Hunter, Plaintiff-Appellant v. McMahon, Defendants-Appellees* On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of New York Niagara County’s Child Protective Services successfully petitioned in Niagara County Family Court to strip Dominique Hunter of her parental rights over her minor son. Hunter appealed the Family Court’s decision. While that appeal was pending, she brought suit in federal court against officials and entities involved in terminating her parental rights. The district court dismissed Hunter’s suit pursuant to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. We hold that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not apply when an appeal remains pending in state court. Rooker-Feldman applies only after the state proceedings have ended. We reverse the judgment of the district court insofar as it dismissed Hunter’s complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. We vacate the judgment insofar as the district court denied Hunter’s motions for leave to amend and for additional time to serve defendants. We remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. STEVEN MENASHI, C.J. The Child Protective Services division of the Niagara County Department of Social Services (“CPS”) determined that Dominique Hunter was unfit to retain parental rights over her minor son C.W. CPS successfully petitioned in state family court to terminate Hunter’s parental rights. Hunter appealed. While Hunter’s appeal was pending, she brought suit in federal court against CPS employees and other public officials and entities. The district court dismissed Hunter’s suit. The district court concluded that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which bars “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 (2005). We disagree. Rooker-Feldman applies when “the losing party in state court filed suit in federal court after the state proceedings ended.” Id. at 291 (emphasis added). When an appeal remains pending in state court, the state proceedings have not ended and Rooker-Feldman does not apply. Because Hunter filed her federal suit before the state proceedings were over, Rooker-Feldman did not deprive the district court of jurisdiction. Moreover, Rooker-Feldman would not bar all of Hunter’s claims in this case even if the state proceedings had reached finality. We reverse the judgment of the district court insofar as it dismissed Hunter’s complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, and we vacate the judgment insofar as the district court denied Hunter’s motions for leave to amend and for additional time to serve defendants. We remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. BACKGROUND On May 10, 2017, Dominique Hunter’s minor son C.W. had a half-day at school. Hunter claims she did not know that C.W. would be coming home early that day. So when the school bus arrived with C.W., Hunter was not there to greet him. C.W. has special needs and cannot be left alone. The Niagara County Department of Social Services therefore took emergency custody of C.W. without a court order. CPS claims that while C.W. was in CPS custody, he informed CPS employees that his mother had been hitting him and that he was afraid of her.1 CPS had previously suspected Hunter of abusing and neglecting C.W. Indeed, CPS discovered that C.W. was unattended on May 10 because CPS caseworker Cheryl McMahon went to Hunter’s house for an unannounced visit to investigate a report that Hunter had used excessive corporal punishment against C.W. The next day, CPS Supervisor Carol Henderson filed a petition of child neglect with the Family Court of New York, County of Niagara. After a hearing with Hunter present, Judge Thomas DiMillo ordered the temporary removal of C.W. from Hunter’s custody. At a later hearing before Judge Kathleen Wojtaszek-Gariano, Hunter agreed to a finding of neglect of C.W. without admission. Under the fact-finding order, Hunter needed to meet certain requirements — including taking anger-management classes and undergoing a mental-health evaluation — to regain custody of C.W. Hunter alleges that she met these requirements. But after a hearing in April 2019, Judge Wojtaszek-Gariano determined that Hunter had not completed the required programs and had not visited C.W. since May 2017. Hunter did not appear at the hearing; she claims that she did not know when it was taking place. Judge Wojtaszek-Gariano ordered that guardianship and custody of C.W. be transferred to the Niagara County Department of Social Services, which was authorized to consent to the adoption of C.W. without Hunter’s consent. On May 21, 2019, Hunter filed a notice of appeal from this family-court judgment. While Hunter’s appeal was pending in state court, she brought suit in federal court. She sued McMahon, Henderson, Judge DiMillo, Judge Wojtaszek-Gariano, and other officials and entities. In her amended complaint, Hunter alleges that these defendants committed torts against her and violated her constitutional rights. See Supp. App’x 14-15. She requests monetary damages and a permanent injunction ordering the return of her son to her custody. Hunter filed her complaint pro se. The district court dismissed the complaint without prejudice because it concluded that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction. In the district court’s view, Rooker-Feldman barred the action because “Hunter ‘lost’ in Family Court…before Hunter filed the instant lawsuit” and “[t]he remedies Hunter seeks — C.W.’s return, expungement of records, and money damages — would require this Court to review and reject the merits