Mo's Express, LLC v. Sopkin

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
PUBLISH
March 29, 2006
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
TENTH CIRCUIT

MO’S EXPRESS, LLC, doing business
as Mo’s Express; AMERICAN ALL
STAR SHUTTLE & LIMO, LLC,
doing business as Denver City
Express; DAVID RUBY, doing
business as Road Runner Express;
MOHAMMAD JAVID AMINI, doing
business as Flying J Shuttle; SHAHLA
SHAN, doing business as EZ
Transportation; CENTENNIAL CAB,
LLC, doing business as A + A Airport
Shuttle; AMERICAN SHUTTLE,
INC.,

Plaintiffs - Appellants,

and
No. 05-1036
ALL STATES SHUTTLE, LLC;
COLORADO EXPRESS AIRPORT
SHUTTLE, LLC; T&G, INC., doing
business as Denver Pro Express;
BELAYE T. DRESE, doing business
as Front Range Express, Inc.; MILE
HIGH EXPRESS
TRANSPORTATION, doing business
as Mile High Express; HANAREH
CORPORATION, doing business as
Advance Airport Shuttle,

Plaintiffs,
v.

GREGORY E. SOPKIN; POLLY
PAGE, in her official capacity as
 Commissioner Public Utilities
Commission of the State of Colorado;
CARL MILLER, in his official
capacity as Commissioner of Public
Utilities Commission of the State of
Colorado; PUBLIC UTILITIES
COMMISSION FOR THE STATE OF
COLORADO,

Defendants - Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Colorado
(D.C. No. 04-ES-1972 (PAC))

Richard S. Strauss of Hochstadt, Straw, Strauss & Silverman, P.C., Denver
Colorado (M. Andrew Andrade of the Law Offices of M. Andrew Andrade, Esq.,
Grenwood Village, Colorado with him on the briefs) for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Allison H. Eid, Solicitor General, Denver, Colorado (John W. Suthers, Attorney
General, and David A. Beckett, Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, on
the briefs) for Defendants-Appellees.

Before KELLY, HENRY, and McCONNELL, Circuit Judges.

McCONNELL, Circuit Judge.

Thirteen individuals and companies that provide shuttle service to and from

the Denver International Airport filed suit on September 23, 2004 against the

Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and its three commissioners in their

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official capacities. The Plaintiffs sought to enjoin the PUC from taking

enforcement action against them for failure to obtain a certificate of public

convenience and necessity issued by the state. They presented two legal theories:

first, that certificates granted to each Plaintiff by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety

Administration authorized their provision of transportation services, preempting

contrary state law requirements, and that the PUC lacked jurisdiction to determine

whether they were in compliance with their federal certificates; and second, that

the PUC had threatened enforcement action against the Plaintiffs “because each of

them are [sic] minorities or foreign born nationals,” in violation of the Equal

Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. App. 7–10.

In December 2004, the district court dismissed the Complaint for lack of

jurisdiction based on the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See Rooker v. Fid. Trust

Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923); D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462

(1983). In March 2005, while this appeal was pending, the Supreme Court

decided Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Industries Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 125 S.

Ct. 1517 (2005), which substantially narrowed the scope of Rooker-Feldman.

Then in February 2006, following oral argument in this appeal, the Court decided

Lance v. Dennis, 126 S. Ct. 1198 (2006), which clarified the role of “privity”

between parties in evaluating the district court’s jurisdiction under Rooker-

Feldman. Based on those decisions as well as our Rooker-Feldman case law, we

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REVERSE the judgment of the district court and REMAND the case for further

proceedings.

I. Facts and Procedural History

Colorado law provides that any carrier operating a motor vehicle for

purposes of transporting persons on public highways in intrastate commerce must

first obtain a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) from the

PUC. See C.R.S. § 40-10-104(1). Although they do not possess a state-issued

CPCN, some shuttle operators—including each of the Plaintiffs in this

case—provide transportation services to and from the Denver International

Airport based on federal certificates, issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety

Administration. These certificates authorize transportation services along certain

interstate routes. Cf. Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1, 209–10 (1824)

(holding that a federal license to transport passengers in interstate commerce

preempts state law prohibiting such transportation without a state license). Each

federal certificate contains a “CONDITION” that the carrier is “authorized to

provide intrastate passenger transportation service under this certificate only if the

carrier also provides substantial regularly scheduled interstate passenger

transportation service on the same route.” App. 14 (emphasis in original).

