Mitchell Ludvigsen v. Lincoln County

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted January 4, 2024*
Decided January 8, 2024
Before
ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge
DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
No. 23-2113
MITCHELL LUDVIGSEN,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
LINCOLN COUNTY, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.
No. 23-cv-265-wmc
James D. Peterson,
Chief Judge.
O R D E R
Mitchell Ludvigsen believes that his constitutional and state-law rights were
violated when he was required to remit child-support payments to the mother of his
child. He brought this civil-rights action against Lincoln County and several other
defendants. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court screened his complaint and dismissed
his suit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. We affirm.
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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. 23-2113 Page 2
In 2017, Meghan Snyder, one of the defendants who works for the Lincoln
County Child Support Agency, sent Ludvigsen a summons and a petition to establish
paternity. Ludvigsen says that he went to her office, provided a DNA sample, and was
later told he was the “legal father” of the child in question. Snyder then told him to sign
a child-support order, which a state court entered. Further motions and hearings
modifying the state court’s order have continued through August 2023.
In April 2023, Ludvigsen brought this suit in federal court. He alleged that
Snyder lacked authority to pronounce him the legal father, that the county
child-support agency engaged in an unconstitutional scheme to garnish his income, and
that neither the agency nor Wisconsin’s state courts have legal authority to issue child-
support orders. In his view, the contract between the Wisconsin Department of
Children and Families and Lincoln County meant that all of the defendants are
contractors rather than government officials with legal authority over him. He sought
monetary damages, a declaration that the defendants violated his constitutional rights,
and an injunction preventing the defendants from further “bad faith prosecution.”
At screening, 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B), the district court concluded that it lacked
subject-matter jurisdiction under abstention principles. Relying on our decision in J.B. v.
Woodard, 997 F.3d 714 (7th Cir. 2021), the court explained that adjudicating Ludvigsen’s
claims would affect his ongoing child-support dispute in Wisconsin’s state court. The
court acknowledged that abstention typically would result in a stay of proceedings, but
here the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, see District of Columbia Ct. of Appeals v. Feldman,
460 U.S. 462 (1983); Rooker v. Fidelity Tr. Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923), as well as the domestic
relations exception to federal court subject matter jurisdiction, see Ankenbrandt v.
Richards, 504 U.S. 689 (1992), deprived it of jurisdiction to address any challenge
Ludvigsen wished to raise in regard to the child-support order, even if the state court’s
proceedings had ended.
On appeal, Ludvigsen challenges the district court’s application of Woodard
based on his belief that his state-court action is no longer pending. He asserts that his
state-court action is not ongoing because the state courts will not “accept” the
constitutional claims he brings here.
But this argument misapprehends the application of abstention doctrines.
Generally, a case is considered “ongoing” when proceedings are still occurring in the
state court at the time of filing in the district court. See Woodard, 997 F.3d at 723.
Ludvigsen does not dispute that his child-support proceedings were ongoing in state

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No. 23-2113 Page 3
court when he filed this action. Indeed, state-court records show that—months after he
filed this action—a hearing took place about a modification of the child-support order.
In Woodard, we held that the principles underlying the abstention doctrines—comity,
equity, and federalism—command federal courts to abstain from cases that might
interfere with state domestic-court proceedings, even when none of the abstention
doctrines fit to the letter. Id. at 722, 724. As in that case, a federal ruling here would
inappropriately insert the federal courts into an ongoing state family-court
proceeding—an area of law traditionally reserved for the states. Id. at 722–23. In such
circumstances, federal courts must “stay on the sidelines.” Id. at 723.
We have reviewed Ludvigsen’s remaining jurisdictional arguments, and none
has merit.
AFFIRMED

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