SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 21–442
_________________
RODNEY REED, PETITIONER
v. BRYAN
GOERTZ
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the fifth circuit
[April 19, 2023]
Justice Thomas, dissenting.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (“CCA”)
affirmed the denial of petitioner Rodney Reed’s state-law motion
for postconviction DNA testing. Reed petitioned this Court for
certiorari, arguing that the CCA’s interpretation and application
of the relevant state law violated his federal due process rights.
After we denied his petition, Reed repackaged it as a complaint in
Federal District Court, naming respondent (the Bastrop County
District Attorney) as a placeholder defendant. Like his earlier
certiorari petition, Reed’s complaint assails the CCA’s state-law
reasoning as inconsistent with due process, and it seeks a
declaration that the CCA’s interpretation and application of state
law was unconstitutional.
Reed’s action should be dismissed for lack of
subject-matter jurisdiction. Federal district courts lack appellate
jurisdiction to review state-court judgments, and Reed’s action
presents no original Article III case or controversy between him
and the district attorney. Because the Court erroneously holds that
the District Court had jurisdiction over Reed’s action, I
respectfully dissent.
I
A
On April 23, 1996, 19-year-old Stacey Stites
failed to report for her 3:30 a.m. shift at the H.E.B. grocery
store in Bastrop, Texas. The truck Stites drove to work was found
abandoned in the Bastrop High School parking lot a couple of hours
later. That afternoon, a passerby discovered Stites’ body in a
ditch by a country road, her clothing disturbed in a manner
suggesting sexual violence. Medical examiners determined that
Stites had been strangled to death with her own belt, which was
found in two pieces—one near the truck, the other near Stites’
body. There was semen in Stites’ vagina and rectum and saliva on
her breasts. The police concluded that Stites had been raped and
murdered.
Despite a wide-ranging investigation, the police
were initially unable to find a DNA match for the bodily fluids
recovered from Stites’ corpse. Then, about six months after Stites’
death, Reed was arrested for kidnaping and attempting to rape and
murder another young woman near the route Stites typically took to
work and around the same time of night when Stites had gone
missing. Reed lived near the high school and was often seen walking
the surrounding area at night. Intrigued, the police checked Reed’s
DNA profile, which Texas had on file from an earlier sexual-assault
case against him. A series of tests established a conclusive,
one-in-the-world-population match between Reed and the fluids
recovered from Stites’ corpse.
When first questioned, Reed insisted that he did
not know Stites at all, unaware that the police had DNA evidence
disproving that claim. By the time of his trial, he had changed his
story: He and Stites were having a consensual affair, and someone
else—perhaps her jealous fiancé—had committed the murder. The jury
rejected that
post hoc narrative and found Reed guilty. In
the separate penalty phase, Reed’s kidnaping victim testified about
how Reed had abducted, threatened, and attempted to rape her before
she was fortuitously able to escape. Four other women—and one
underage girl—also testified that Reed had brutally beaten and
raped them in the past. Reed was sentenced to death.
The CCA affirmed Reed’s conviction and sentence
in 2000. In the 23 years since, he has kept up a constant stream of
postconviction filings asserting his innocence. Every few years,
Reed’s lawyers have produced a new theory and a new purportedly
exculpatory affidavit. With the patience of Job, the Texas courts
have duly considered them all. On one such occasion, the CCA noted
“the complete lack of a cohesive theory of innocence” across Reed’s
unending series of attempts to relitigate his guilt.
Ex parte Reed, 271 S.W.3d 698, 746 (2008).[
1]
B
In Texas, a convict has two distinct avenues
to obtain postconviction DNA testing of evidence—one executive and
discretionary, the other judicial and legal. As for the first, the
convict can attempt to reach an agreement with the district
attorney, who has broad discretion to order or allow DNA testing.
See Tr. of Oral Arg. 39–40. In the case of the second, the convict
can file a motion under Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Arts. 64.01
through 64.05 (Vernon 2018) (Chapter 64), which requires “the
convicting court” to “order testing” if the movant establishes
certain requirements.
