UBEROI v. LABARGA

Filing 42

ORDER OF DISMISSAL - 39 The report and recommendation is accepted. The motion to dismiss, ECF No. 30 , is granted. The clerk must enter judgment and close the file. Signed by JUDGE ROBERT L HINKLE on 8/18/2017. (vkm)

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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
TALLAHASSEE DIVISION

BARBARA U. UBEROI,
Plaintiff,
v.

CASE NO. 4:16cv638-RH/CAS

JORGE LABARGA, in his
capacity as Chief Justice of
the Florida Supreme Court,
Defendant.
_____________________________/
ORDER OF DISMISSAL
The plaintiff challenges on due-process grounds the Florida Supreme
Court’s rejection of her application for admission to the Florida Bar. The defendant
has moved to dismiss. This order grants the motion, partly based on the RookerFeldman doctrine, and partly for lack of standing under City of Los Angeles v.
Lyons, 461 U.S. 95 (1983).

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I. Background
The plaintiff Barbara U. Uberoi applied for admission to the Florida Bar.
The Florida Board of Bar Examiners alleged that she had engaged in prior
misconduct that rendered her unfit. After an evidentiary hearing, Ms. Uberoi and
the Board entered an agreement calling for her conditional admission on specific
terms. The agreement was expressly subject to approval by the Florida Supreme
Court, which has plenary authority over admission decisions.
The Florida Supreme Court did not approve the agreement. Instead, the court
denied Ms. Uberoi’s application. The court said she could apply again in three
years. And the court said that on any new application, Ms. Uberoi would be
required to demonstrate sufficient rehabilitation.
Ms. Uberoi filed an action against the Florida Supreme Court in the Middle
District of Florida. The court dismissed the action. Ms. Uberoi appealed. The
Eleventh Circuit affirmed based on the Eleventh Amendment. This was hardly
surprising. See Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996) (holding that
a state sued in its own name has Eleventh Amendment immunity, regardless of the
relief sought, unless the immunity has been waived or validly abrogated by
Congress).
Ms. Uberoi next filed this action, again in the Middle District, naming as a
defendant only the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court in his official

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capacity. Ms. Uberoi asserts that the Florida Supreme Court rejected her agreement
with the Board of Bar Examiners without affording her notice and an opportunity
to be heard on the issue of whether the agreement should be approved. Ms. Uberoi
demands two forms of relief: first, notice and an opportunity to be heard on the
issue already decided by the Florida Supreme Court; and second, invalidation of
rules that she says allowed the denial of due process.
The Middle District transferred the action to this court. The Chief Justice has
moved to dismiss. The motion is before the court on the magistrate judge’s report
and recommendation, ECF No. 39, and the objections, ECF No. 40. I have
reviewed de novo the issues raised by the objections.
The recommendation is for dismissal of the complaint. This order accepts
the recommendation but gets there through somewhat different reasoning.
II. Eleventh Amendment
As Ms. Uberoi correctly notes, a claim for prospective relief against a state
official with a role in a constitutional violation is not barred by the Eleventh
Amendment. This is the holding of Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908). Ms.
Uberoi’s demand for notice and an opportunity to be heard is a demand for
prospective relief—she seeks an injunction requiring the Florida Supreme Court to
provide notice and an opportunity to be heard, not a payment of damages or other

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compensation for a past denial. The same is true of the demand to invalidate the
allegedly offending rules.
To be sure, Ms. Uberoi’s claim arises from a past violation—she says she
was denied notice and an opportunity to be heard in the past—but that is neither
unusual nor a basis for disallowing an Ex parte Young claim. Many, probably
most, claims for prospective relief are based on past violations. Thus a plaintiff
seeking admission to a school on the ground of racial discrimination—a
prototypical Ex parte Young claim—has usually been denied admission in the past,
but the case may go forward because the plaintiff seeks admission in the future.
See, e.g., Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003). The same is true here: Ms.
Uberoi seeks notice and an opportunity to be heard in the future, albeit on an
application that was denied in the past.
III. Necessary Parties
Ms. Uberoi has named as a defendant only the Chief Justice, not the other
members of the court. In Florida, the Supreme Court makes admission decisions
and adopts the rules that govern the consideration of an application. The Chief
Justice does not do this unilaterally.
This is not, however, a basis for dismissal. If the case could otherwise go
forward, this procedural defect could be cured by joining the other justices.