underlying the Family Court judgments.” Hunter v. McMahon, No. 20-CV-0018, 2021 WL 1996772, at *2 (W.D.N.Y. May 19, 2021). The district court concluded that Hunter’s “claims either already have been decided by the Family Court or are ‘inextricably intertwined’ with the claims already decided by the Family Court.” Id. at *3 (alteration omitted) (quoting the report and recommendation of the magistrate judge). The district court denied Hunter leave to amend her complaint on the ground that amendment would be futile because “[e]verything that Hunter asks of this Court…would require it to review and reject the Family Court judgments, something it does not have the power to do.” Id. Additionally, the district court denied as futile Hunter’s motion for a second extension of time to serve certain defendants. Hunter timely appealed. STANDARD OF REVIEW “Because Rooker-Feldman goes to subject-matter jurisdiction, we review de novo the district court’s application of the doctrine.” Hoblock v. Albany Cnty. Bd. of Elections, 422 F.3d 77, 83 (2d Cir. 2005). In fact, “we have an independent obligation to consider the presence or absence of subject matter jurisdiction sua sponte.” Joseph v. Leavitt, 465 F.3d 87, 89 (2d Cir. 2006). Moreover, “[w]hen the denial of leave to amend is based on a legal interpretation, such as a determination that amendment would be futile, a reviewing court conducts a de novo review.” Hutchison v. Deutsche Bank Sec. Inc., 647 F.3d 479, 490 (2d Cir. 2011). In conducting our review, “[w]e construe complaints filed by pro se litigants liberally and ‘interpret them to raise the strongest arguments that they suggest.’” Pabon v. Wright, 459 F.3d 241, 248 (2d Cir. 2006) (quoting Burgos v. Hopkins, 14 F.3d 787, 790 (2d Cir. 1994)). DISCUSSION Hunter argues that Rooker-Feldman does not bar her federal lawsuit. We agree. Rooker-Feldman applies only after state-court proceedings have “ended.” Exxon Mobil, 544 U.S. at 291. Those proceedings had not ended by the time Hunter filed her federal lawsuit because an appeal remained pending in state court. Because federal courts “assess[] jurisdiction…as of the moment the complaint was filed,” E.R. Squibb & Sons, Inc. v. Lloyd’s & Cos., 241 F.3d 154, 163 (2d Cir. 2001), Rooker-Feldman presents no jurisdictional bar to proceeding with Hunter’s federal suit. In addition, at least some of Hunter’s claims would not be barred by Rooker-Feldman even if the state-court proceedings had ended before the filing of the federal suit. We reverse the judgment of the district court insofar as it dismissed Hunter’s complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. We vacate the judgment insofar as the district court denied Hunter’s motions for leave to amend and for additional time to serve defendants. We remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion I Until Congress provides otherwise, the only federal court to which a litigant may appeal from a state-court judgment is the Supreme Court of the United States. See 28 U.S.C. §1257(a) (providing that “[f]inal judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had, may be reviewed by the Supreme Court by writ of certiorari” when federal law is implicated). The Rooker-Feldman doctrine, named after a pair of Supreme Court decisions that applied this rule,2 “is based on the congressional grant, in 28 U.S.C. §1257, of appellate jurisdiction over state court judgments to the United States Supreme Court and the grant of original jurisdiction over certain suits to United States district courts. Read together, these statutes indicate that the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction over state court judgments is exclusive and the jurisdiction of the federal district courts is purely original.”3 The Supreme Court has explained that Rooker-Feldman bars “a party losing in state court…from seeking what in substance would be appellate review of the state judgment in a United States district court.” Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1005-06 (1994). But the Court has emphasized “the narrow ground occupied by Rooker-Feldman,” noting that the doctrine applies in “limited circumstances.” Exxon Mobil, 544 U.S. at 284, 291. The Court has held that Rooker-Feldman “is confined to cases of the kind from which the doctrine acquired its name: 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. The doctrine “does not otherwise override or supplant preclusion doctrine or augment the circumscribed doctrines that allow federal courts to stay or dismiss proceedings in deference to state-court actions.” Id. The Court meant what it said. It subsequently reiterated that “Rooker-Feldman is not simply preclusion by another name” but “applies only in limited circumstances where a party in effect seeks to take an appeal of an unfavorable state-court decision to a lower federal court.” Lance v. Dennis, 546 U.S. 459, 466 (2006) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). And the Court has “warned that the lower courts have at times extended Rooker-Feldman ‘far beyond the contours of the Rooker and Feldman cases, overriding Congress’ conferral of federal-court jurisdiction concurrent with jurisdiction exercised by state courts, and superseding the ordinary application of preclusion law pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1738.’” Id. at 464 (quoting Exxon Mobil, 544 U.S. at 283).4 The Court has been so emphatic on this point that Justice Stevens believed it had “finally interred the so-called ‘Rooker-Feldman doctrine’” and had rejected the “resuscitation of a doctrine that has produced nothing