Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co.

Mr. Justice Van Devanter delivered the.opinion of the Court.- This is a bill in equity to have a judgment of a circuit court in Indiana, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the State, declared null and void, and to obtain other relief dependent on that outcome. An effort to have the judgment reviewed by this Court' on writ of error had failed because the record did not disclose the presence of any question constituting a basis for such a review.

Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 261 U. S. 114. The parties to the bill are the same as in the litigation in the state court, but with an addition of two defendants whose presence does not need special notice. All are citizens of the same State. The grounds advanced for resorting to the District Court are that the judgment [*415] was rendered and affirmed in contravention of the contract clause of the Constitution of the United States and the due process of law and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, in that it gave effect to a state statute alleged to be in conflict with those clauses and did not give effect to a prior decision in the same ' cause by the Supreme Court of the State which is alleged to have become- the “ law óf. the case.” The District Court was of opinion that the suit was not within its jurisdiction as defined by Congress, and on that ground dismissed the bill. The plaintiffs have appealed directlv to this court under § 238 of the Judicial Code.

The appellees ihove that the appeal be dismissed, or in the alternative that the decree be affirmed. ' The appeal is within the first clause of § 238; so the motion to dismiss must be overruled. But the suit is so plainly not. within, the District Court’s jurisdiction as defined by Congress that the motion to affirm must be sustained.