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IV. Rooker-Feldman
Ms. Uberoi’s demand for an order requiring the Florida Supreme Court to
provide her notice and an opportunity to be heard is a direct attack on the Florida
Supreme Court’s decision denying her application. If, as she claims, the court
denied her due process, its decision would properly be reversed on review by a
higher court. But the only higher court with authority to review decisions of the
Florida Supreme Court is the United States Supreme Court. An appeal from a
Florida Supreme Court decision does not lie to a United States District Court. This
long-settled principle is known as the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.
The Supreme Court has put it this way: federal district courts cannot hear
“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 review and rejection of those judgments.” Exxon Mobil Corp. v.
Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005). See also Rooker v. Fidelity
Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923); D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462
(1983).
Ms. Uberoi is a state-court loser. The Florida Supreme Court ruled against
her. As the Eleventh Circuit has recognized time and again, this was a judicial
decision fully subject to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See, e.g., Doe v. Florida
Bar, 630 F.3d 1336, 1341 (11th Cir. 2011) (affirming the district court’s dismissal

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of as-applied challenges to the Florida Bar’s certification rules); Berman v. Fla.
Bd. of Bar Exam’rs, 794 F.2d 1529 (11th Cir. 1986) (applying Feldman to affirm
the district court’s dismissal of an action challenging denial of admission to the
Florida Bar). And Ms. Uberoi is complaining of injuries caused by the state-court
judgment—the denial of due process that allegedly led to the decision and to her
continuing exclusion from the Florida Bar.
This claim is dead center of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.
V. Standing
The same is not true of Ms. Uberoi’s attack on the rules governing bar
proceedings. As the Supreme Court recognized in Feldman, an attack on
procedures generally, rather than just on their application in a specific case, is not
tantamount to an appeal from a specific decision. Feldman, 460 U.S. at 486. Such
an attack on procedures generally is not barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.
Ms. Uberoi’s rules claim is, however, barred by another principle. Even
when a plaintiff has been subjected to a constitutional violation in the past, the
plaintiff has standing to seek injunctive relief against future violations only if there
is a “sufficient likelihood that he will again be wronged in a similar way.” City of
Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 102, 111 (1983). There the Court held that Mr.
Lyons, who had been subjected to a chokehold in the past, had no standing to seek
injunctive relief against the city’s practice of using chokeholds. The Eleventh

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Circuit applied the same principle in Malowney v. Federal Collection Deposit
Group, 193 F.3d 1342, 1346 (11th Cir. 1999), holding that the plaintiffs did not
have standing to assert a due-process attack on a Florida garnishment procedure
that was unlikely to affect the plaintiffs again.
The Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Ms. Uberoi’s case—a decision
that, under Rooker-Feldman, Ms. Uberoi cannot challenge in this proceeding—
prevents her from reapplying for admission to the Florida Bar for three years. She
has not alleged she intends to reapply. But even if she does, the possibility is
remote that these same challenged provisions will again come into play. These
provisions would come into play only if Ms. Uberoi again reached an agreement
with the Board of Bar Examiners and again did not seek and obtain leave to present
whatever arguments she wished to present in support of her position. The
likelihood that this will occur seems at least as remote as the likelihood that Mr.
Lyons would again be subjected to a chokehold or that the plaintiffs in Malowney
would again be subjected to the challenged garnishment procedure.
VI. Conclusion
For these reasons,
IT IS ORDERED:
1. The report and recommendation is accepted.
2. The motion to dismiss, ECF No. 30, is granted.

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3. The plaintiff’s claims are dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, partly under
the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and partly for lack of standing.
4. The clerk must enter judgment and close the file.
SO ORDERED on August 18, 2017.
s/Robert L. Hinkle
United States District Judge

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