WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in T.M. v. University of Maryland Medical System, a case in which the Court is considering whether the Rooker-Feldman doctrine requires dismissal of a request for relief from a state-court decision that did not reach the state’s highest court, Constitutional Accountability Center Senior Appellate Counsel Miriam Becker-Cohen issued the following reaction:

Rooker-Feldman is a judge-made doctrine that precludes federal district courts from exercising appellate jurisdiction over final decisions of state high courts. In deciding whether to extend that doctrine to bar collateral attacks on state-court judgments prior to the conclusion of state-court proceedings, the Court today grappled with the underpinnings of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. While some justices questioned whether the doctrine developed out of respect for federalism, or out of a negative implication from statutes that affirmatively grant jurisdiction to federal district courts, Justice Kagan got it right when she said that “it’s [28 U.S.C §] 1257 that has grounded this doctrine from the very beginning.” That statute provides no basis for the massive expansion of Rooker-Feldman undertaken by the court below.

CAC Douglas T. Kendall Fellow Michelle Berger added this reaction:

As we explained in the amicus brief we filed in this case, with sweeping statutory grants of jurisdiction, the Reconstruction-era Congresses threw open the federal courthouse doors for the vindication of federal rights. To respect that deliberate congressional design, the Supreme Court should not permit the lower federal courts to expand the Rooker-Feldman doctrine beyond its only arguable textual underpinnings in 28 U.S.C § 1257. In a case like this one—a civil rights case where there is no final decision of a state high court and Section 1257 therefore does not apply—text and history make clear that Congress intended to make a federal forum available.