Barbara Allen v. Irmco Management Com

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
• Decided: May 6, 2011
• Docket: 10-2790
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted May 4, 2011* Decided May 5, 2011

By the Court:

No. 10-2790

BARBARA A. ALLEN, Appeal from the United States District Plaintiff-Appellant, Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. v. No. 09 C 79 IRMCO MANAGEMENT COMPANY, Robert W. Gettleman, Defendant-Appellee. Judge.

ORDER

Barbara Allen appeals the district court’s dismissal of her Fair Housing Act (FHA) action for lack of jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. We affirm.

Allen, who used to live in a building owned by IRMCO Management Company, suffers from a disability that causes fits of dementia and other symptoms. In this FHA suit, see 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(1), (2), she claims that IRMCO refused to negotiate changes in her lease, wrongly accused her of falling behind on rent, and evicted her, all because of her disability. She seeks damages for costs incurred looking for new housing, emotional distress on being tossed out, and the value of property that she says was destroyed when the sheriff executed an Illinois court’s eviction order. As relevant here, the district court dismissed her

* After examining the briefs and record, we have concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. Thus, the appeal is submitted on the briefs and record. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). No. 10-2790 Page 2

complaint under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983); Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923). The doctrine explains that Congress has not authorized any federal court other than the Supreme Court to review state-court judgments. See 28 U.S.C. § 1257; Exxon-Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 283-84 (2005); Gilbert v. Ill. State Bd. of Educ., 591 F.3d 896, 900 (7th Cir. 2010).

On appeal Allen asserts that the district court wrongly applied Rooker-Feldman to her discrimination claim because, she says, she did not raise the claim in the state-court eviction proceeding. But as the district court recognized, Rooker-Feldman is not limited to claims actually raised in state court. Feldman, 460 U.S. at 482 n.16; Long v. Shorebank Dev. Corp., 182 F.3d 548, 557 (7th Cir. 1999). Although there is some question whether a plaintiff like Allen could escape the rule of Rooker-Feldman if she lacked a “reasonable opportunity” to raise her discrimination claim as a defense to the eviction, compare Gilbert, 591 F.3d at 901-02, Casale v. Tillman, 558 F.3d 1258, 1260 (11th Cir. 2009), and Long, 182 F.3d at 557-58, with Kelley v. Med- 1 Solutions, LLC, 548 F.3d 600, 607 (7th Cir. 2008), and Abbott v. Michigan, 474 F.3d 324, 330 (6th Cir. 2007), she makes no argument on this point, nor does she dispute the district court’s conclusion that discrimination claims are “germane” to the issue of possession in Illinois, 735 ILCS 5/9-106, and may thus be used to defend against eviction, Long, 182 F.3d at 559; People ex rel. Dep’t of Trans. v. Walliser, 629 N.E.2d 1189, 1196 (Ill. App. 1994); Marine Park Assocs. v. Johnson, 274 N.E.2d 645 (Ill. App. 1971).

Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court, and DENY as unnecessary Allen’s motion to certify questions of state law to the Illinois Supreme Court.