Nathan J. Huiras v. Kristin Cafferty

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted May 19, 2023*
Decided July 28, 2023
Before
DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge
JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge
DORIS L. PRYOR, Circuit Judge
No. 22-3081
NATHAN J. HUIRAS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
KRISTIN CAFFERTY, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of
Wisconsin.
No. 22-cv-575-pp
Pamela Pepper,
Chief Judge.
O R D E R
When Nathan Huiras’s wife filed for divorce, a state court awarded her custody
of their children, ordered Huiras to pay child support, and temporarily denied him
visitation rights. As those proceedings continued in state court, Huiras turned to federal
district court, seeking to enjoin the state case under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He alleged that, in
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. F ED. R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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No. 22-3081 Page 2
order to obtain federal grant money, the participants in the state case conspired to deny
him due process. The district court correctly abstained from hearing Huiras’s federal
challenge, relying on Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), and our decision in J.B. v.
Woodard, 997 F.3d 714 (7th Cir. 2021); we therefore affirm.
At this stage, we accept as true the allegations in Huiras’s final, operative
complaint. See Perez v. Fenoglio, 792 F.3d 768, 776 (7th Cir. 2015). Huiras’s wife Nicole
petitioned for divorce in the Circuit Court for Racine County, Wisconsin, launching
proceedings that, Huiras contends, unfairly denied him time with his children. First,
Nicole obtained custody of the children by falsely calling him mentally ill. Then the
children’s guardian ad litem lied about Huiras’s mental health in a motion temporarily
to suspend his visitation rights. The presiding judge granted the motion after a hearing
that Huiras alleges was one-sided. The judge admitted the guardian’s testimony that
Huiras had spat on the guardian’s lawn and a court-appointed counselor’s testimony
criticizing Huiras’s behavior during a video call with his children, but she excluded the
recording itself and a report about his mental health and parenting skills. After the
court ordered Huiras to pay child support and a county employee garnished his
paycheck, Huiras requested records from the County. The County’s response revealed
what he considers the financial motivation for these adverse rulings: a contract showing
“millions of dollars’ worth of awards that Racine County receives for enforcing child
support.” The complaint does not say who pays those “awards,” but Huiras asserts
now that the federal government offers grants for enforcing child-support orders.
Huiras turned to federal district court, in which he sued Nicole’s attorney, the
guardian, the state judge, the counselor, and the county employee who garnished his
wages, asserting that a “scheme” to maximize federal grant money denied him his right
to due process and familial association. Among other things, he asked the court to
enjoin the defendants from taking any action in the state proceedings. In granting the
defendants’ motion to dismiss, the court first ruled that the case met the requirements
for abstention under Younger. The court also relied on Woodard, which upheld the
abstention-based dismissal of a similar custody dispute. 997 F.3d at 718-19, 721–22.
Woodard held that the “equity, comity, and federalism principles” of abstention required
dismissal of a federal case seeking “to influence” state custody procedures. Id. at 721–23.
Abstaining was necessary to avert federal disruption of a family-law process
“traditionally reserved for state and local government.” Id. at 723. The district court
reasoned that the same rationale applied to Huiras’s lawsuit.

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No. 22-3081 Page 3
On appeal, Huiras offers several arguments for why the district court was wrong
to abstain and dismiss. (Because Huiras tells us that the litigation in state court
continues and Huiras attacks conduct independent of any state-court judgment, the
parties appropriately do not consider the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See Skinner v. Switzer,
562 U.S. 521, 531–32 (2011) (citing Rooker v. Fid. Tr. Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923), and D.C. Ct.
of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983)).) We review the decision to abstain de novo.
See Mulholland v. Marion Cnty. Election Bd., 746 F.3d 811, 816 (7th Cir. 2014).
Huiras first attacks the district court’s application of Woodard. He contends that a
caveat in that opinion—that federal courts should not abstain if the state courts are
“proven unwilling” to address federal constitutional claims—applies here. 997 F.3d
at 725. We do not see it that way. Unless Huiras produces evidence to the contrary, we
must assume that the Wisconsin courts are “fully capable of respecting and
adjudicating claims regarding [Huiras’s] fundamental right to familial association.” Id.
at 724. Huiras does not even allege that he raised in the Racine County court his claim
that the federal grant program interferes with his right to due process and familial
association, let alone that the court refused to decide that claim. On appeal he states
only that he argued (unsuccessfully) in state court that Wisconsin law (not due process
or another federal right) required the state judge to restore his parenting and visitation
rights. Huiras’s apparent decision not to raise his federal theory in the Wisconsin court
does not mean that the court is “unwilling” to address it. See Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco, Inc.,
481 U.S. 1, 15, 17 (1987) (state courts not closed to federal claim just because party never
litigated it before them).
Huiras offers two replies, but neither is persuasive. First, he contends that we can
infer from the Wisconsin court’s adverse rulings that it was “unwilling” fairly to
address his federal claim. But adverse rulings alone almost never show bias, Liteky v.
United States, 510 U.S. 540, 555 (1994), and we see no reason why the rulings here would
do so. Second, Huiras worries that he cannot trust Wisconsin’s judiciary to evaluate in
good faith his claim about the federal grant program because (in his view) that program
creates an incentive for Racine County officials to pursue bogus child-support orders.
But his unsupported worry of bad faith in the state’s judiciary impermissibly “reflect[s]
a lack of respect for the state’s ability to resolve” his claim, and thus our adjudication of
his claim on the merits would contradict our longstanding reluctance to meddle in
state-court proceedings. SKS & Assocs., Inc. v. Dart, 619 F.3d 674, 679 (7th Cir. 2010).
Finally, Huiras argues that Younger abstention, which was a separate ground for
the district court’s decision, does not apply here. Relying on the principle that Younger

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No. 22-3081 Page 4
abstention requires that the state proceeding be “judicial,” see FreeEats.com, Inc. v.
Indiana, 502 F.3d 590, 596 (7th Cir. 2007), Huiras contends that the divorce proceedings
are not judicial, the state judge was merely an “Article I adjudicator,” and the Racine
County court is only “administrative.” These are legal conclusions that we need not
accept as true, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009), and the record contradicts them.
Huiras’s own filings in the district court show that the state adjudicator is a “judge,” the
tribunal is the “Racine County Circuit Court,” and thus the proceedings are judicial.
We have reviewed Huiras’s remaining arguments, and none merits discussion,
but we close with a slight modification to the district court’s judgment. The district
court dismissed the case “with prejudice” for lack of jurisdiction. Dismissal on
abstention grounds is “without prejudice to the plaintiff’s right to raise the same
contentions in a state tribunal.” Moses v. Kenosha County, 826 F.2d 708, 710 (7th Cir.
1987). And when a court abstains, it declines to decide a case otherwise within its
jurisdiction. See Woodard, 997 F.3d at 722–23. We therefore MODIFY the judgment to
reflect that the case was dismissed without prejudice. As so modified, we AFFIRM.

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