LANCE et al. v. DENNIS, COLORADO SECRETARY OF STATE

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459 OCTOBER TERM, 2005
Syllabus
LANCE et al. v. DENNIS, COLORADO SECRETARY
OF STATE
on appeal from the united states district court for
the district of colorado
No. 05–555. Decided February 21, 2006
Several rounds of state-court litigation following the 2000 census culmi
nated in a Colorado Supreme Court holding that the state legislature’s
congressional redistricting plan violated the State Constitution. Sub
sequently, plaintiffs, Colorado voters, filed a federal-court suit, seeking
to require the secretary of state to use the legislature’s plan because
the State Constitution, as interpreted by the State Supreme Court, vio
lated, inter alia, the Elections Clause of the U. S. Constitution. A
three-judge District Court ruled that it had no jurisdiction to hear the
claim because the Rooker-Feldman doctrine—which prevents lower fed
eral courts from exercising jurisdiction over cases brought by “state
court losers” challenging “state-court judgments rendered before the
district court proceedings commenced,” Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi
Basic Industries Corp., 544 U. S. 280, 284—applied to plaintiffs, who
were in privity with the Colorado General Assembly, a losing party in
the state case. In finding privity, the court reasoned that the preclu
sion principle that a State’s citizens are deemed to be in privity with a
state government that litigates a matter of public concern, see, e. g.,
Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel
Assn., 443 U. S. 658, applied equally in the Rooker-Feldman context.
Held: The Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not bar plaintiffs from proceed
ing. The District Court erroneously conflated preclusion law with
Rooker-Feldman. Whatever the impact of privity principles on preclu
sion rules, Rooker-Feldman is not simply preclusion by another name.
It 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. Incorporation of preclusion principles into Rooker-Feldman
risks turning that limited doctrine into a uniform federal rule governing
the preclusive effect of state-court judgments, contrary to the Full Faith
and Credit Act.
Jurisdiction noted; 379 F. Supp. 2d 1117, vacated and remanded.

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460 LANCE v. DENNIS
Per Curiam
Per Curiam.
The Rooker-Feldman doctrine prevents the lower federal
courts from exercising jurisdiction over cases brought by
“state-court losers” challenging “state-court judgments ren
dered before the district court proceedings commenced.”
Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Industries Corp., 544
U. S. 280, 284 (2005). In this case, the District Court dis
missed the plaintiffs’ suit on the ground that they were in
privity with a state-court loser. We hold that the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine does not bar the plaintiffs from proceed
ing, and vacate the District Court’s judgment.
I
This is the latest of several rounds of litigation involving
the State of Colorado’s congressional redistricting after the
2000 census, under which the State gained a seat in the
House of Representatives. Lance v. Davidson, 379 F. Supp.
2d 1117, 1121 (2005). The first round began in May 2001.
When the Colorado General Assembly failed to pass a redis
tricting plan for the 2002 congressional elections by the close
of its regular session, a group of Colorado voters asked the
state courts to create a plan. The courts agreed, drawing a
new map reflecting the additional district. See Beauprez v.
Avalos, 42 P. 3d 642 (Colo. 2002) (en banc). The 2002 elec
tions were held using this court-ordered plan.
The General Assembly passed its own redistricting plan in
the spring of 2003, prompting further litigation—this time
about which electoral map was to govern, the legislature’s
or the courts’. Two suits were filed seeking to enjoin the
legislature’s plan: an original action in the Colorado Supreme
Court by the state attorney general seeking to require the
secretary of state to use the court-ordered plan, and a similar
action brought in a lower state court by several proponents
of the court-ordered plan. 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1121. After
the Colorado General Assembly intervened to defend its plan
in the first case, the Colorado Supreme Court held that the

