Jane Doe, et al., 1 v. Mark R. Lindell

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued November 18, 2022
Decided January 17, 2023
Before
MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge
THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge
JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge
No. 22-1666
JANE DOE, et al., 1
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
MARK R. LINDELL, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of Illinois,
Eastern Division.
No. 21-cv-3262
Robert M. Dow, Jr.
Judge.
O R D E R
Jane Doe sued her ex-husband, along with numerous others involved in her
state-court divorce and custody proceedings, for conspiring to deprive her and her
minor children of their rights to familial relations and to a fair and unbiased fact finder.
The district court dismissed the case as barred by the abstention doctrine recognized in
1 Doe also brings this suit on behalf of her three minor children.
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. A PP. P. 32.1

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Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), as well as the federalism principles outlined in J.B.
v. Woodard, 997 F.3d 714 (7th Cir. 2021). We affirm.
I
In July 2018, Mark Lindell filed for divorce from Jane Doe. Doe and Lindell have
three minor children, and their acrimonious divorce proceeding involved an extensive
custody dispute.
Doe alleges that during the custody proceedings, Lindell and the children’s
court-appointed guardian ad litem “developed a plan” to portray her as an alcoholic
and a threat to her children. This complicated plan, says Doe, comprised several steps:
(1) the guardian ad litem “got” the psychiatrist appointed; (2) together, they convinced
the court to order Doe to submit a hair sample for drug-and-alcohol testing; (3) Lindell
paid off an employee at the lab to procure false hair-test results that suggested severe
alcohol use; (4) the guardian ad litem “threatened” Doe into signing on to an emergency
order that limited her parenting time; (5) the psychiatrist recommended, based on the
false hair-test results, that Lindell be given sole decision-making authority over the
children and that Doe’s parenting time be limited and supervised. When the guardian
ad litem and the psychiatrist testified at trial, they again relied on the allegedly false
hair-test results to support their recommendations about limits on Doe’s parenting time.
According to Doe, Lindell bribed the defendants to participate in the conspiracy using
money from his stepmother.
Doe asserts that as part of their plan, the defendants switched her hair sample
with the hair of someone known to abuse alcohol. She says that she does not consume
alcohol and that when she conducted her own tests (hair, blood, and urine), the results
were negative for alcohol and positive only for her prescription medication. She further
asserts that, around the start of the divorce proceedings, she participated in a three-
month long, group therapy program, and her random drug-and-alcohol tests
consistently came back negative. The court-ordered, drug-and-alcohol test was also
suspect, she says, because it did not detect any traces of her prescription medication.
She attributes her symptoms—daytime drowsiness and speech difficulties—to attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder, which was triggered by the divorce proceedings, and she
asserts that the defendants intentionally mistook her ADHD symptoms as “evidence” of
substance abuse.

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Doe alleges that the state-court judge’s decisions before, during, and after the
trial indicate that the judge took part in the conspiracy. For instance, when Doe moved
to continue the trial, asserting that her ADHD left her underemployed and unable to
afford experts to challenge the hair-test results and prove the conspiracy, the court
denied her request. Doe says that at trial, the judge “ignored” her evidence (e.g., her
self-conducted drug tests) that the results of the hair test were false. On May 28, 2021,
the court issued a judgment approving the divorce, concluding that Doe was an
immediate danger to her three children, and ordering limited, supervised parenting
time.
Doe’s state-court case appears to be ongoing. On June 28, 2021, she filed a motion
to reconsider and for a new trial. Nearly a month later, on July 22, she petitioned for
indirect criminal contempt against several defendants based on the same conspiracy
allegations she makes here. Her motion and contempt petition were denied, but
litigation relating to the contempt petition was ongoing when Doe filed this appeal. At
oral argument before us, Doe’s counsel indicated that the state-court case remained
ongoing.
Meanwhile, on June 17, 2021, Doe filed this suit in federal court, alleging under
42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985 that the defendants conspired with the state-court judge to
limit her parental rights. Her conspiracy claim focused mainly on the court-ordered hair
test: the defendants, she said, conspired with the state-court judge to have her provide a
hair sample, and then conspired with the lab to generate false results, which the
defendants could then use as “proof” that she was an alcoholic. Doe also sought relief
under the Americans with Disabilities Act, alleging essentially that Lake County failed
to accommodate her disability by not continuing the trial, and discriminated against her
by removing her children “because of her disability.” 2 She also brought state-law claims
of abuse of process, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud.
The district court granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss. In a well-reasoned
Memorandum Opinion and Order, the court ruled that it was required to abstain under
Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), because Doe had petitioned in state court for a
contempt order against the defendants based on their “unlawful conspiracy,” and civil
2 Doe has not preserved her ADA claim. Lake County was the only ADA defendant
named in Doe’s complaint, but Doe specified in her notice of appeal that Lake County
“shall remain dismissed.”

