F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
PUBLISH
DEC 27 2004
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
PATRICK FISHER
Clerk
TENTH CIRCUIT
D.L., individually and as next friend
of J.L., a minor; ESTATE OF R.L.;
and P.P.,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
v. No. 03-3268
THE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
NO. 497; DR. DOUGLAS EICHER,
School Administrator, individually and
in his official capacity,
Defendants - Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS
(D.C. NO. 00-CV-2439-CM)
Gregory P. Goheen of McAnany, Van Cleve & Phillips, P.A., Kansas City,
Kansas, for Plaintiffs - Appellants.
W. Joseph Hatley of Lathrop & Gage, L.C., Overland Park, Kansas, for
Defendants - Appellees.
Before KELLY , HENRY , and HARTZ , Circuit Judges.
HARTZ , Circuit Judge.
The suit before us on appeal arises out of a dispute concerning the
eligibility of J.L. and R.L. (the children) for special-education services provided
by Unified School District No. 497, Douglas County, Kansas (the District).
Plaintiffs are J. L; the Estate of R.L., who died after the suit was filed; their
mother D.L. (Mother); and her cohabiting boyfriend P.P. Defendants are the
District and Dr. Douglas Eicher, its former director of special education.
Before this suit was filed, the District brought a state-court action (which is
still pending) to require Mother and P.P. to pay for special-education services
provided the children during a period when, according to the District, the children
were not residents of the District and therefore were ineligible for those services.
Plaintiffs then sued in federal district court, claiming that denial of the special-
education services received by the children from the District would have violated
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq.;
the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq.; the
Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794 et seq.; the Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act (FERPA), 20 U.S.C. § 1232g; and the Fourteenth Amendment.
We exercise jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We affirm the judgment
in favor of Defendants on one part of the IDEA claim. As for the other claims
before us, we hold that the district court should have stayed proceedings on the
claims for damages and lacked jurisdiction to resolve the remaining claims
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because of the pending state action. See Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 54
(1971).
I. Background
R.L. was autistic and his brother J.L. suffers from a milder learning
disability. In August 1997 Mother enrolled the children in the District. During
that school year an anonymous informant told the District that the children were
nonresidents. When asked, Mother assured the District that she and the children
were residents. In November 1999 an anonymous informant again told the
District that the children were nonresidents. The District hired an investigator
who discovered that they were being driven from Kansas City, Kansas, outside the
District, to Lawrence, Kansas, inside the District, to attend school.
On January 4, 2000, the District wrote Mother saying that the children
would not be permitted to return to school after January 13, 2000, the end of the
semester. Plaintiffs requested a due-process hearing under the IDEA, but the
District denied the request. On January 24, 2000, after negotiations between the
District and counsel for Mother, Mother provided an affidavit of residency stating
that R.L. was living with her within the District. The children were readmitted
that day. In March 2000, however, the District again engaged an investigator who
discovered that the children were commuting to school from Kansas City.
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The District maintained a nonresident-admission policy under which
nonresidents were admitted so long as there was space available in the District’s
schools. They were not admitted, however, if doing so would require the District
to hire additional staff. Because each autistic student was assigned his own
paraprofessional (and, apparently, the staff included no extra paraprofessionals
for autistic students), autistic students were unable to obtain nonresident
admission.
On April 18, 2000, the District sued Mother and P.P. in Kansas state court,
seeking damages to compensate it for the cost of educating the children while
they were nonresidents and an injunction prohibiting the children from attending
District schools in the future. The crux of the suit is whether the children were
entitled to the education they received from the District.
On September 29, 2000, Mother, P.P., and the children countered by filing
suit in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas against the
District, Dr. Eicher, and the members of the District’s school board. They alleged
that (1) the District violated the IDEA by denying the requested due-process
hearing and by expelling the children from January 13 until January 24, 2000,
when Mother provided the affidavit of residency; (2) the District violated the
ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Fourteenth Amendment by discriminating
against Plaintiffs because of the children’s residence and disabilities; (3) the
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District violated the FERPA by disclosing the disabilities of the children in the
state-court suit; and (4) the District violated Plaintiffs’ common-law right to
privacy by placing them under surveillance and making public statements about,
among other things, their residency outside the district. Plaintiffs sought a variety
of forms of relief: declaratory judgments (on their IDEA, ADA, Rehabilitation
Act, and Fourteenth Amendment claims); “compensatory education” for wrongful
expulsion of the children (on their IDEA claim); compensatory and punitive
damages (on their Rehabilitation Act, ADA, FERPA, and common-law right-to-
privacy claims); attorney and expert-witness fees (on their Rehabilitation Act,
ADA, and Fourteenth Amendment claims); an injunction requiring the District to
permit J.L. to attend school (on their Rehabilitation Act, ADA, and Fourteenth
Amendment claims); an injunction requiring the District to adopt
nondiscriminatory policies (on their Rehabilitation Act and ADA claims); and an
injunction requiring Defendants “to abide by the statutory requirements of IDEA,
specifically including the Procedural Safeguards which protect families from the
abuses perpetrated by defendants.” Aplt. App. at 6.