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Per Curiam
plan violated Article V, § 44, of the State Constitution, which
the court construed to limit congressional redistricting to
“once per decade.” People ex rel. Salazar v. Davidson, 79
P. 3d 1221, 1231 (2003) (en banc). It therefore ordered the
secretary of state to use the court-created plan. We denied
certiorari. 541 U. S. 1093 (2004).
The second suit was removed to federal court by the de
fendants on the basis of the plaintiffs’ federal-law claims.
See Keller v. Davidson, 299 F. Supp. 2d 1171, 1175 (Colo.
2004). Once Salazar was decided by the Colorado Supreme
Court, the viability of the defendants’ counterclaims was the
only remaining issue. A three-judge District Court held
that the defendants were barred by the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine from amending their counterclaims to assert addi
tional challenges to the decision in Salazar. It also held
that the defendants’ original counterclaims, while not barred
by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, were precluded under Col
orado law by the judgment in Salazar. Accordingly, the
court dismissed the case.
Finally, this suit: Before the dismissal in Keller, several
Colorado citizens unhappy with Salazar filed an action in the
District Court seeking to require the secretary of state to
use the legislature’s plan.1 The plaintiffs argued that Arti
cle V, § 44, of the Colorado Constitution, as interpreted by
the Colorado Supreme Court, violated the Elections Clause
of Article I, § 4, of the U. S. Constitution (“The Times, Places
and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Repre
sentatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legisla
ture thereof ”), and the First Amendment’s Petition Clause
(“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of
the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances”). The defendants filed a motion to dismiss, ar
1 Although the secretary of state defended the legislature’s plan in Sala
zar, following that decision she agreed to defend the court-ordered plan in
this litigation and to allow the state attorney general to represent her.
379 F. Supp. 2d 1117, 1122, n. 3 (Colo. 2005).

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guing that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and Colorado pre
clusion law barred any attack on the Colorado Supreme
Court’s judgment in Salazar and that the plaintiffs had failed
to state a valid Petition Clause claim.
The three-judge District Court ruled that under the
Rooker-Feldman doctrine, it had no jurisdiction to hear the
Elections Clause claim. 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1127. The
Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the court explained, includes
three requirements: (1) “[T]he party against whom the doc
trine is invoked must have actually been a party to the prior
state-court judgment or have been in privity with such a
party”; (2) “the claim raised in the federal suit must have
been actually raised or inextricably intertwined with the
state-court judgment”; and (3) “the federal claim must not
be parallel to the state-court claim.” 379 F. Supp. 2d, at
1124. The District Court found the first requirement satis
fied on the ground that the citizen-plaintiffs were in privity
with the Colorado General Assembly—a losing party in
Salazar. Relying on our decisions in Washington v. Wash
ington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Assn.,
443 U. S. 658 (1979), and Tacoma v. Taxpayers of Tacoma,
357 U. S. 320 (1958), the court stated that “when a state gov
ernment litigates a matter of public concern, that state’s citi
zens will be deemed to be in privity with the government
for preclusion purposes.” 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1125. This
principle, the court reasoned, applies “with equal force in
the Rooker-Feldman context.” Ibid. The court went on to
conclude that the Elections Clause claim was actually raised
in Salazar, or inextricably intertwined with that decision,
and was not parallel to the claims presented in Salazar. As
to the Petition Clause claim, the court ruled that neither
Rooker-Feldman nor Colorado preclusion law prevented the
court from proceeding to the merits, but that the plaintiffs
failed to state a claim. 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1132; see Fed.
Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6).
The plaintiffs appealed. See 28 U. S. C. § 1253. We now
note jurisdiction, and address whether the Rooker-Feldman

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doctrine bars the plaintiffs from proceeding because they
were in privity with a party in Salazar. We conclude it does
not, and vacate the judgment of the District Court.
II
This Court is vested, under 28 U. S. C. § 1257, with juris
diction over appeals from final state-court judgments. We
have held that this grant of jurisdiction is exclusive: “Review
of such judgments may be had only in this Court.” District
of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U. S. 462, 482
(1983) (emphasis added); see also Atlantic Coast Line R. Co.
v. Locomotive Engineers, 398 U. S. 281, 286 (1970); Rooker
v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U. S. 413, 416 (1923). Accordingly,
under what has come to be known as the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine, lower federal courts are precluded from exercising
appellate jurisdiction over final state-court judgments.
The Rooker-Feldman doctrine takes its name from the
only two cases in which we have applied this rule to find that
a Federal District Court lacked jurisdiction. In Rooker, a
party who had lost in the Indiana Supreme Court, and failed
to obtain review in this Court, filed an action in Federal Dis
trict Court challenging the constitutionality of the state
court judgment. We viewed the action as tantamount to an
appeal of the Indiana Supreme Court decision, over which
only this Court had jurisdiction, and said that the “aggrieved
litigant cannot be permitted to do indirectly what he no
longer can do directly.” 263 U. S., at 416. Feldman, de
cided 60 years later, concerned slightly different circum
stances, with similar results. The plaintiffs there had been
refused admission to the District of Columbia bar by the Dis
trict of Columbia Court of Appeals, and sought review of
these decisions in Federal District Court. Our decision held
that to the extent plaintiffs challenged the Court of Appeals
decisions themselves—as opposed to the bar admission rules
promulgated nonjudicially by the Court of Appeals—their
sole avenue of review was with this Court. 460 U. S., at 476.