but mischief for 23 years.” Lance, 546 U.S. at 468 (Stevens, J., dissenting).5 Despite the Supreme Court’s “efforts to return Rooker-Feldman to its modest roots,” however, “lawyers continue to invoke the rule and judges continue to dismiss federal actions under it” beyond the modest circumstances in which it applies. Vanderkodde v. Mary Jane M. Elliott, P.C., 951 F.3d 397, 405 (6th Cir. 2020) (Sutton, J., concurring).6 In our circuit, we have articulated a four-part test according to which Rooker-Feldman applies if “(1) the federal-court plaintiff lost in state court; (2) the plaintiff complains of injuries caused by a state court judgment; (3) the plaintiff invites review and rejection of that judgment; and (4) the state judgment was rendered before the district court proceedings commenced.” Vossbrinck v. Accredited Home Lenders, Inc., 773 F.3d 423, 426 (2d Cir. 2014) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). We employ that test while keeping in mind the Supreme Court’s warning that courts must avoid extending Rooker-Feldman beyond the narrow circumstances in which it properly applies. Here, we conclude that Rooker-Feldman does not bar Hunter’s lawsuit for two reasons. First, the state-court judgment was not “rendered” for Rooker-Feldman purposes “before the district court proceedings commenced” because an appeal remained pending in the state case when Hunter filed her federal suit. Second, at least some of Hunter’s claims would not implicate Rooker-Feldman even if the state proceedings had ended before Hunter filed her federal suit. A We have not previously decided whether Rooker-Feldman applies to a federal lawsuit when a state-court appeal remains pending.7 Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Exxon Mobil, however, “every federal circuit court that has addressed the issue has held that Rooker-Feldman does not apply if a state-court appeal is pending when the federal suit is filed.” Hansen v. Miller, 52 F.4th 96, 103 (2d Cir. 2022) (Menashi, J., concurring).8 Our court has also suggested that is the correct approach.9 In resolving this question, therefore, we “adopt the unanimous position of every other circuit court to address it.” Butcher, 975 F.3d at 246 (Menashi, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). The Supreme Court has emphasized that Rooker-Feldman deprives a federal court of jurisdiction only if the federal suit is filed “after the state proceedings ended.” Exxon Mobil, 544 U.S. at 291. If a federal-court plaintiff’s state-court appeal remains pending when she files her federal suit, the state-court proceedings have not ended and Rooker-Feldman does not apply. Under such circumstances, the plaintiff’s federal suit does not function as an appeal from the statecourt judgment, and consideration of the federal suit does not interfere with Supreme Court review of “[f]inal judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a State.” 28 U.S.C. §1257(a); see Dornheim, 430 F.3d at 923 (“There is no judgment to review if suit is filed in federal district court prior to completion of the state-court action.”). We agree with those circuits that have held that “Rooker-Feldman does not apply when state proceedings have neither ended nor led to orders reviewable by the United States Supreme Court.” Malhan, 938 F.3d at 460. The state-court proceedings must either have reached finality or yielded an order that satisfies “the exceptions to the finality requirement that were set out in Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469 (1975),” so as to trigger the exclusive appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605, 612 (1989).10 Simply stated, “[p]roceedings end for Rooker-Feldman purposes when the state courts finally resolve the issue that the federal court plaintiff seeks to relitigate in a federal forum.” Mothershed, 410 F.3d at 604 n.1. If the rule were otherwise, it would not be possible to tell whether the plaintiff in federal court was the loser in state court. In this case, for example, two months after the district court dismissed Hunter’s complaint, a New York appellate court reversed the statecourt order terminating Hunter’s parental rights. See Matter of Calvin L.W. (Dominique H.), 196 A.D.3d 1181 (N.Y. App. Div. 4th Dep’t 2021). While the state proceedings were ongoing, the district court could not conclusively determine that Hunter was “the losing party in state court.” Exxon Mobil, 544 U.S. at 291. The defendants concede that Hunter’s state-court appeal was pending when she filed her federal lawsuit. Because federal courts “assess[] jurisdiction…as of the moment the complaint was filed,” E.R. Squibb & Sons, 241 F.3d at 163, that is the end of the Rooker-Feldman inquiry. The state proceedings remained ongoing when Hunter filed her federal complaint, so Rooker-Feldman does not apply.11 B Even if the state proceedings in this case had reached finality, the district court still would have erred because it “misperceived the narrow ground occupied by Rooker-Feldman.” Exxon Mobil, 544 U.S. at 284. The district court determined that it could not consider any of Hunter’s claims “because those claims either already have been decided by the Family Court or are ‘inextricably intertwined’ with the claims already decided by the Family Court.” Hunter, 2021 WL 1996772, at *3 (alteration omitted). Yet Rooker-Feldman applies only when “the plaintiff complains of injuries caused by a state court judgment,” Vossbrinck, 773 F.3d at 426 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted), and not all of Hunter’s alleged injuries were so caused. We have