Commonwealth Plaza Condo. Ass'n v. City of Chi., Corp.

• Decision Date: 30 August 2012
• Docket Number: No. 11–3776.,11–3776.
• Citation: 693 F.3d 743
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH PLAZA CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, an Illinois not-for-profit corporation et al., Plaintiffs–Appellants, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, a municipal corporation, Defendant–Appellee, and Saint Joseph Hospital, an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, Intervening Defendant–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

693 F.3d 743

COMMONWEALTH PLAZA CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, an Illinois not-for-profit corporation et al., Plaintiffs–Appellants,

v. CITY OF CHICAGO, a municipal corporation, Defendant–Appellee,andSaint Joseph Hospital, an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, Intervening Defendant–Appellee.

No. 11–3776.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued June 5, 2012.

Decided Aug. 30, 2012.

Reuben L. Hedlund (argued), Attorney, McGuirewoods LLP, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs–Appellants.

Jennifer Erickson Baak (argued), Attorney, Office of the Corporation Counsel, Appeals Division, Benjamin B. Folsom, William J. McKenna, Jr., Attorneys, Foley & Lardner, LLP, Chicago, IL, for Defendants–Appellees.

Before BAUER, ROVNER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs Commonwealth Plaza Condominium Association, Suhail al Chalabi, Virginia M. Harding, and Darren Moss sued the City of Chicago in federal court alleging that an opinion of the Illinois Appellate Court interpreting the Home Rule Provision of the Illinois Constitution in a zoning dispute deprived them of constitutional due process. The district court dismissed the claim as barred by the Rooker–Feldman doctrine, under which federal district and circuit courts lack jurisdiction to review decisions of state courts. Plaintiffs appeal, and we affirm the dismissal for lack of jurisdiction.

I. Background

In 2004, Resurrection Health Care filed an application to rezone property around Saint Joseph Hospital in Chicago to allow Resurrection to conduct further development of the campus. Plaintiffs own property within 250 feet of the property Resurrection sought to rezone. They attended public hearings about the rezoning and filed objections to it. In 2006, after those hearings were completed, the City Council of Chicago approved the rezoning and amended the Chicago Zoning Ordinance to establish Institutional Planned Development 1019 (“IPD 1019”), which changed the zoning classification of the land Resurrection sought to develop.

Plaintiffs then filed a complaint in state court against the City of Chicago and other defendants claiming that the IPD 1019 ordinance violated plaintiffs' constitutional rights under the due process clauses of the Illinois and U.S. Constitutions because it was inconsistent with provisions of the Chicago Zoning Code. The state trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the City, finding that even though IPD 1019 was inconsistent with the Chicago Zoning Code, that fact alone did not support an order invalidating IPD 1019. Plaintiffs appealed, and the Illinois Appellate Court issued a published opinion affirming the trial court's decision. The appellate court held: “The IPD ordinance enacted by the city council in this case is not rendered unconstitutional simply because this municipality, a home rule unit, violated its own self-imposed ordinances in enacting the IPD ordinance.” Condominium Ass'n of Commonwealth Plaza v. City of Chicago, 399 Ill.App.3d 32, 338 Ill.Dec. 390, 924 N.E.2d 596, 606 (2010). The Illinois Supreme Court denied plaintiffs' petition for leave to appeal, and plaintiffs' state court action was then dismissed without prejudice with the agreement of the parties.

Having lost in state court, plaintiffs then filed suit in federal court. Count I of the three-count amended complaint alleges:

It is now binding law in Cook County, Illinois (the jurisdiction of the Illinois Appellate Court, 1st District) that a home rule municipality may violate its own, duly enacted laws in adopting or amending a zoning ordinance. This law deprives all property owners in Cook County, including Plaintiffs, the right to seek or oppose a proposed amendment of existing zoning law affecting their property, of constitutional due process of law.

Am. Compl. ¶ 22. Plaintiffs asked the district court to enter a declaratory judgment ruling that this decision deprived them of property without constitutional due process. Counts II and III alleged that IPD 1019 violates plaintiffs' substantive and procedural due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and is therefore void. Defendants, in turn, moved to dismiss all counts for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted. The district court dismissed Count I pursuant to the Rooker–Feldman doctrine, and Counts II and III as barred by res judicata. Commonwealth Plaza Condo. Ass'n v. City of Chicago, 2011 WL 5830128 (N.D.Ill. Nov. 17, 2011).

