richard H. Fallon, Jr., The Ideologies of Federal Courts Law,

74 Va. L. Rev. 1141, 1171 (1988) (footnote omitted).

12

matters. Under the Pullman abstention doctrine, a

federal court will stay its hand, and defer to the state

court, “when novel or unsettled questions of state law

arise in a federal constitutional case.”21 In addition,

Burford abstention may be appropriate in cases

presenting “difficult questions of state law bearing on

policy problems of substantial public import whose

importance transcends the result in the case then at

bar,” as well as in cases in which “adjudication in a

federal forum would be disruptive of state efforts to

establish a coherent policy with respect to a matter of

substantial public concern.” Quackenbush v. Allstate

Ins. Co., 517 U.S. 706, 726–27 (1996) (cleaned up); see

also Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U.S. 315, 334 (1943).

And

in

limited

situations

“involving

the

contemporaneous exercise of concurrent jurisdictions

… by state and federal courts,” a view toward “wise

judicial administration, giving regard to conservation

of judicial resources and comprehensive disposition of

litigation” may counsel in favor of abstention. Colo.

River, 424 U.S. at 817 (cleaned up). Finally, in

contexts such as family law, in which states ordinarily

have primacy, principles like “domestic relations

abstention” preclude federal-court review of statecourt judgments.22

The Anti-Injunction Act provides an additional

check on federal judicial interference in ongoing state

civil proceedings. The Act provides that a federal

21 Robert A. Schapiro, Interjurisdictional Enforcement of Rights

in a Post-Erie World, 46 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1399, 1415 (2005);

see also R.R. Comm’n of Tex. v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 501

(1941) (establishing this principle).

22 Meredith Johnson Harbach, Is the Family a Federal Question?,

66 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 131, 152 (2009).

13

court “may not grant an injunction to stay proceedings

in a State court except as expressly authorized by Act

of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its

jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments.”

28 U.S.C. § 2283. To be sure, this Court has held that

the Anti-Injunction Act does not bar federal suits

brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See Mitchum v.

Foster, 407 U.S. 225, 242–43 (1972).23 Yet, despite

this exception, the Act limits the role of federal courts

when they are asked to interfere with state

proceedings. See Toucey, 314 U.S. at 129–41.

Once a case reaches final judgment in the state

court, well-settled preclusion doctrines limit the role

of federal courts. Preclusion principles give meaning

to the finality of judgments—including the judgments

of state courts—when federal courts are called to

resolve the same dispute. The doctrine of “[c]laim

preclusion prevents parties from relitigating the same

claim or cause of action, even if certain issues were not

litigated in the prior action.” Brownback v. King, 592

U.S. 209, 215 n.3 (2021) (cleaned up). This rule works

in tandem with the federal Full Faith and Credit

Statute, which demands that federal courts respect

Professor Pfander has argued that the Court could have

limited federal-court stays of state-court enforcement

proceedings by relying on the Anti-Injunction Act, rather than

the principles set forth in Younger. See Pfander & Nazemi, supra,

at 59–64. Had it done so, the Court need not have recognized

what Professor Pfander has described as Mitchum’s extratextual

exception to the Anti-Injunction Act for § 1983 suits. See id. at

45–51. It could have instead relied on the declaratory judgment

statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2201, to authorize federal courts to address

matters of federal law that might cast doubt on the viability of a

pending state court enforcement proceeding. See Pfander &

Nazemi, supra, at 63–64.

23

14

state-court judgments—even if doing so might bar

relitigation in a federal forum. See 28 U.S.C. § 1738;

Migra v. Warren City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 465 U.S.

75, 84 (1984) (explaining that 28 U.S.C. § 1738

“embodies the view that it is more important to give

full faith and credit to state-court judgments than to

ensure separate forums for federal and state claims”).

In addition, the doctrine of issue preclusion “precludes

a party from relitigating an issue actually decided in

a prior case and necessary to the judgment.”

Brownback, 592 U.S. at 215 n.3 (emphasis added).