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Neither Rooker nor Feldman elaborated a rationale for a
wide-reaching bar on the jurisdiction of lower federal courts,
and our cases since Feldman have tended to emphasize
the narrowness of the Rooker-Feldman rule. See Exxon
Mobil, 544 U. S., at 292 (Rooker-Feldman does not apply to
parallel state and federal litigation); Verizon Md. Inc. v. Pub
lic Serv. Comm’n of Md., 535 U. S. 635, 644, n. 3 (2002)
(Rooker-Feldman “has no application to judicial review of
executive action, including determinations made by a state
administrative agency”); Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S.
997, 1005–1006 (1994) (Rooker-Feldman does not bar actions
by a nonparty to the earlier state suit). Indeed, during that
period, “this Court has never applied Rooker-Feldman to
dismiss an action for want of jurisdiction.” Exxon Mobil,
supra, at 287.
In Exxon Mobil, decided last Term, we 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.” 544 U. S., at 283. Rooker-
Feldman, we explained, is a narrow doctrine, confined to
“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 re
view and rejection of those judgments.” 544 U. S., at 284.
Although we have never addressed the precise question
before us, we have held Rooker-Feldman inapplicable where
the party against whom the doctrine is invoked was not a
party to the underlying state-court proceeding. See De
Grandy, supra, at 1006. In De Grandy, the State of Florida
sought, using Rooker-Feldman, to prevent the United States
from bringing a challenge under § 2 of the Voting Rights Act
of 1965 to the reapportionment of state electoral districts.
The Florida Supreme Court, in an action initiated by the

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state attorney general, had already declared the law valid
under state and federal law. We held that Rooker-Feldman
did not bar the United States from bringing its own action
in federal court because the United States “was not a party
in the state court,” and “was in no position to ask this Court
to review the state court’s judgment and has not directly
attacked it in this proceeding.” 512 U. S., at 1006.
In the case before us, the plaintiffs were plainly not parties
to the underlying state-court proceeding in Salazar. Sala
zar was an action brought by the state attorney general
against the secretary of state, in which the Colorado General
Assembly intervened. 79 P. 3d, at 1227. The four citizen
plaintiffs here did not participate in Salazar, and were not
in a “position to ask this Court to review the state court’s
judgment.” De Grandy, supra, at 1006; see Karcher v. May,
484 U. S. 72, 77 (1987) (“[T]he general rule [is] that one who
is not a party or has not been treated as a party to a judg
ment has no right to appeal therefrom”).
Although the District Court recognized the “general rule”
that “Rooker-Feldman may not be invoked against a
federal-court plaintiff who was not actually a party to the
prior state-court judgment,” 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1123, it nev
ertheless followed Tenth Circuit precedent in allowing ap
plication of Rooker-Feldman against parties who were in
privity with a party to the earlier state-court action, 379
F. Supp. 2d, at 1123 (citing Kenmen Eng. v. Union, 314 F. 3d
468, 481 (2002)). In determining whether privity existed,
the court looked to cases concerning the preclusive effect
that state courts are required to give federal-court judg
ments. 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1125 (citing Washington, 443
U. S., at 693, n. 32; Taxpayers of Tacoma, 357 U. S., at 340–
341). It concluded that—for Rooker-Feldman as well as
preclusion purposes—“the outcome of the government’s liti
gation over a matter of public concern binds its citizens.”
379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1125.