II. Analysis

Plaintiffs appeal only the dismissal of Count I, arguing that the district court erred in dismissing their claim as barred by Rooker–Feldman. We have jurisdiction over this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review de novo the district court's dismissal of a complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Brokaw v. Weaver, 305 F.3d 660, 664 (7th Cir.2002).

The Rooker–Feldman doctrine takes its name from Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S.Ct. 149, 68 L.Ed. 362 (1923), and District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 103 S.Ct. 1303, 75 L.Ed.2d 206 (1983). The doctrine, which is a jurisdictional limitation, “prevents lower federal courts from reviewing state-court judgments, over which only the United States Supreme Court has federal appellate jurisdiction.” Crawford v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., 647 F.3d 642, 645 (7th Cir.2011), citing Skinner v. Switzer, ––– U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 1289, 179 L.Ed.2d 233 (2011); see also Remer v. Burlington Area Sch. Dist., 205 F.3d 990, 996 (7th Cir.2000) (“[N]o matter how erroneous or unconstitutional the state court judgment may be, the Supreme Court of the United States is the only federal court that could have jurisdiction to review a state court judgment.”). This narrow doctrine deprives federal district and circuit courts of jurisdiction to hear “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, 161 L.Ed.2d 454 (2005).

Plaintiffs' complaint alleges: “Plaintiffs have exhausted all state remedies provided by law or equity on the claims asserted below, and thus appeal to this Court for the relief requested.” Am. Compl. ¶ 20. Consistent with this assertion, Count I of plaintiffs' Complaint expressly placed before the district court the judgment of the Illinois Appellate Court, alleging injury from this “binding law.” Plaintiffs then asked the district court to “declare by judgment that home rule municipalities in [Cook County, Illinois] must comply with their own laws in approving amendment of an existing zoning ordinance, absent specific repeal of those laws that would otherwise prohibit such amendment.” Am. Compl. ¶ 23.

The district court correctly found that Count I is barred by the Rooker–Feldman doctrine. Plaintiffs did not suffer an out-of-court injury and then fail to obtain relief from the state court. They allege an injury from the state court judgment rejecting their constitutional challenge and upholding the rezoning. The “binding law” to which plaintiffs' refer as the source of their injury is the Illinois Appellate Court's decision itself. See Condominium Ass'n of Commonwealth Plaza, 338 Ill.Dec. 390, 924 N.E.2d at 606 (“The IPD ordinance enacted by the city council in this case is not rendered unconstitutional simply because this municipality, a home rule unit, violated its own self-imposed ordinances in enacting the IPD ordinance.”). Absent that state court ruling, plaintiffs would not have suffered the alleged injury they are asking the federal courts to redress, and that is a clear symptom of the Rooker–Feldman bar. See Holt v. Lake County Bd. of Comm'rs, 408 F.3d 335, 336–37 (7th Cir.2005) (dismissing § 1983 civil rights case because injury was caused by the state court judgment).

The more common Rooker–Feldman fact pattern involves state court defendants, ordered by the state court to pay money or take some action, who file a federal suit claiming injury from that state court judgment. See, e.g., Garry v. Geils, 82 F.3d 1362, 1367 (7th Cir.1996) (“In Homola and Nesses we offered the following rough guide to determining whether Rooker–Feldman or res judicata should be applied to a federal plaintiff making a claim due to unhappiness with a prior state-court ruling: if the federal plaintiff was the plaintiff in state court, apply res judicata; if the federal plaintiff was the defendant in state court, apply Rooker–Feldman.”). But these plaintiffs, who were also plaintiffs in state court, have pled that the state court ruling is the source of their alleged injury. We take them at their word, and that means the district court properly dismissed the claim for lack of jurisdiction.

Plaintiffs attempt to avoid this straightforward application of Rooker–Feldman with a creative argument that would, if accepted, leave the Rooker–Feldman doctrine in tatters. Plaintiffs build their argument from the Supreme Court's recent decision in Skinner v. Switzer, ––– U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 1289, 179 L.Ed.2d 233 (2011), where the Court found that Skinner's claim was not barred by Rooker–Feldman because he was challenging a Texas statute providing for limited post-conviction DNA testing, rather than the state court decisions to deny him the requested DNA testing. Id. at 1298. The Court found: “If a federal plaintiff presents an independent claim, it is not an impediment to the exercise of federal jurisdiction that the same or a related question was earlier aired between the parties in state court.” Id. at 1297 (internal quotation and alteration marks omitted). Thus, while a state court decision is not reviewable by lower federal courts, a statute or rule governing the decision may be challenged in an independent federal action. Id. at 1298.

Plaintiffs...