The district court dismissed all of P.P.’s claims for lack of standing,
dismissed the claims against the school-board members as redundant because of
the District’s presence as a defendant, held that Plaintiffs had failed to state a
claim under the FERPA, see Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273, 287 (2002),
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and granted summary judgment in favor of Defendants on the ADA,
Rehabilitation Act, Fourteenth Amendment, and invasion-of-privacy claims. The
court also held that Dr. Eicher enjoyed qualified immunity and granted summary
judgment in his favor on all claims. The court tried the IDEA claims on
deposition testimony and documentary evidence. It decided that even if there had
been a procedural violation, there had been no loss of substantive educational
benefits, and held that Plaintiffs hence had no right to recovery.
Plaintiffs appeal the district court’s judgment in favor of Defendants on the
IDEA claims; the court’s grant of summary judgment on the ADA, Rehabilitation
Act, and constitutional claims; the court’s grant of summary judgment as to
Dr. Eicher; and the court’s ruling that P.P. lacked standing.
II. Younger Abstention
Even when a federal court would otherwise have jurisdiction to hear a
claim, the court may be obliged to abstain when a federal-court judgment on the
claim would interfere with an ongoing state proceeding implicating important
state interests. The classic example of this proposition, generally referred to as
the Younger doctrine, is a federal suit to enjoin a pending state criminal
proceeding. See Younger; J.B. ex rel. Hart v. Valdez, 186 F.3d 1280 (10th Cir.
1999) (applying Younger). But the Younger doctrine also can apply to a state-
court civil proceeding, see Trainor v. Hernandez, 431 U.S. 434, 444 (1977) (civil
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suit by state administrative agency to collect fraudulently obtained welfare
benefits), including state-court suits between two private parties, see Pennzoil Co.
v. Texaco, Inc., 481 U.S. 1, 10 (1987).
Moreover, although Younger involved a request for injunctive relief against
the ongoing state proceeding, such relief need not be explicitly sought in federal
court. In an opinion issued concurrently with Younger, the Supreme Court held
that “the same equitable principles relevant to the propriety of an injunction
[apply] to . . . a declaratory judgment . . . . [W]here an injunction would be
impermissible under these principles, declaratory relief should ordinarily be
denied as well.” Samuels v. Mackell, 401 U.S. 66, 73 (1971). The Court
expressed two reasons for treating declaratory relief essentially the same as
injunctive relief. First, even though a party seeks only declaratory relief, once a
declaratory judgment is obtained, the party may obtain an injunction to enforce
the declaratory judgment. Id. at 72. If, for example, the court’s declaratory
judgment states that a statute is unconstitutional, the court may then enjoin a
prosecution of the federal plaintiff under the statute. Second, a federal-court
declaratory judgment would ordinarily have preclusive effect in the state-court
proceeding. Id. Once the declaratory judgment is entered, the victorious party
could insist in state court that the legal proposition declared in federal court
cannot be disputed in the state proceeding. Thus, a state-court prosecution of the
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federal plaintiff may not be able to proceed under a statute declared
unconstitutional in the federal-court proceeding.