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The District Court erroneously conflated preclusion law
with Rooker-Feldman. Whatever the impact of privity
principles on preclusion rules, Rooker-Feldman is not simply
preclusion by another name. The doctrine applies only in
“limited circumstances,” Exxon Mobil, supra, at 291, where
a party in effect seeks to take an appeal of an unfavorable
state-court decision to a lower federal court. The Rooker-
Feldman doctrine does not bar actions by nonparties to the
earlier state-court judgment simply because, for purposes of
preclusion law, they could be considered in privity with a
party to the judgment.2
A more expansive Rooker-Feldman rule would tend to
supplant Congress’ mandate, under the Full Faith and Credit
Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1738, that federal courts “ ‘give the same
preclusive effect to state court judgments that those judg
ments would be given in the courts of the State from which
the judgments emerged.’ ” Baker v. General Motors Corp.,
522 U. S. 222, 246 (1998) (quoting Kremer v. Chemical Constr.
Corp., 456 U. S. 461, 466 (1982)); see Exxon Mobil, supra,
at 293. Congress has directed federal courts to look prin
cipally to state law in deciding what effect to give state
court judgments. Incorporation of preclusion principles
into Rooker-Feldman risks turning that limited doctrine
into a uniform federal rule governing the preclusive effect
of state-court judgments, contrary to the Full Faith and
Credit Act.3
2 In holding that Rooker-Feldman does not bar the plaintiffs here from
proceeding, we need not address whether there are any circumstances,
however limited, in which Rooker-Feldman may be applied against a party
not named in an earlier state proceeding—e. g., where an estate takes a
de facto appeal in a district court of an earlier state decision involving
the decedent.
3 Our holding also disposes of the claim, which the District Court did not
reach, that plaintiffs were barred by Rooker-Feldman because they were
in privity with the secretary of state, the other losing party in People ex
rel. Salazar v. Davidson, 79 P. 3d 1221 (Colo. 2003) (en banc). We do not
pass on the District Court’s resolution of the merits of the plaintiffs’ Peti
tion Clause claim.

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Stevens, J., dissenting
* * *
The judgment of the District Court is vacated, and the
case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with
this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Souter joins,
concurring.
I agree in full with the Court’s correction of the District
Court’s Rooker-Feldman error, and therefore join the
Court’s opinion. Although Justice Stevens has persua
sively urged that issue preclusion warrants affirmance, see
post, at 468–469 (dissenting opinion), that question of Colo
rado law seems to me best left for full airing and decision
on remand.
Justice Stevens, dissenting.
Rooker and Feldman are strange bedfellows. Rooker, a
unanimous, three-page opinion written by Justice Van De
vanter in 1923, correctly applied the simple legal proposition
that only this Court may exercise appellate jurisdiction over
state-court judgments. See Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co.,
263 U. S. 413, 416. Feldman, a nonunanimous, 25-page opin
ion written by Justice Brennan in 1983, was incorrectly de
cided and generated a plethora of confusion and debate
among scholars and judges.* See District of Columbia
*See, e. g., Comment, Collateral Estoppel and the Rooker-Feldman Doc
trine: The Problematic Effect These Preclusion and Jurisdictional Princi
ples Have on Bankruptcy Law, 21 Emory Bankr. Dev. J. 579 (2005); Com
ment, The Rooker-Feldman Doctrine: Toward a Workable Role, 149 U. Pa.
L. Rev. 1555 (2001); Proctor, Wirth, & Spencer, Rooker-Feldman and the
Jurisdictional Quandary, 2 Fla. Coastal L. J. 113 (2000); Rowley, Tenth
Circuit Survey, The Rooker-Feldman Doctrine: A Mere Superfluous Nu
ance or a Vital Civil Procedure Doctrine? An Analysis of the Tenth Cir
cuit’s Decision in Johnson v. Rodrigues, 78 Denver U. L. Rev. 321 (2000);
Symposium, The Rooker-Feldman Doctrine, 74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1081
(1999); Pfander, An Intermediate Solution to State Sovereign Immunity:
Federal Appellate Court Review of State-Court Judgments After Semi