said that this part of the Rooker-Feldman inquiry “is the ‘core requirement from which the other Rooker-Feldman requirements derive.’” Sung Cho v. City of New York, 910 F.3d 639, 646 (2d Cir. 2018) (alterations omitted) (quoting Hoblock, 422 F.3d at 87). In applying this requirement, “[t]he following formula guides our inquiry: a federal suit complains of injury from a state-court judgment, even if it appears to complain only of a third party’s actions, when the third party’s actions are produced by a state-court judgment and not simply ratified, acquiesced in, or left unpunished by it.” Hoblock, 422 F.3d at 88 (emphasis added). Accordingly, “[o]ur court has further determined that Rooker-Feldman does not bar claims based on an opponent’s misconduct that precedes the state court proceeding, if the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries were merely ratified by the state-court judgments rather than caused by them.” Dorce v. City of New York, 2 F.4th 82, 104 (2d Cir. 2021) (internal quotation marks omitted and emphasis added).12 As the Supreme Court has explained, “[i]f a federal plaintiff presents some independent claim, albeit one that denies a legal conclusion that a state court has reached in a case to which he was a party, then there is jurisdiction and state law determines whether the defendant prevails under principles of preclusion.” Exxon Mobil, 544 U.S. at 293 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). The notions of “inextricably intertwined” or “independent” claims “are simply descriptive labels attached to claims that either do or do not meet the requirements outlined in Exxon Mobil, and therefore they do not have substantive content independent of the four Exxon Mobil requirements.” McKithen v. Brown, 481 F.3d 89, 97 n.7 (2d Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks, alterations, and citation omitted). Thus, “if the requirements outlined in Exxon Mobil are met, then the claim asserted in federal court is ‘inextricably intertwined’ with the claim raised in state court.” Id. There is no separate inquiry into whether a claim is “inextricably intertwined.”13 As the Seventh Circuit has explained: If a contention in federal litigation is intertwined with the state litigation only in the sense that it entails a factual or legal contention that was, or could have been, presented to the state judge, then the connection between the state and federal cases concerns the rules of preclusion, which are not jurisdictional and are outside the scope of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Because the phrase “inextricably intertwined” has the potential to blur this boundary, it should not be used as a ground of decision. Milchtein v. Chisholm, 880 F.3d 895, 898 (7th Cir. 2018) (Easterbrook, J.). For Rooker-Feldman purposes, we are looking for a “causal relationship between the state-court judgment and the injury of which the party complains in federal court.” McKithen, 481 F.3d at 98. At least some of Hunter’s claims do not satisfy this causalrelationship requirement. For example, Hunter alleges that some of the defendants conspired — before any decisions were issued by the family court — to discriminate against her on the basis of race, to conduct unlawful searches and seizures, and to defame her, among other claims. See Supp. App’x 14-15. Hunter alleges that McMahon and Henderson took custody of C.W. on May 10 “under falsified claims that an emergency existed” and conducted “an illegal interrogation of [C.W.] in [Hunter's] absence and without [her] consent.” Id. at 11. Hunter claims that this conduct violated her constitutional rights, and she seeks damages for that violation.14 The state-court judgment did not produce this alleged earlier-in-time conduct, though it may have adjudicated the legitimacy of the conduct after the fact. The district court therefore did not lack subject matter jurisdiction to evaluate Hunter’s claim. Instead, “the connection between the state and federal cases concerns the rules of preclusion, which are not jurisdictional and are outside the scope of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.” Milchtein, 880 F.3d at 898. Even if the state proceedings had ended by the time Hunter filed her federal suit, the district court should not have allowed an expansive view of Rooker-Feldman to “supersed[e] the ordinary application of preclusion law.” Exxon Mobil, 544 U.S. at 283. II The district court did not grant Hunter leave to amend her complaint and it denied her motion for a second extension of time to serve additional defendants. These decisions were, at least in part, based on the district court’s erroneous conclusion that Rooker-Feldman deprived it of subject matter jurisdiction over the case. See Hunter, 2021 WL 1996772, at *3 (“Because this Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over Hunter’s claims, it also agrees…that leave to amend should be denied.”); id. at *4 (“Because this Court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over Hunter’s claims, the Court dismisses, sua sponte, the amended complaint against [the additional defendants].”). Accordingly, we vacate those decisions of the district court and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.15 CONCLUSION We reverse the judgment of the district court insofar as it dismissed Hunter’s complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. We vacate the judgment insofar as the district court denied Hunter’s motions for leave to amend and for additional time to serve defendants. We remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