These same two reasons apply, of course, regardless of the relief initially
sought in the federal-court suit. For example, a plaintiff who seeks only monetary
damages could, once a money judgment is obtained, seek the additional relief of
an injunction and could argue in state court that the federal judgment has
preclusive effect. Accordingly, the Younger doctrine extends to federal claims for
monetary relief when a judgment for the plaintiff would have preclusive effects
on a pending state-court proceeding. See generally Gilbertson v. Albright, 381
F.3d 965, 978-80 (9th Cir. 2004) (en banc). The rationale for Younger abstention
can be satisfied, however, by just staying proceedings on the federal damages
claim until the state proceeding is final. See Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co.,
517 U.S.706, 730 (1996) (“we have permitted federal courts applying abstention
principles in damages actions to enter a stay, but we have not permitted them to
dismiss the action altogether); Gilbertson, 381 F.3d at 980-82. 1
Younger abstention is jurisdictional. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better
Env., 523 U.S. 83, 100 n.3 (1998) (distinguishing case cited by dissent in support
1
In Weitzel v. Dep’t of Commerce of State of Utah, 240 F.3d 871, 874-75,
877-78 (10th Cir. 2001), we affirmed the dismissal of a damages claim under the
Younger doctrine. But that decision has no precedential value with respect to this
issue because the opinion did not address whether a stay would be the proper
disposition.
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of hypothetical jurisdiction as decided on “Younger abstention, which we have
treated as jurisdictional”). We address it at the outset because a determination
that the district court lacked jurisdiction over a claim moots any other challenge
to the claim, including a different jurisdictional challenge. Indeed, we have no
power to decide an issue if we lack jurisdiction. See id. at 93-102. We may
address jurisdictional issues in any order we find convenient. See Ruhrgas AG v.
Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S. 574, 585 (1999) (deciding personal as against
subject-matter jurisdiction); Younger, 401 U.S. at 54 (“Because our holding rests
on the absence of the factors necessary . . . to justify federal intervention, we have
no occasion to consider whether [the Anti-Injunction Act] . . . would in and of
itself be controlling . . . .”).
III. Younger Abstention Applied
We proceed to consider Plaintiffs’ claims to determine whether it is
appropriate to exercise federal jurisdiction over each. We examine only the
claims Plaintiffs continue to assert on appeal; we lack jurisdiction to inquire into
judgments not appealed, whether or not jurisdiction was properly exercised below.
See Snell v. Tunnell, 920 F.2d 673, 676 (10th Cir. 1990). We turn first to
Plaintiffs’ ADA, Rehabilitation Act, and Fourteenth Amendment claims, and hold
that Younger abstention is required. We then address Plaintiffs’ IDEA claim. We
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hold that part of this claim is subject to Younger abstention and that the remainder
was properly rejected by the district court on summary judgment.
A. The ADA, Rehabilitation Act, and Fourteenth Amendment
Claims
Plaintiffs contend that the District’s nonresident-admission policy violates
the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act by treating disabled nonresident children
differently from nonresident children who are not disabled; that denying
admission to the children on the basis of residency would be a violation of their
Fourteenth Amendment right to travel; that equal-protection principles required
the District to admit them as nonresidents; and that the nonresident-admission
policy violates due process by denying their “property interest [in the children’s]
education and . . . fundamental liberty interest in having as many residences as
they desire.” Aplt. Br. at 24.
The district court lacked jurisdiction over each of these claims. Each claim
asserts the entitlement of the children to the education they received from the
District. The court could not grant any relief—injunctive, declaratory, or
monetary—without concluding that the children were so entitled. If any claim
succeeds, then there is no merit to the District’s state-court suit, which seeks
reimbursement from Mother and P.P. for educational expenses of the children to
which they, as nonresidents, were not entitled. Therefore, a resolution favorable
to Plaintiffs in this case would foreclose that suit (and might even be enforced by
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a federal injunction against the suit), an interference with state-court litigation
that is impermissible under Younger. See Samuels, 401 U.S. at 72-73.
Younger abstention is inappropriate when a federal plaintiff cannot pursue
its federal contentions in the ongoing state proceeding. See Middlesex County
Ethics Comm. v. Garden State Bar Ass’n, 457 U.S. 423, 435-37 (1982). But no
reason appears why Plaintiffs’ contentions here could not be interposed as
defenses in state court. See Lebbos v. Judges of Superior Court, 883 F.2d 810,
815 (9th Cir. 1989) (opportunity to raise federal contentions as defenses is
sufficient).
