Strange Bedfellows: An Unusual Supreme Court Split Clarifies Rooker-Feldman’s Reach

Under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, a party may not file a federal suit seeking to review and reject a state-court judgment that was issued before the federal suit started.  But must that state-court judgment be from a state’s highest court to be so insulated—or does any state-court judgment trigger the doctrine, even if there may be further state appellate proceedings?  This June, in T.M. v. University of Maryland Medical System Corp., the Supreme Court held the latter in a 5-4 decision with an unusual voting alignment. 

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