A Contemporary Examination of Rooker-Feldman: Should the Doctrine Extend to Interlocutory State Court Orders?

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Barbour, Alex M.

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2023-06

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INTRODUCTION It has been established throughout the last century of American jurisprudence that lower federal courts (i.e., federal courts other than the United States Supreme Court) do not have the authority to review final state court decisions. This notion is the fundamental principle behind the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. The Rooker-Feldman doctrine follows closely in the footsteps of 28 U.S.C. § 1331, which provides that lower federal courts only possess original jurisdiction. Thus, Rooker-Feldman echoes the doctrine of res judicata by preventing dissatisfied litigants from bringing resolved state court issues a second time in federal court. Additionally, the jurisdiction granted to lower federal courts will not change unless § 1331 is amended by an act of Congress. As a result, if a party wishes to appeal an order from a state court of last resort, they must do so in the United States Supreme Court. Since its inception, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine has seldom been raised before the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the doctrine has been at the center of a recent split among the federal appellate courts, which arose out of the Sixth Circuit’s decision in RLR Investments, LLC v. City of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. In this case, the Sixth Circuit applied Rooker-Feldman to prevent relitigation of an interlocutory state court order.9 The Sixth Circuit is currently the only federal court of appeals to endorse this view.

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Creighton University School of Law

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