NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FEB 14 2018
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
JAY DIAZ SANTOS, No. 15-16854
Plaintiff-Appellant, D.C. No. 1:14-cv-00019
v.
MEMORANDUM*
SUPERIOR COURT OF GUAM; PEOPLE
OF GUAM,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Guam
Frances Tydingco-Gatewood, Chief Judge, Presiding
Submitted February 12, 2018**
Honolulu, Hawaii
Before: O’SCANNLAIN, CLIFTON, and IKUTA, Circuit Judges.
Jay Diaz Santos appeals the district court’s dismissal of his suit for lack of
subject-matter jurisdiction. The facts of this case are known to the parties, and we
do not repeat them here. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
The district court found that Santos was “essentially seeking appellate
review of the Superior Court of Guam’s decision” to deny his motion to suppress
in a criminal case. Therefore, the district court ruled, it was barred from exercising
jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See Rooker v. Fid. Tr. Co., 263
U.S. 413, 415–16 (1923); D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 476
(1983). On appeal, Santos argues that even if Rooker-Feldman would bar the
district court from reviewing the Superior Court’s probable cause determination, it
does not bar the district court from issuing an order for the Superior Court to
decide in the first instance whether there was probable cause for a search warrant.
The People of Guam seemingly agree with Santos, suggesting that Rooker-
Feldman only applies to final state court judgments and so would not apply in the
case of Santos’s ongoing criminal prosecution.
Both are mistaken. “The [Rooker-Feldman] doctrine bars a district court
from exercising jurisdiction not only over an action explicitly styled as a direct
appeal, but also over the ‘de facto equivalent’ of such an appeal.” Cooper v.
Ramos, 704 F.3d 772, 777 (9th Cir. 2012) (quoting Noel v. Hall, 341 F.3d 1148,
1155 (9th Cir. 2003)). “To determine whether an action functions as a de facto
appeal, we pay close attention to the relief sought by the federal-court plaintiff,”
and a suit is a “forbidden de facto appeal under Rooker–Feldman when the plaintiff
in federal district court complains of a legal wrong allegedly committed by the
2
state court, and seeks relief from the judgment of that court.” Id. at 777–78
(internal quotation marks omitted). We have expressly ruled that the doctrine
applies not only to final judgments, but also to “interlocutory state court
decisions.” Doe & Assocs. Law Offices v. Napolitano, 252 F.3d 1026, 1030 (9th
Cir. 2001).
Here, Santos is unhappy with the Superior Court’s pre-trial decision that it
would not reevaluate the probable cause determination of the judge who issued the
search warrant. Santos sought and was denied interlocutory review of that decision
by the Supreme Court of Guam. He then turned to the federal district court,
seeking precisely the appellate relief denied him in the Guam courts. There is no
way to construe his suit but as an attempted appeal of the Superior Court’s
decision, and the district court was therefore correct that the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine barred it from exercising jurisdiction.1
AFFIRMED.
1
The Superior Court of Guam and the People of Guam filed a Joint Motion
for Judicial Notice, asking us to take notice of the docket sheet in Santos’s criminal
case to support their argument that the district court should have dismissed the case
under the Younger abstention doctrine. Because we affirm the judgment of the
district court based on Rooker-Feldman, which is unaffected by the procedural
status of the Guam prosecution, the motion is DENIED as moot.
3