Ex parte Gutierrez, 337 S.W.3d
883, 889–890 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011).
In 2014, on the same day that the trial court
held a hearing to set Reed’s execution date, Reed filed a Chapter
64 motion for DNA testing of a large number of items. The district
attorney consented to test some of the items outside of the Chapter
64 framework, but he otherwise opposed Reed’s request. The trial
court denied the motion, finding that Reed had not established two
necessary elements for Chapter 64 testing: (1) that he “would not
have been convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained
through DNA testing,” Art. 64.03(a)(2)(A); and (2) that his Chapter
64 motion was “not made to unreasonably delay the execution of
sentence or administration of justice.” Art. 64.03(a)(2)(B). Reed
appealed, and the CCA remanded for the trial court to address the
other elements of the Chapter 64 rubric. After making supplemental
findings, the trial court again denied Reed’s motion, and Reed
again appealed.
In April 2017, the CCA issued an opinion
affirming the trial court. First, the CCA held that the record
supported the trial court’s finding that many of the items had not
“been subjected to a chain of custody sufficient to establish that
[they had] not been substituted, tampered with, replaced, or
altered in any material respect.” Art. 64.03(a)(1)(A)(ii); see
Reed v.
State, 541 S.W.3d 759, 769–770. Second, it
held that Reed had not shown “a reasonable likelihood” that many of
the items “contain[ed] biological material suitable for DNA
testing.” Art. 64.03(a)(1)(B); see 541 S. W. 3d, at 772.
Third, addressing only the items that survived the previous two
holdings, the CCA held that Reed had not established that
exculpatory results from DNA testing of those items would have
prevented his conviction. See
id., at 773–777. Finally, the
CCA held that Reed had failed to establish that his Chapter 64
motion was not made for purposes of delay. See
id., at
777–780. The CCA noted that “Chapter 64 had existed with only
slight variations for over thirteen years at the time Reed filed
his motion,” and that Reed’s motion was suspiciously filed “on the
same day the judge heard the State’s motion to set an execution
date.”
Id., at 779.
Reed moved for rehearing, arguing that the CCA
had misapplied the Chapter 64 elements and asserting, in broad
terms, that those errors violated his due process rights. See App.
to Pet. for Cert. in
Reed v.
Texas, O. T. 2017, No.
17–1093, pp. 263a–272a. The CCA denied rehearing by summary
order in October 2017.
Reed then timely petitioned this Court for a
writ of certiorari to review the CCA’s judgment. His petition
contended that the CCA’s judgment “violate[d his] due process
rights” because it was based on “arbitrary and fundamentally unfair
interpretation[s]” of Chapter 64’s chain-of-custody and
unreasonable-delay elements. Pet. for Cert. in No. 17–1093,
pp. i–ii. We denied certiorari. See
Reed v.
Texas, 585 U. S. ___ (2018).
C
In August 2019, Reed sued the district
attorney under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983 in the
U. S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. As
relevant here, Reed’s complaint alleges that he successfully
“proved each of the statutory requirements of [Chapter] 64” in the
state-court proceedings, App. 31, ¶52, but that “the CCA’s adoption
of non-statutory criteria to preclude . . . Reed from
testing key trial evidence to prove his innocence violate[d]
fundamental notions of fairness and denie[d] him due process of
law,”
id., at 14, ¶2. Reed proceeds to allege “several ways”
in which “[t]he CCA’s interpretation and application of [Chapter]
64 violate[d] fundamental fairness,”
id., at 41, ¶79, with
particular focus on the CCA’s allegedly arbitrary constructions of
the chain-of-custody, unreasonable-delay, and exculpatory-results
elements, see
id., at 41–42, ¶¶79–81; 43–45, ¶¶84–87. For
relief, “Reed seeks a declaration that [Chapter] 64, as
interpreted, construed and applied by the Texas courts to deny his
motion for DNA testing, violates his rights under” the
Constitution.