Beginning in 1999, the PUC issued a series of penalty notices to some of

these federally certificated carriers, alleging that they were conducting extensive

intrastate business without providing the regularly scheduled interstate services,

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as required by their federal certificates. While review of those penalty notices

was still pending in state court, a group of four carriers consisting of Trans

Shuttle, Inc., Hallelujah Shuttle, Ethio Shuttle, and Galaxy Shuttle—none of

which is a party to this action—filed suit in federal court against the PUC and

other defendants, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The district court

declined to exercise jurisdiction on Younger abstention grounds, citing the

pending proceedings in state court. See Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971);

Middlesex County Ethics Comm. v. Garden State Bar Ass’n, 457 U.S. 423 (1982).

In an unpublished order in November 2001, this Court affirmed the abstention

decision. See Trans Shuttle, Inc. v. Pub. Utils. Comm’n, 24 F. App’x 856 (10th

Cir. 2001).

The state court proceedings culminated in a May 2004 decision of the

Colorado Supreme Court, which upheld the PUC’s jurisdiction over carriers

transporting passengers in intrastate commerce. See Trans Shuttle, Inc. v. Pub.

Utils. Comm’n, 89 P.3d 398, 404–06 (Colo. 2004) (“Trans Shuttle”). The court

also affirmed the PUC’s imposition of fines against the three carriers that were

parties to the state-court appeal: Trans Shuttle, Inc., Mo’s Express, LLC, and

Hallelujah Shuttle. See id. at 409. In reaching its decision, the Colorado

Supreme Court considered and specifically rejected the federal preemption and

jurisdiction arguments raised by the Plaintiffs in this action. See id. at 404–06.

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 On August 16, 2004, the PUC sent a letter to each of the thirteen Plaintiffs

in this action. The letters described the Colorado Supreme Court’s holding in

Trans Shuttle, and stated that “the PUC intends to go to court to ask for an

injunction to halt the operations of any motor carrier transporting passengers to

and from Denver International Airport (DIA) on an intrastate basis . . . without

actual, substantial and bona fide interstate operations in full compliance with the

carrier’s federal certificate.” App. 47. The letters also announced that the PUC

“intends to go to court to ask for an injunction against [the named Plaintiff]

unless [the named Plaintiff] provides proof to the PUC of its 2004 for-hire

interstate passenger transportation operations . . . . [within] 30 days from the date

of this letter.” Id.

In September 2004, the Plaintiffs commenced this federal action seeking

declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent the PUC from going to court as

threatened in its letters. They did not seek money damages. They argued, first,

that the PUC lacked jurisdiction to impose penalties because federal law

authorized them to provide transportation services. According to the Plaintiffs,

only a federal authority—not a state agency—has jurisdiction to revoke their

certificates for failure to satisfy the conditions. Second, they argued that the

PUC’s actions reflected discrimination against businesses with minority and

foreign-born owners and operators.

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 One of the Plaintiffs in this action, Mo’s Express, was also a losing party to

the state court judgment in Trans Shuttle. With one possible exception, the other

twelve Plaintiffs--All States Shuttle, Colorado Express Airport Shuttle, Denver

Pro Express, Front Range Express, Mile High Express, Denver City Express,

Road Runner Express, Flying J Shuttle, EZ Transportation, Advance Airport

Shuttle, A+ Airport Shuttle, and American Shuttle--had no involvement in the

Trans Shuttle litigation. 1

The district court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds, citing the

Rooker-Feldman doctrine. The Plaintiffs had made it “clear,” according to the

district court, that “their intentions in filing in this court is [sic] to void the ruling

of the Colorado Supreme Court” in Trans Shuttle, and thus to take a de facto

appeal in federal district court from a judgment by a state court. Order of

Dismissal 12. Although it acknowledged that Mo’s Express is the only Plaintiff

in this case that was also party to Trans Shuttle, the district court found that the

Plaintiffs’ claims had been “fully presented” in the state court proceedings “by

the shuttle operators who were named in the state action.” Id. at 14. The court

concluded that “the identity of interest of all the operators has remained the same

At oral argument, the Defendants stated that Colorado Express Airport
1

Shuttle had litigation in the Colorado courts that was stayed pending the outcome
of Trans Shuttle and has since become final. For the reasons set forth in Part
II.B, we need not determine whether Colorado Express Airport Shuttle was in fact
bound by the judgment in Trans Shuttle or by another final judgment of the
Colorado courts.