Given all these established doctrines, “scholars

struggle to find a role for Rooker-Feldman among

other jurisdictional doctrines with which it seems to

overlap.”24 One commentator has observed that

Rooker-Feldman makes little sense in light of “the

panoply of other doctrines that preclude any further

parallel litigation once one court reaches a final

judgment.”25 And as Professor Jack Beermann has

explained, “[t]he Rooker-Feldman doctrine … is

inconsistent with federal preclusion principles and

Friedman & Gaylord, supra, at 1130; see also Pfander &

Nazemi, supra, at 34 (writing that Rooker-Feldman “remains a

source of puzzlement; scholars have asked about the doctrine’s

origins and what it adds, if anything, to doctrines of claim and

issue preclusion that foreclose relitigation of matters previously

settled in state court proceedings”); Thomas D. Rowe, Jr.,

Rooker-Feldman: Worth Only the Powder to Blow It Up?, 74

Notre Dame L. Rev. 1081, 1083 (1999) (noting the “considerable

superfluity” of Rooker-Feldman “in light of [its] overlap with

other doctrines”).

25 Brian M. Hoffstadt, The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of

Habeas, 78 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1125, 1141 n.63 (2005).

24

15

should be abandoned.”26 Professor Beermann notes

that “[i]f the state court judgment, under state

preclusion rules, would not bar the subsequent federal

action, then federal courts cannot apply the RookerFeldman doctrine to bar the case without violating

[this] Court’s rule that federal courts may not give

greater preclusive effect to a state court judgment

than would the courts of the rendering state.”27 What

is left of Rooker-Feldman “is a powerful, all-tootempting tool for district courts” to clear their

dockets.28

C. There is no need for Rooker-Feldman in

the context of judicial review of state

administrative proceedings.

A similar analysis applies in the context of state

administrative proceedings. While those proceedings

are pending, Younger again carries the load. This

Court has extended Younger to many state

administrative proceedings. See Ohio Civ. Rights

Comm’n v. Dayton Christian Schs., 477 U.S. 619, 627

(1986).29

26 Jack M. Beermann, Government Official Torts and the Takings

Clause: Federalism and State Sovereign Immunity, 68 B.U. L.

Rev. 277, 341 (1988).

27 Id.

28 Raphael Graybill, Comment, The Rook That Would Be King:

Rooker-Feldman Abstention Analysis After Saudi Basic, 32 Yale

J. on Regul. 591, 601 (2015).

29 As with civil enforcement proceedings, “[w]ithin the Court’s

ongoing application of Younger is a subset of cases dealing

specifically with state administrative proceedings.” Louis J.

Virelli III, Administrative Abstention, 67 Ala. L. Rev. 1019, 1034

(2016).

16

For concluded proceedings, other doctrines fill the

gap. Preclusion rules apply when a state agency acts

in a judicial capacity and resolves disputed facts after

an adequate opportunity to litigate. In University of

Tennessee v. Elliott, this Court held that federal courts

must give such factfinding the same preclusive effect

it would receive in the state’s own courts, at least

under the civil rights statutes. 478 U.S. 788, 799

(1986). That rule enforces repose and respects

federalism without resort to jurisdictional dismissals.

Taken together, the cases show that the

relationship between federal courts and state

administrative systems is already governed by a

robust array of doctrines. And given that these

doctrines only create exceptions to the broader rule

that the federal courthouses’ doors are open to those

who satisfy the ordinary requirements of federal

jurisdiction, Rooker-Feldman is unnecessary.

III. Rooker-Feldman wastes judicial resources

and disrupts orderly litigation.

As

explained

above,

Rooker-Feldman

is

unnecessary in light of other established doctrines

that govern the relationship between state and

federal courts. Worse, the continued existence of

Rooker-Feldman causes significant problems.

First, because Rooker-Feldman goes to the court’s

subject matter jurisdiction, it wastes judicial

resources by short-circuiting resolution of preclusion

disputes.

As explained above, Rooker-Feldman

largely overlaps with better-established doctrines

such as preclusion. But because “jurisdiction” must

“be established as a threshold matter,” Steel Co. v.

17

Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 94 (1998),

Rooker-Feldman must be addressed before preclusion

issues. The result is that courts may—indeed often

must—dismiss suits on Rooker-Feldman grounds that

might just as well have been rejected because of

preclusion. Cf., e.g., Mains v. Citibank, N.A., 852 F.3d

669, 675 (7th Cir. 2017) (“Even if Rooker-Feldman

does not bar a claim, … the possibility exists that res

judicata may apply.”).30 Because dismissal on RookerFeldman grounds “ordinarily is not a ‘judgment on the

merits,’ … a state court faced with a third action may

need to resolve the res judicata question on its own

without the opportunity to rely on the federal

judgment, which ordinarily would preclude

relitigation of the preclusion issue.”31 Ironically then,

Rooker-Feldman, a doctrine supposedly meant to

prevent relitigation of claims, can actually further

delay a lawsuit’s final disposition.