Id., at 14, ¶3; see also
id., at 49
(prayer for relief ).
The district attorney moved to dismiss Reed’s
complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and for failure
to state a claim. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b)(1) and
(b)(6). The District Court held that it had jurisdiction but
dismissed Reed’s complaint on the merits, concluding that Reed had
alleged only “that he disagree[d] with the state court’s
construction of Texas law” and that none of the issues in the
complaint “r[ose] to the level of a procedural due-process
violation.” 2019 WL 12073901, *7 (WD Tex., Nov. 15, 2019). The
Fifth Circuit affirmed on the alternative ground that Reed’s claim
was untimely: Applying Texas’ 2-year statute of limitations for
personal-injury claims, it reasoned that Reed’s due process claim
accrued when the trial court first denied his Chapter 64 motion,
rendering his complaint several years too late. 995 F.3d 425, 431
(2021).
II
Two intertwined principles of federal
jurisdiction—Article III standing and the
Rooker-
Feldman doctrine[
2]—mandate a finding that the District Court lacked
jurisdiction over this action. The majority gives short shrift to
these principles, and its holding that Reed’s claim was timely
serve only to underscore its antecedent jurisdictional errors.
A
The Constitution limits the federal courts’
jurisdiction to “Cases” and “Controversies,” Art. III, §2,
cl. 1, constraining judicial power to “the determination of
real, earnest and vital controvers[ies] between” contending
litigants.
Chicago & Grand Trunk R. Co. v.
Wellman,
143 U.S.
339, 345 (1892). “[A]n essential and unchanging part of [this]
case-or-controversy requirement” is the doctrine of Article III
standing.
Lujan v.
Defenders of Wildlife,
504 U.S.
555, 560 (1992). Under that doctrine, any party requesting
relief from a federal court must assert “an injury” that is
“concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent,” and he must
show that his injury is both “fairly traceable to the challenged
action” and “redressable by a favorable ruling.”
Monsanto
Co. v.
Geertson Seed Farms,
561
U.S. 139, 149 (2010); see also
Town of Chester v.
Laroe Estates, Inc., 581 U.S. 433, 438–439 (2017). Absent
that showing, the court has no jurisdiction and thus no “power to
adjudicate the case.”
Steel Co. v.
Citizens for Better
Environment,
523 U.S.
83, 89 (1998) (emphasis deleted).
Jurisdiction, moreover, comes in two
types—original and appellate—and the application of the Article III
standing elements is interwoven with that constitutionally grounded
distinction. See Art. III, §2, cl. 2. In an original case
or controversy, the plaintiff traces his injury “to the defendant’s
allegedly unlawful conduct,”
Allen v.
Wright,
468 U.S.
737, 751 (1984), and, correspondingly, seeks a remedy that runs
against the defendant and determines that defendant’s duties or
liabilities (
e.g., a judgment for money damages or an
injunction). On the other hand, “[t]he criterion which
distinguishes appellate from original jurisdiction, is that it
revises and corrects the decisions of another tribunal.”
Ex
parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75, 86 (1807); see also
Marbury
v.
Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 175–176 (1803). As such, a case or
controversy is appellate in nature when the relief-seeking party’s
injury is traceable to the allegedly erroneous action
of another
court and requires a remedy correcting that judicial action
(
e.g., reversal or vacatur of the challenged
judgment).[
3] See,
e.g.,
Food Marketing Institute v.
Argus Leader Media, 588
U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (slip op., at 4–5);
Monsanto,
561 U. S., at 150–153. Thus, whenever a party seeks relief
from a federal court, the elements that bring his claim within
Article III in the first place—the nature and source of his injury
and the remedy needed to redress it—also dictate whether his claim
invokes original or appellate jurisdiction.
The conceptual distinction between original and
appellate jurisdiction also animates the
Rooker-
Feldman doctrine—which, despite its name, is
not so much a “doctrine” as a basic fact of federal statutory law.