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throughout.” Id. at 16. It also found that the Plaintiffs “have always been in

privity with one another in their joint commitment to the same claims and

arguments.” Id. It therefore applied the jurisdictional bar of Rooker-Feldman

against all Plaintiffs, even those who were not parties to the state court action.

We review the district court’s dismissal for lack of subject matter

jurisdiction de novo, and any factual findings relevant to the court’s jurisdiction

for clear error. Merrill Lynch Bus. Fin. Servs., Inc. v. Nudell, 363 F.3d 1072,

1074 (10th Cir. 2004).

II. Rooker-Feldman

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not reflect a constitutional limitation on

the lower federal courts. See The Federalist No. 82, at 494 (Alexander Hamilton)

(Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961) (“I perceive at present no impediment to the

establishment of an appeal from the State courts to the subordinate national

tribunals; and many advantages attending the power of doing it may be

imagined.”). Instead, it arises by negative inference from 28 U.S.C. § 1257(a),

which allows parties to state court judgments to seek direct review in the Supreme

Court of the United States, but not to appeal to the lower federal courts.

Crutchfield v. Countrywide Home Loans, 389 F.3d 1144, 1147 (10th Cir. 2004).

Rooker-Feldman precludes federal district courts from effectively exercising

appellate jurisdiction over claims “actually decided by a state court” and claims

“‘inextricably intertwined’ with a prior state-court judgment.” Kenmen Eng’g v.

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City of Union, 314 F.3d 468, 473 (10th Cir. 2002) (citing Rooker, 263 U.S. at

415–16, and Feldman, 460 U.S. at 483 n.16).

The operation of Rooker-Feldman is best demonstrated by the two cases

that give the doctrine its name. In Rooker, the federal-court plaintiffs alleged that

the judgment of an Indiana circuit court, to which they were parties, had caused

them injury by enforcing a state statute in violation of the Contracts Clause and

due process protections of the United States Constitution. Rooker, 263 U.S. at

414–15. In federal court they sought relief “in equity to have [the] judgment . . .

declared null and void.” Id. at 414. The Supreme Court held that because “[t]he

jurisdiction possessed by the District Courts is strictly original,” not appellate, the

district court lacked jurisdiction over the claim, which was “indubitably . . .

merely an attempt to get rid of the judgment for alleged errors of law.” Id. at

416. In Feldman, the federal-court plaintiffs alleged (1) that the District of

Columbia Court of Appeals had caused them injury by denying their petitions for

bar membership “arbitrarily and capriciously . . . unreasonably and

discriminatorily,” and (2) that one of the court’s general rules, Rule 46 I(b)(3)

concerning proof of legal education to establish eligibility for the D.C. bar,

violated due process and the federal antitrust laws. Feldman, 460 U.S. at 468,

486–87. They sought injunctive relief to compel the District of Columbia Court

of Appeals to grant them bar admission or to allow them to sit for the bar

immediately, as well as declaratory relief announcing that the court’s policies

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were unconstitutional. Id. at 468–69. The Supreme Court held that the federal

district court lacked jurisdiction to review the plaintiffs’ applications, but that it

could properly exercise jurisdiction over their “general attack on the

constitutionality of Rule 46 I(b)(3).” Id. at 486–87.

Both Rooker and Feldman were “cases brought by state-court losers

complaining of injuries caused by state-court judgments . . . and inviting district

court review and rejection of those judgments.” Exxon Mobil, 125 S. Ct. at

1521–22. As the Supreme Court observed in Exxon Mobil, however, lower courts

have at times construed the Rooker-Feldman doctrine “to extend far beyond the

contours of the Rooker and Feldman cases.” Id. at 1521. In particular, some

circuit courts—including this one—have occasionally treated Rooker-Feldman as

a substitute for ordinary principles of preclusion, or as an extension of the various

grounds for abstention by federal courts. Id. at 1522. In Exxon Mobil, the

Supreme Court sought to curb these excesses and “confined” Rooker-Feldman “to

cases of the kind from which the doctrine acquired its name.” Id. at 1521. In

Lance, the Court again emphasized “the narrowness of the Rooker-Feldman rule.”

126 S. Ct. at 1201.

In two respects, assertion of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine in this case

epitomizes the expansive view that the Supreme Court repudiated in Exxon Mobil.

First, the district court applied Rooker-Feldman against all of the Plaintiffs,

despite the fact that most of them were not party to the state-court judgment in

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Trans Shuttle. Second, the district court found Rooker-Feldman applicable

despite the fact that the Plaintiffs sought only prospective relief challenging the

constitutionality of the PUC’s jurisdiction to take future action. Under our pre-

Exxon Mobil case law, both holdings were questionable; after Exxon Mobil and

Lance, they are incorrect.