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468 LANCE v. DENNIS
Stevens, J., dissenting
Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U. S. 462; id., at 488 (Ste
vens, J., dissenting). Last Term, in Justice Ginsburg’s
lucid opinion in Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus
tries Corp., 544 U. S. 280 (2005), the Court finally interred
the so-called “Rooker-Feldman doctrine.” And today, the
Court quite properly disapproves of the District Court’s re
suscitation of a doctrine that has produced nothing but mis
chief for 23 years.
My disagreement with the majority arises not from what
it actually decides, but from what it fails to address. Even
though the District Court mistakenly believed it had no ju
risdiction to hear this matter, its judgment dismissing the
cause with prejudice was correct and should be affirmed.
See Lance v. Davidson, 379 F. Supp. 2d 1117, 1132 (Colo.
2005). The Elections Clause claim advanced by citizen
appellants in this case is the same as that advanced by
their official representatives and decided by the Colorado
Supreme Court in People ex rel. Salazar v. Davidson, 79
P. 3d 1221, 1231–1232 (2003). See 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1126.
As appellee points out, appellants’ second question presented
“is literally the same question presented by the General
Assembly on certiorari review (and denied) in Salazar.”
Motion to Affirm 12. And, as a matter of Colorado law,
appellants are clearly in privity with both then-Colorado
Attorney General Salazar, who brought the suit on behalf
of the people of Colorado, and the Colorado General Assem
nole Tribe, 46 UCLA L. Rev. 161 (1998); Recent Case, Ninth Circuit Ig
nores Principles of Federalism and the Rooker-Feldman Doctrine: Bates
v. Jones, 131 F. 3d 843 (9th Cir. 1997) (en banc), 21 Harv. J. L. & Pub.
Pol’y 881 (1998); Schmucker, Possible Application of the Rooker-Feldman
Doctrine to State Agency Decisions: The Seventh Circuit’s Opinion in Van
Harken v. City of Chicago, 17 J. Nat. Assn. Admin. L. Judges 333 (1997);
Casenote, Texaco, Inc. v. Pennzoil Co.: Beyond a Crude Analysis of the
Rooker-Feldman Doctrine’s Preclusion of Federal Jurisdiction, 41 U.
Miami L. Rev. 627 (1987); Comment, Texaco, Inc. v. Pennzoil Co.: Some
Thoughts on the Limits of Federal Court Power Over State Court Pro
ceedings, 54 Ford. L. Rev. 767 (1986).

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Stevens, J., dissenting
bly, which was also a party to the Salazar litigation. See
McNichols v. City & County of Denver, 101 Colo. 316, 322,
74 P. 2d 99, 102 (1937) (en banc) (finding privity between
taxpayers seeking to challenge the validity of a bond issue
and a public official “charged with ministerial and executive
duties in connection” with the issuance of the bonds who al
ready brought such a suit); Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co. v.
Board of County Comm’rs of County of Fremont, 95 Colo.
435, 441, 37 P. 2d 761, 764 (1934) (en banc) (explaining that
taxpayers are in privity with a political division of the State
or its official representative if the case involves “a matter of
general interest to all the people”). Thus, all of the require
ments under Colorado law for issue preclusion have been
met, and appellants’ Elections Clause claim should therefore
be dismissed. See generally 28 U. S. C. § 1738; Michaelson
v. Michaelson, 884 P. 2d 695, 700–701 (Colo. 1994) (en banc)
(setting forth requirements for issue preclusion under Colo
rado law).
Appellants’ spurious Petition Clause claim was also prop
erly dismissed by the District Court. See 379 F. Supp. 2d,
at 1130–1132. Nothing in the Colorado Constitution pre
vents appellants from petitioning the Colorado General As
sembly with their grievances, id., at 1131; nothing in the
United States Constitution guarantees that such a petition
will be effective, Smith v. Highway Employees, 441 U. S.
463, 465 (1979) (per curiam); see also Minnesota State Bd.
for Community Colleges v. Knight, 465 U. S. 271, 285 (1984).
Moreover, as the District Court recognized, appellants’ in
terpretation of the Petition Clause would lead to absurd re
sults. See 379 F. Supp. 2d, at 1131–1132. As such, appel
lants’ Petition Clause claim was correctly dismissed because
it fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.
See generally Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6).
For the foregoing reasons I respectfully dissent.