Second, Rooker-Feldman has all the disadvantages

that attend other subject-matter jurisdiction

doctrines. “Unlike most arguments, challenges to

subject-matter jurisdiction may be raised by the

30 Some courts have held that it is “permissible to bypass Rooker-

Feldman to reach a preclusion question that disposes of a case.”

In re Athens/Alpha Gas Corp., 715 F.3d 230, 235 (8th Cir. 2013);

see also 18B Wright & Miller, supra, § 4469.3 n.12 (collecting

cases). Apart from the fact that this approach disregards the

Court’s clear directive in Steel Co., it does not address “[t]he everpresent risk … that the jurisdiction label will stop up thought,

invoking inappropriate reflexes rather than independent

consideration of distinctive problems.” 18B Wright & Miller,

supra, § 4469.1; see also Butcher v. Wendt, 975 F.3d 236, 245 (2d

Cir. 2020) (Menashi, J., concurring in part and concurring in the

judgment) (criticizing this approach in a case involving the

Rooker-Feldman doctrine).

31 18B Wright & Miller, supra, § 4469.3.

18

defendant at any point in the litigation, and courts

must consider them sua sponte.” Fort Bend Cnty. v.

Davis, 587 U.S. 541, 548 (2019) (cleaned up). This

means that Rooker-Feldman is apt to ensnare

inexperienced litigants who seek to vindicate federal

rights but are unfamiliar with the doctrine’s

intricacies.32 And even for litigants who satisfy this

Court’s description of Rooker-Feldman in Exxon,

district courts continue to dismiss suits on the basis of

expansive, pre-Exxon circuit precedents.33 The result

is that “district courts’ misapplications of RookerFeldman have caused numerous civil rights and

§ 1983 challenges to conditions of confinement and

probation to be dismissed without ever reaching the

Further, for the experienced and

merits.”34

inexperienced alike, all varieties of subject-matter

jurisdiction have “a unique potential to disrupt the

orderly course of litigation.” Wilkins v. United States,

598 U.S. 152, 157 (2023). Last-minute jurisdiction

problems can waste “many months of work on the part

of the attorneys and the court.” Id. at 157–58 (cleaned

up).

Jurisdictional doctrines also escape the

disciplining functions of estoppel and waiver, which

“ensure efficiency and fairness by precluding parties

See, e.g., Hunter v. McMahon, 75 F.4th 62 (2d Cir. 2023)

(reversing the Rooker-Feldman-based dismissal of a pro se

litigant’s claim involving the termination of her parental rights

over her minor son).

33 Hayden Davis, Note, Reining in Rooker-Feldman: The

Harmful Effects of Lower Courts’ Overextension of the RookerFeldman Doctrine and What Can Be Done About It, 44 Rev. Litig.

107, 121, 127 (2024) (explaining that some courts “shoehorn older

standards and tests … into the Exxon framework” while others

“rely exclusively on their own pre-Exxon precedents”).

34 Id. at 132.

32

19

from raising arguments

disavowed.” Id. at 158.

they

had

previously

Courts and litigants live with the costs of subjectmatter jurisdiction because it “springs from the

nature and limits of the judicial power of the United

States.” Steel Co., 523 U.S. at 94–95 (cleaned up). But

Rooker-Feldman springs only from a flawed statutory

interpretation, and non-jurisdictional doctrines leave

no significant work for it to do. Despite this, lower

courts continue to invoke Rooker-Feldman—by one

count even more often than before Exxon.35 Therefore,

this Court should—as Justice Stevens once thought it

already had in Exxon—“finally inter[] the so-called

‘Rooker-Feldman doctrine.’” Lance, 546 U.S. at 468

(Stevens, J., dissenting).

35 Graybill, supra, at 601 (concluding from an empirical analysis

“that [after Exxon] Rooker-Feldman cases grew in number and

did so substantially faster than the overall increase in litigation

generally”).

20

CONCLUSION

The Court should reverse the judgment of the court

of appeals.

Respectfully submitted,

Robert A. Long

Counsel of Record

Thomas R. Brugato

Eli Nachmany

Benjamin Rolsma

COVINGTON & BURLING LLP

One CityCenter

850 Tenth Street, NW

Washington, DC 20001

rlong@cov.com

(202) 662-6000

January 21, 2026

Counsel for Amici Curiae