A. Applying Rooker-Feldman Against Nonparties

This Court has repeatedly held that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine “should

not be applied against non-parties” to the state-court judgment. Johnson v.

Rodrigues (Orozco), 226 F.3d 1103, 1109 (10th Cir. 2000) (citing Johnson v. De

Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1005 (1994)); Johnson v. Riddle, 305 F.3d 1107, 1116

(10th Cir. 2002) (calling this rule “well settled”). Rooker-Feldman, after all, bars

federal district courts from exercising appellate jurisdiction over state-court

judgments, and “a person would generally have no basis (or right) to appeal a

judgment to which that person was not a party.” Kenmen Eng’g, 314 F.3d at 480.

The Supreme Court appeared to endorse this view in Exxon Mobil, characterizing

its decision in De Grandy as holding that “the doctrine has no application to a

federal suit brought by a nonparty to the state suit.” Exxon Mobil, 125 S. Ct. at

1523.

In Lance, the Court explicitly held that Rooker-Feldman does not apply

against nonparties to the prior judgment in state court. Lance, 126 S. Ct. at 1202.

The case involved a federal suit brought by citizens concerning legislative

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redistricting in Colorado. Id. at 1199. A three-judge district held that it lacked

jurisdiction because of a prior state-court action in which the Colorado General

Assembly pressed similar claims and lost. See Lance v. Davidson, 379 F. Supp.

2d 1117, 1125 (D. Colo. 2005), rev’d sub nom. Lance, 126 S. Ct. at 1202–03.

Specifically, the panel concluded that Rooker-Feldman applies not only against

parties to the state-court judgment, but against anyone “in privity with parties to

the original state-court suit.” Id. at 1123. 2 Noting that “when a state government

litigates a matter of public concern, that state’s citizens will be deemed to be in

privity with the government for preclusion purposes,” the panel held that although

2
In support of this proposition, the panel relied on our decision in Kenmen
Engineering. See Lance v. Davidson, 379 F. Supp. 2d at 1123 (citing Kenmen
Eng’g, 314 F.3d at 481). In fact, Kenmen Engineering did not hold that Rooker-
Feldman extends to all parties in privity with a state-court loser. Rather, it
clarified that the “parties” to a state-court judgment for Rooker-Feldman purposes
include all persons directly bound by the state-court judgment, whether or not
they appear in the case caption. See Kenmen Eng’g, 314 F.3d at 481 (applying
Rooker-Feldman where the federal court plaintiffs were the agents of a
corporation, and the state court had issued an injunction against the corporation
“by and through its officers, agents, servants, employees, attorneys, or
representatives”). Kenmen Engineering did not retreat from the general
proposition that nonparties, so defined, are not affected by the jurisdictional bar
of Rooker-Feldman.
Thus, although the Supreme Court in Lance reversed a panel decision that
nominally “followed Tenth Circuit precedent,” see Lance, 126 S. Ct. at 1202
(citing Kenmen Eng’g, 314 F.3d at 481), the Court reversed only the district
court’s misapplication of Kenmen Engineering. It did not necessarily repudiate
the narrow holding of Kenmen Engineering concerning parties directly bound by
the state-court judgment—who would seem to fall squarely within the definition
of “state-court losers.” See Exxon Mobil, 125 S. Ct. at 1521.

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the citizen plaintiffs were not parties to the prior judgment in state court, Rooker-

Feldman operated to deprive the district court of jurisdiction. Id. at 1125.

The Supreme Court reversed, emphasizing that in De Grandy it had

declined to apply Rooker-Feldman when the federal-court plaintiff “‘was not a

party in the state court,’ and ‘was in no position to ask this Court to review the

state court’s judgment.’” Lance, 126 S. Ct. at 1202 (quoting De Grandy, 512 U.S.

at 1006). By asking whether the citizens were “in privity” with the General

Assembly, “[t]he District Court erroneously conflated preclusion law with

Rooker-Feldman.” Id. Although Lance leaves room for an extremely limited

form of privity analysis—for example, in cases “where an estate takes a de facto

appeal in a district court of an earlier state decision involving the decedent,” id. at

1202 n.2—it broadly rejects the use of preclusion principles in determining the

scope of Rooker-Feldman. Id. at 1202–03 (noting that “Rooker-Feldman is not

simply preclusion by another name” and that “[i]ncorporation 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”).

