NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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 11, 2015*
Decided May 11, 2015
Before
JOEL M. FLAUM, Circuit Judge
MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge
ANN CLAIRE WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge
No. 14‐3673
YASMEEN STURDIVANT, Appeal from the United States District
Plaintiff‐Appellant, Court for the Northern District of Illinois,
Eastern Division.
v.
No. 14 C 8402
SELECT PORTFOLIO SERVICING,
INC., and U.S. BANK, NATIONAL John J. Tharp, Jr.,
ASSOCIATION, Judge.
Defendants‐Appellees.
O R D E R
Yasmeen Sturdivant filed this action against Select Portfolio Servicing and
U.S. Bank after the mortgage on her house in Crete, Illinois, was foreclosed. She alleged
that the “foreclosing entity” (which she never identified) did not hold the note or
mortgage at the time of the foreclosure. Sturdivant sought to quiet title to the property
under state law and claimed that the defendants had violated the Constitution of the
* 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. 14‐3673 Page 2
United States. The district court recognized the federal claim to be insubstantial and,
unable to discern another basis for subject‐matter jurisdiction, dismissed Sturdivant’s
complaint without prejudice. Sturdivant then amended her complaint to add a single
sentence asserting that the two financial institutions were state actors. This time, the
court dismissed the amended complaint without prejudice and also dismissed the case,
explaining that Sturdivant had not set out a basis for either diversity or federal‐question
jurisdiction. Her allegation that these defendants are state actors, the court reasoned, is
too implausible even to invoke the court’s jurisdiction.
On appeal Sturdivant argues that she said enough to allege state action. Neither
her amended complaint nor her brief offers any explanation whatsoever of how the
defendants, both private parties, engaged in state action, and, though her brief identifies
several means by which a private party might do so, none of these theories is remotely
relevant to her lawsuit. See generally Rodriguez v. Plymouth Ambulance Serv., 577 F.3d 816,
822–24 (7th Cir. 2009). Sturdivant’s § 1983 claim is thus “wholly insubstantial and
frivolous” and therefore does not invoke the court’s federal‐question jurisdiction.
See McCoy v. Iberdrola Renewables, Inc., 760 F.3d 674, 681 (7th Cir. 2014) (internal quotation
marks and citations omitted); cf. Avila v. Pappas, 591 F.3d 552, 555 (7th Cir. 2010)
(concluding that a “veneer of constitutional phraseology on top of a state tort claim
cannot justify its adjudication in federal court”).
She also argues that the district court applied various abstention doctrines and
the Rooker‐Feldman doctrine. See D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983);
Rooker v. Fid. Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923). But Sturdivant is mistaken; the district court
did not apply any abstention doctrine or the Rooker‐Feldman doctrine in dismissing her
case.
We have considered Sturdivant’s other contentions, and none has merit.
AFFIRMED.