There remains, however, one further complication in this case. The parties
are not identical in the state and federal lawsuits. In state court the District is
plaintiff, and Mother and P.P. are defendants. In federal court Mother and P.P.
are joined as plaintiffs by J.L. and the Estate of R.L., who are not parties in the
state case. Likewise, the District is not the only defendant; an additional
defendant is Dr. Eicher, who is not a party in the District’s state suit to recover
the cost of the children’s education. Consequently, we must decide whether
Younger bars the claims of J.L. and the Estate of R.L. against either defendant,
and bars the claims of all plaintiffs against Dr. Eicher, even though J.L., the
Estate of R.L., and Dr. Eicher are not parties in the state case. As we proceed to
explain, we hold that the Younger bar does extend to these claims.
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Two 1975 Supreme Court opinions provide guidance. In Doran v. Salem
Inn, Inc., 422 U.S. 922, 924 (1975), three bartenders faced with a local ordinance
prohibiting topless dancing filed federal challenges to the constitutionality of the
ordinance. One bartender violated the ordinance and was prosecuted. Id. at 925.
The other two did not. Id. at 924-25. The Court held that Younger barred the
claim of the prosecuted bartender, but not the claims of the other bartenders. It
added, however, that “there plainly may be some circumstances in which legally
distinct parties are so closely related that they should all be subject to the Younger
considerations which govern any one of them.” Id. at 928. In the other case,
Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 334-35 (1975), a state prosecuted theater
employees for showing an obscene film, and seized several copies of the film.
When the theater owners brought a federal-court challenge, the Court applied
Younger. The Court wrote, “Absent a clear showing that [the owners] . . . could
not seek the return of their property in the state proceedings and see to it that
their federal claims were presented there,” Younger abstention could not be
avoided. Id. at 349. The owners, it said, “had a substantial stake in the state
proceedings, so much so that they sought federal relief . . . . Obviously, their
interests and those of their employees were intertwined; and, as we have pointed
out, the federal action sought to interfere with the pending state prosecution. Id.
at 348-49.
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Doran illustrates that it is proper for a federal court to exercise jurisdiction
over the claim of a genuine stranger to an ongoing state proceeding even though a
federal decision clearly could influence the state proceeding by resolving legal
issues identical to those raised in state court—for example, both proceedings may
involve challenges to the same ordinance as an unconstitutional restraint on
expressive activity. See Doran, 422 U.S. at 928. So long as the stranger has its
own distinct claim to pursue, it may even be aligned with the state-court litigant
in a common enterprise of vindicating the policy that gives rise to their individual
claims. See Federal Home Loan Bank Bd. v. Empie, 778 F.2d 1447, 1452 (10th
Cir. 1985); Robinson v. Stovall, 646 F.2d 1087, 1091 (5th Cir. 1987) (“neither a
common interest in the outcome of federal litigation nor a common effort in
pressing it requires abstention as to all plaintiffs”). But when in essence only one
claim is at stake and the legally distinct party to the federal proceeding is merely
an alter ego of a party in state court, Younger applies. See Cedar Rapids Cellular
Tel., L.P. v. Miller, 280 F.3d 874, 882 (8th Cir. 2002) (corporation cannot avoid
Younger by having subsidiaries sue in federal court when federal relief could
obstruct enforcement of any state-court remedy); Spargo v. N.Y. State Comm’n on
Jud. Conduct, 351 F.3d 65, 81-84 (2d Cir. 2003) (Younger applies to persons not
parties in state proceeding when free-speech right asserted is purely derivative of
free-speech rights of defendant in state proceeding).
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J.L. and the Estate of R.L. seek to vindicate in federal court the right of the
children to the education they received from the District. The state-court defense
of Mother and P.P. that they do not have to pay the District for that education
necessarily derives from the entitlement of the children to that education. As
Judge Wisdom wrote in Robinson, “The federal plaintiffs and state defendants in
Hicks had much closer mutual interests than common membership in, or support
of, a large political organization: they were the owners and employees of the
same small business.” 646 F.2d at 1092. Here we are presented with a familial
relationship, even closer than the business relationship in Hicks, and with similar
preclusive consequences. Cf. Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 41(1)(c)
(person is bound by judgment binding “executor, administrator, guardian,
conservator, or similar fiduciary manager of an interest of which the person is a
beneficiary” (emphasis added)); id. § 51(1) (preclusive effect of judgment when
party in one case is vicariously liable for conduct of party in other case).
Accordingly, we hold it improper under Younger to exercise federal jurisdiction
over the claims of J.L. and the Estate of R.L. even though they are not parties to
the state-court suit.