The district court in this case relied extensively on Keller v. Davidson, 299

F. Supp. 2d 1171 (D. Colo. 2004), another decision by a three-judge district court

as part of continuing litigation over redistricting in Colorado. Based on the same

prior state-court judgment at issue in Lance, the Keller panel applied Rooker-

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Feldman against the Governor of Colorado because “the Governor’s claimed

interest in the primacy of the legislative lawmaking process in congressional

redistricting places him in privity with the General Assembly.” Id. at 1177. The

Court’s decision in Lance undermines not only the reasoning of Keller but its

general technique of commingling res judicata and Rooker-Feldman principles.

Exxon Mobil and Lance make the disposition of this appeal straightforward

for almost all of the Plaintiffs. Only one of the Plaintiffs, Mo’s Express, was a

party to the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court in Trans Shuttle. With a

possible exception noted in footnote 1, the other Plaintiffs had no connection

whatsoever to the Trans Shuttle case. They were not parties, they were not bound

by the judgment, and they were neither predecessors nor successors in interest to

the parties. The other Plaintiffs were nothing more than competitors of the

shuttle operators who were party to Trans Shuttle. That relationship falls far

short of the connection necessary under Rooker-Feldman to characterize their

action in federal court as an appeal of the state-court judgment.

The district court found that “the identity of interest of all of the operators

has remained the same throughout” because “they have always been in privity

with one another in their joint commitment to the same claims and arguments.”

Order of Dismissal 16. The factual basis for this conclusion is uncertain, as there

is no evidence to suggest that the other Plaintiffs actually consulted with the

Trans Shuttle parties before the state court litigation began to coordinate their

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claims and arguments. As far as the record discloses, the other Plaintiffs became

involved only after receiving letters threatening an injunction against the

operation of their businesses. In any case, a “commitment” to the same claims

and arguments has no bearing on the applicability of Rooker-Feldman. See Exxon

Mobil, 125 S. Ct. at 1524 n.2 (rejecting the argument that Rooker-Feldman

applies to “federal actions that simply raise claims previously litigated in state

court”); cf. Kenmen Eng’g, 314 F.3d at 478–79 (declining to incorporate a “full-

and-fair-opportunity-to-litigate inquiry into the Rooker-Feldman analysis”

because it “tends to blur the distinction between res judicata and Rooker-

Feldman”).

In crafting its expansive “in privity” standard, the district court sought to

prevent the shuttle operators from employing an “artifice” whereby “groups of

individuals like these plaintiffs could easily avoid the application of the Rooker-

Feldman bar by merely naming only a part of the group in the state proceedings,

presenting the names of new individuals in the federal case.” Order of Dismissal

16. We doubt that anything so conspiratorial took place in this case, considering

that the state-court proceedings involved operators who already had been fined by

the PUC, whereas this suit involves operators who were only recently threatened

with legal action. But even if the district court’s account is accurate, any

“group[] of individuals” faced with the same legal problem is free to pursue

different avenues of relief. As the Supreme Court emphasized in Exxon Mobil,

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125 S. Ct. at 1521, federal and state courts hold concurrent jurisdiction over

federal claims. To the extent that strategic behavior by similarly situated parties

is a concern, the proper safeguard against relitigation is res judicata, not Rooker-

Feldman.

Because only Mo’s Express was a party to the Colorado Supreme Court

judgment in Trans Shuttle, the district court erred in applying Rooker-Feldman

against the remaining Plaintiffs.

B. Evaluating the Relief Requested in Federal Court

Even against the parties to a state-court judgment, Rooker-Feldman only

applies when the injury alleged by the plaintiffs was “caused by [the] state-court

judgment[].” Id. at 1521–22. As we explained in our pre-Exxon Mobil case law,

“we approach the question by asking whether the state-court judgment caused,

actually and proximately, the injury for which the federal-court plaintiff seeks

redress,” paying “close attention to the relief sought” in the federal suit. Kenmen

Eng’g, 314 F.3d at 476 (emphasis in original, footnote omitted). In Kenmen

Engineering, for example, an Oklahoma court had issued an injunction that forced

a firm and its agents to sell magnesium “at a discounted rate, resulting in

economic loss.” Id. at 472. The firm’s agents filed suit in federal court, alleging

that the injunction itself violated their rights under federal law, and requesting

money damages as compensation for the forced sale. Id. at 477. Emphasizing

that the plaintiffs had not requested “any form of prospective declaratory

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injunctive relief,” this Court held that Rooker-Feldman deprived the district court

of jurisdiction: the requested relief “would necessarily undo the Oklahoma state

court’s judgment” because it would “place them back in the position they

occupied prior to the [injunction].” Id.

