Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Industries Corp.

Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case concerns what has come to be known as the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, applied by this Court only twice, first in Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U. S. 413 (1923), then, 60 years later, in District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U. S. 462 (1983). Variously interpreted in the lower courts, the doctrine has sometimes been construed to extend far beyond the contours of the Rooker and Feldman cases, overriding Congress’ conferral of federal-court jurisdiction concurrent with jurisdiction exercised by state courts, and superseding the ordinary application of preclusion law pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 1738. See, e.g., Moccio v. New York State Office of Court Admin., 95 F. 3d 195, 199-200 (CA2 1996).

Rooker was a suit commenced in Federal District Court to have a judgment of a state court, adverse to the federal court plaintiffs, "declared null and void.” 263 U. S., at 414. In Feldman, parties unsuccessful in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals (the District’s highest court) commenced a federal-court action against the very court that had rejected their applications. Holding the federal suits impermissible, we emphasized that appellate jurisdiction to reverse or modify a state-court judgment is lodged, initially by § 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 85, and now by 28 U. S. C. § 1257, exclusively in this Court. Federal district courts, we noted, are empowered to exercise original, not appellate, jurisdiction. Plaintiffs in Rooker and Feldman had litigated and lost in state court. Their federal complaints, we observed, essentially invited federal courts of first instance to review and reverse unfavorable state-court judgments. We [*284] declared such suits out of bounds, i. e., properly dismissed for want of subject-matter jurisdiction.