Plaintiffs’ claims against Dr. Eicher are similarly barred because of the
close connection of those claims to their claims in state court and the close
connection of Dr. Eicher to the District, which is the plaintiff in state court.
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Plaintiffs’ allegation against Dr. Eicher is that he was the officer of the District
responsible for many of its allegedly unlawful actions. Whether Dr. Eicher’s
actions were appropriate depends on whether the children were entitled to the
education they received. Plaintiffs’ claim against Dr. Eicher is derivative of, if
not the same as, their claim against the District. The relationship between
Dr. Eicher and his former employer, the District, is comparable to that between
the theater owners and their employees in Hicks. In the context of the claims on
appeal, Dr. Eicher is a mere alter ego of the District.
B. The IDEA Claims
When Mother was informed of the District’s plan to expel the children as
nonresidents, she asked the District for a due-process hearing under the IDEA.
Plaintiffs’ federal suit claims that the District’s denial of this request constitutes
an actionable violation of the IDEA. As we understand this claim, it does not
assert any right of the children to the education received from the District and
resolution of the claim would not interfere with the state-court litigation. Thus,
there is no Younger bar.
Nevertheless, we are compelled by our decision in T.S. v. Ind. Sch. Dist.
No. 54, 265 F.3d 1090 (10th Cir. 2001), to affirm the district court’s decision
denying relief. In that case we held that “[f]or a claim based on deprivation of
[an IDEA] due process hearing . . . to be cognizable, [it] must be linked with a
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consequent loss of substantive benefits.” Id. at 1093. Here, there was no “loss of
substantive benefits.” Not only do Plaintiffs fail to allege any connection
between the denial of the due-process hearing and any substantive educational
harm, they fail to allege any substantive educational harm at all. Indeed they tell
us that “all parties agree that the school district provided [the children] an
‘appropriate public education’ . . . during the time they attended school in the
district.” Aplt. Br. at 10. Plaintiffs do not contend on appeal that expulsion of
the children between January 14 and January 21, 2000, constitutes a substantive
educational harm. (Apparently, Mother and P.P. were too ill to take the children
to school.) Thus, under T.S., we must affirm.
Plaintiffs may, however, be contending that the substantive harm is the
state-court suit to recover the cost of educating the children; they say that the suit
was “the ultimate result” of the denial of the due-process hearing. Aplt. Reply
Br. at 7. But to the extent that Plaintiffs raised this contention below, Younger
deprived the district court of jurisdiction to resolve it. The state suit would
constitute an injury to Plaintiffs only if it lacked merit; and, as explained above,
Younger prohibits federal litigation that seeks to establish the lack of merit of
pending state litigation.
So, too, for Plaintiffs’ remaining contention—that the state-court suit
violated the IDEA independently of the denial of the due-process hearing. A
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decision that the state-court suit violated the IDEA would necessarily imply that
the children were entitled to the education they received. Thus, it would preclude
the District’s state-court claim, contrary to Younger.
Finally, we observe that P.P. lacks standing to raise the only claim not
barred by Younger. The constitutional mandate that federal courts can hear only a
Case or Controversy, U.S. Const. art. III § 2, requires “a plaintiff [to] show [that]
(1) it has suffered an ‘injury in fact’ that is (a) concrete and particularized and (b)
actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly
traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and (3) it is likely, as opposed
to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.”
Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Env. Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 180-
81 (2000). Here P.P. fails to show a redressable injury in fact with respect to the
nonbarred claim. Although the denial of a right guaranteed by statute may
constitute an injury in fact, see Fed. Election Comm’n v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11, 21
(1998), P.P. does not (and could not) contend that the IDEA granted him the right
to a hearing, see 20 U.S.C. §§ 1415(a) (hearing provided for children and their
parents), 1401(19) (defining “parent”). The only injury alleged by P.P. is the
state-court litigation. That alleged injury may give him standing with respect to
the claims barred by Younger, but it is not an injury redressable through the one
nonbarred claim—which is not barred precisely because it does not question the
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state-court litigation. Therefore, the district court properly dismissed this claim
of P.P.’s for lack of standing, and we AFFIRM that dismissal.
With respect to the other claims, we AFFIRM the judgment below as to the
IDEA claim based on alleged denial of a due-process hearing, VACATE the
judgment as to all other claims raised on appeal, and REMAND for the district
court to STAY proceedings on the claims for damages and DISMISS without
prejudice the remaining vacated claims.
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