In contrast, when the relief sought by the plaintiffs would not reverse or

“undo” the state-court judgment, Rooker-Feldman does not apply. Feldman itself

distinguished “general constitutional challenges to state laws,” which by

definition “are not attacks on state court judgments.” Crutchfield, 389 F.3d at

1149; see Rodriguez (Orozco), 226 F.3d at 1108 (finding Rooker-Feldman

inapplicable to a “discrete general challenge to the validity of the Utah adoption

laws” that did not “challeng[e] the merits of a particular state court ruling”); ANR

Pipeline Co. v. Lafaver, 150 F.3d 1178, 1186 n.8 (10th Cir. 1998) (finding

Rooker-Feldman inapplicable where the federal complaint “does not contest the

finality of the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision”). As the Supreme Court

emphasized in Exxon Mobil, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not apply “simply

because a party attempts to litigate in federal court a matter previously litigated in

state court.” 125 S. Ct. at 1527. To the contrary, a party may lose in state court

and then raise precisely the same legal issues in federal court, so long as the relief

sought in the federal action would not reverse or undo the relief granted by the

state court: “If a federal plaintiff ‘present[s] some independent claim, albeit one

that denies a legal conclusion that a state court has reached in a case to which he

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was a party . . . , then there is jurisdiction . . . .’” Id. (quoting GASH Assocs. v.

Village of Rosemont, 995 F.2d 726, 728 (7th Cir. 1993)).

Mo’s Express, like the other Plaintiffs, has requested only prospective

injunctive and declaratory relief that would prevent the PUC from exercising

jurisdiction over them in the future. See App. 10. Both of its claims amount to

“general constitutional challenges” to the jurisdiction of the PUC: first, that

federal law preempts the state’s jurisdiction pursuant to the Supremacy Clause;

and second, that the PUC has exercised its jurisdiction in a discriminatory fashion

in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Neither claim would disrupt the judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court. The

Trans Shuttle decision simply “upheld penalties assessed against [the parties,

including Mo’s Express,] by the Public Utilities Commission.” Trans Shuttle, 89

P.3d at 400 (characterizing the decision below, which the Colorado Supreme

Court affirmed). The Plaintiffs in this action have not requested money damages

that would compensate them for the amount of those penalties. Nor have they

requested retrospective relief that would invalidate any past action of the PUC.

Accordingly, their federal suit would not reverse or otherwise “undo” the relief

granted by the Colorado Supreme Court, and Rooker-Feldman does not operate to

deprive the district court of jurisdiction.

To be sure, Mo’s Express has asked the federal courts to accept a legal

argument that was specifically rejected in its earlier lawsuit in state court. If the

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Plaintiffs eventually prevail on the merits, the Colorado courts will have held that

the PUC can exercise jurisdiction, while the federal courts will have held that it

cannot. That result should not be alarming, however, because state and federal

courts enjoy concurrent jurisdiction over questions of federal law, and the

possibility of inconsistent rulings on issues of federal law is a predictable, if

infrequent, consequence of our dual system. A federal court is free to “den[y] a

legal conclusion that a state court has reached,” provided it does not exercise de

facto appellate jurisdiction by entertaining a suit that would disrupt the final

judgment entered by the state court. GASH Assocs., 995 F.2d at 728. Because the

prospective relief requested by the Plaintiffs would not undo the penalties

imposed by the state court judgment, the district court erred in applying the

Rooker-Feldman doctrine, even against Mo’s Express.

III. Conclusion

Although we disagree with the district court’s Rooker-Feldman analysis, we

express no view as to the alternative grounds for dismissal raised by the

Defendants. The Trans Shuttle case may well have some preclusive effect in

federal court, for example, and the Plaintiffs as always must establish a justiciable

case or controversy, ripe for federal review. Because the district court based its

dismissal exclusively on Rooker-Feldman, and these other arguments were not

briefed by both sides, we think it best to allow the district court to consider them

in the first instance. See Lance, 126 S. Ct. at 1203 (Ginsburg, J., concurring)

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(finding questions of preclusion under Colorado law “best left for full airing and

decision on remand”). We also express no view on the merits of the underlying

preemption and discrimination claims.

We REVERSE the judgment of the district court and REMAND the case

for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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