In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 15‐3875
JOHN J. OTROMPKE,
Plaintiff‐Appellant,
v.
BRADLEY SKOLNIK, Executive Director, Indiana State Board of
Law Examiners, and GREG ZOELLER, Attorney General of
Indiana,
Defendants‐Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division.
No. 2:14‐cv‐00296‐RLM‐JEM — Robert L. Miller, Jr., Judge.
____________________
SUBMITTED MAY 3, 2016 — DECIDED JUNE 24, 2016
____________________
Before POSNER, FLAUM, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.
POSNER, Circuit Judge. Section 3 of Rule 12 of the Indiana
Rules for the Admission to the Bar and the Discipline of At‐
torneys states: “No person who advocates the overthrow of
the government of the United States or this state by force,
violence or other unconstitutional or illegal means, shall be
certified to the Supreme Court of Indiana for admission to
2 No. 15‐3875
the bar of the court and a license to the practice of law.” The
plaintiff intends to engage in “revolutionary advocacy,” as
by distributing the Charter of Carnaro (Gabrielle
d’Annunzio’s constitution, combining proto‐fascist, anar‐
chist, and democratic ideas, for his short‐lived rule over
Fiume in 1920), and Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto,
and he is concerned, he says, that his actions will be deemed
to violate Rule 12(3). He doesn’t quite say that he intends to
advocate the overthrow of the government of the United
States or of Indiana by illegal means. But he implies that,
both by his citation to the Communist Manifesto and by argu‐
ing that the defendants are violating the First Amendment
by refusing to admit to the Indiana bar any “person who ad‐
vocates the overthrow of the United States or this state by
force, violence, or other unconstitutional or illegal means”—
presumably he is such a person. His suit, which is against
the director of Indiana’s bar examiners and the state’s attor‐
ney general, seeks to enjoin the enforcement of Rule 12(3) on
the ground that it infringes freedom of speech, in violation
of the U.S. Constitution.
The suit is premature. Otrompke has not applied for ad‐
mission to the Indiana bar. For all we can know, should he
apply the board of examiners or the attorney general (the
defendants) might agree with him that Rule 12(3) violates
the First Amendment, or might decide that in any event his
proposed activities would not violate the rule. Given those
possibilities, he lacks standing to bring the present suit, as
the district court held in dismissing it for want of jurisdic‐
tion.
He lacks standing because he’s failed to show that unless
he obtains a judgment against the defendants he will be
No. 15‐3875 3
harmed because until then Rule 12(3) will remain in effect
and prevent his admission to the Indiana bar. The rule will
harm him only if he would be admitted to the Indiana bar
were the rule to be invalidated but not otherwise. And that
is highly unlikely, as we know from our previous involve‐
ment in his tempestuous relations with the Illinois bar au‐
thorities. After the state’s Committee on Character and Fit‐
ness deemed him unfit to practice law, citing his failure to
acknowledge on his bar and law school applications his mul‐
tiple arrests and firings over the previous decade, he sought
to obtain admission by suing the state’s Board of Admissions
in federal district court. He lost, see Otrompke v. Chairman of
the Committee on Character & Fitness for the First Judicial Dis‐
trict of Illinois, 2005 WL 3050618 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 7, 2005),
didn’t appeal, but ten years later again sued the Board of
Admissions (along with the Illinois attorney general, who
has however no authority with regard to bar admission
standards), again lost, this time appealed—and lost still
again. In Otrompke v. Hill, 592 F. App’x 495, 497 (7th Cir.
2014), affirming the district court’s dismissal of his suit after
modifying the dismissal to base it on want of jurisdiction, we
explained that the Rooker‐Feldman doctrine divested the dis‐
trict court of jurisdiction to review the state supreme court’s
decision rejecting his application.
Otrompke’s baleful Illinois experience makes it impera‐
tive that he apply to the Indiana bar authorities for admis‐
sion before challenging the legality of the state’s rules for
admission. At present he has no standing to maintain a suit
such as this because he can’t show harm. The judgment of
the district court is therefore
AFFIRMED.