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proceedings involving the contempt process fall within Younger’s reach. Even if Younger
did not apply, abstention was appropriate under J.B. v. Woodard, 997 F.3d 714 (7th Cir.
2021), the court concluded, because adjudication of her claims would require federal
courts to interfere with family-law proceedings that traditionally are reserved for state
and local government. The court also ruled that Doe’s conspiracy claims did not
demonstrate any extraordinary circumstances—such as bad faith—that would allow it
to avoid abstaining under any exception to Younger abstention. The court likewise
declined to apply the Rooker-Feldman doctrine because the state-court proceedings were
still pending, and that doctrine divests district courts of jurisdiction only in cases where
the losing state-court party filed suit after the state proceedings ended. See Parker v.
Lyons, 757 F.3d 701, 705 (7th Cir. 2014).
II
On appeal, Doe challenges the district court’s application of Younger abstention.
Younger requires federal courts to abstain when the federal suit would interfere with
three types of ongoing state proceedings: criminal prosecutions; civil enforcement
proceedings; and “civil proceedings involving certain orders … uniquely in furtherance
of the state courts’ ability to perform their judicial functions.’” Sprint Commc’ns, Inc., v.
Jacobs, 571 U.S. 69, 78 (2013) (cleaned up) (alteration in original). The third category
includes civil cases involving the contempt process. See Juidice v. Vail, 430 U.S. 327, 335
(1977). If one of these three types of proceedings is involved, then the court must
consider three additional factors: whether the state proceeding is ongoing, involves
important state interests, and provides an adequate opportunity to raise constitutional
challenges. See Sprint, 571 U.S. at 81. When a case satisfies all the factors, federal courts
should abstain unless there are extraordinary circumstances, such as “bad faith,
harassment, or a patently invalid state statute.” Id. at 77.
Doe makes a two-part argument against applying Younger in this case. First,
although she concedes that her case is an ongoing judicial proceeding that touches on
important state interests, she argues that she did not have an adequate opportunity to
raise her constitutional claims in the state court. Second, she argues that her conspiracy
allegations fall within the “extraordinary circumstances” exception to Younger.
We conclude that this case falls within Younger’s purview, although we add our
own gloss to the district court’s ruling. The district court abstained under Younger
because Doe’s contempt petition, which postdated the filing of her federal case, meant

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that her state case was one of the three types of proceedings in which Younger applies.
See Juidice, 430 U.S. at 335. That is correct, but also significant is the timing when Doe
filed her contempt petition. She did not file her contempt petition—the aspect of the
state-court litigation bringing the case within Younger’s reach—until after she filed her
federal suit, and Younger applies only to federal suits that would interfere with a
“pending” or “ongoing” state-court proceeding. See Sprint, 571 U.S. at 78. For purposes
of Younger, a state-court proceeding is deemed pending if it was initiated “before any
proceedings of substance on the merits have taken place in the federal court.” See Haw.
Hous. Auth. v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229, 238 (1984) (cleaned up). Here, abstention under
Younger was appropriate because at the time Doe filed her contempt petition, the
federal case had not “progressed beyond the embryonic stage”—the district court had
granted extensions of time but had not decided any “contested matter.” Ewell v. Toney,
853 F.3d 911, 916–17 (7th Cir. 2017). Indeed, at the time she initiated her contempt
petition, the complaint was the only document of substance that had been filed in the
district court.
As for Doe’s Younger-specific arguments, neither has merit. First, she had an
adequate opportunity to raise her claims in the state court. She can (and did) appeal to
the state appellate court. And Doe raised these conspiracy allegations in her contempt
petition and in her motion to reconsider. Thus, the state court was “open” to hear her
claims. See Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco, Inc., 481 U.S. 1, 17 (1987).
Second, Doe has not adequately alleged the type of “extraordinary circumstance”
that warrants an exception to Younger abstention. Doe bases her “extraordinary
circumstances” argument primarily on Loubser v. Thacker, in which this court ruled that
federal courts may choose not to abstain under Rooker-Feldman abstention when the
defendants “succeeded in corrupting the state judicial process.” 440 F.3d 439, 441
(7th Cir. 2006) (quoting Nesses v. Shepard, 68 F.3d 1003, 1005 (7th Cir. 1995)). But Loubser
is inapposite. First, that case did not address Younger abstention. Second, Doe did not
adequately “allege specific facts to support her inferences” that the state-court judge
was part of the alleged conspiracy. See Crenshaw v. Sup. Ct. of Ind., 170 F.3d 725, 729
(7th Cir. 1999). Doe’s conclusory assertion that the defendants “had ex parte
communications with the associate judge” is insufficient to “tie the defendants to a
conspiracy.” See Cooney v. Rossiter, 583 F.3d 967, 971 (7th Cir. 2009). And her reference to
judicial rulings, which almost never support an allegation of bias, see Liteky v. United
States, 510 U.S. 540, 555 (1994), are also insufficient. Indeed, parts of Doe’s brief suggest
that the judge was not involved in the alleged conspiracy.

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The district court also based its ruling on this court’s opinion in J.B. v. Woodard, in
which 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 fits
to the letter. 997 F.3d at 722–24. Doe’s brief, however, neither addresses the district
court’s alternative ruling nor suggests how the state courts are “unwilling to address”
her federal claims. See id. at 725 (quoting Courthouse News Serv. v. Brown, 908 F.3d 1063,
1071 (7th Cir. 2018)). As in J.B., 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. Also like J.B., this case is one where a
stay is not practical. Because of the young ages of Doe’s children, we are unwilling to
require this case to linger for years on the federal docket. See id. at 725. We therefore
agree with the district court that dismissal rather than a stay is appropriate.
We have considered Doe’s other arguments; none merit discussion.
AFFIRMED.

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