This Court has discretionary appellate jurisdiction to review
certain state-court judgments by certiorari. 28 U. S. C.
§1257(a). But no other federal court has appellate jurisdiction
over state-court judgments, and, in particular, “[t]he jurisdiction
possessed by the District Courts is strictly original.”
Rooker v.
Fidelity Trust Co.,
263
U.S. 413, 416 (1923); see,
e.g., 28 U. S. C.
§1331 (“The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all
civil actions arising under [federal law]”). Thus, if the losing
party in a state judicial proceeding “claim[s] that the state
judgment itself violates [his] federal rights”—a claim that calls
for an exercise of appellate jurisdiction—his only remedy in the
federal system is certiorari in this Court.
Johnson v.
De
Grandy,
512 U.S.
997, 1006 (1994). He may not “see[k] what in substance would be
appellate review of the state judgment” under the guise of an
original action in federal district court.
Id., at
1005–1006; see also
Exxon Mobil Corp. v.
Saudi Basic
Industries Corp.,
544 U.S.
280, 284–285 (2005);
District of Columbia Court of
Appeals v.
Feldman,
460
U.S. 462, 482–488, and nn. 15, 16 (1983).
Yet, that is precisely what Reed has done here.
While his complaint purports to bring an original action against
the district attorney, in reality, it seeks appellate review to
redress an alleged injury inflicted by the CCA’s adverse decision
“in [his] particular cas[e].”
Id., at 487, n. 18. The
gravamen of Reed’s claim—made clear again and again throughout his
complaint—is that the CCA violated his due process rights through
its reasoning in his case. See,
e.g., App. 14, ¶2; 31–33,
¶¶53–57; 38, ¶69; 39–40, ¶¶71, 74; 41, ¶79; 42–43, ¶¶83–84; 44–45,
¶¶86–87. All of those alleged injuries are traceable to the CCA,
not the district attorney. And, redressing them would require an
exercise of appellate jurisdiction over the CCA—jurisdiction that
the District Court does not have. Confirming the point, Reed’s
complaint does not ask the District Court to control the district
attorney’s actions at all. Instead, the only relief it requests is
“[a] declaration that the CCA’s interpretation and application of
[Chapter] 64 . . . is unconstitutional.”
Id., at
49. The complaint transparently seeks nothing more than the
District Court’s “review and rejection” of the CCA’s judgment.
Exxon Mobil, 544 U. S., at 284. As such, it founders
upon the
Rooker-
Feldman doctrine as well as the
Article III traceability and redressability requirements with which
that doctrine is intertwined.
Any doubt that Reed seeks
de facto
appellate review should be dispelled by one undisputed fact: Every
due process violation that Reed alleges could have been considered
on direct review of the CCA’s judgment in this Court. After all,
determining whether state-court judgments applied unconstitutional
constructions of state law is a classic use of this Court’s
appellate jurisdiction under §1257(a). See,
e.g.,
Rogers v.
Tennessee,
532 U.S.
451, 453 (2001);
Bouie v.
City of Columbia,
378 U.S.
347, 349 (1964);
Brinkerhoff-Faris Trust & Sav. Co.
v.
Hill,
281 U.S.
673, 678 (1930). That is why Reed originally petitioned this
Court for certiorari to review the CCA’s judgment. And it is why he
agreed at oral argument that we could have granted that petition.
See Tr. of Oral Arg. 32–33.
Yet, even after repackaging his failed
certiorari petition as an original §1983 complaint, Reed not only
concedes but
affirmatively argues that his claim is
analogous to the due process arguments presented in
Rogers,
Bouie, and
Brinkerhoff-Faris. See Brief for
Petitioner 33–34. That he is correct on that front should be fatal
to his complaint. Like the petitioners in those cases, Reed
contends that the rules of decision applied against him in a
state-court proceeding violated his due process rights. Because
those contentions would have been appropriate subjects for this
Court’s appellate review, it follows that Reed cannot press the
same due process challenges and seek the same relief in an original
action in the District Court. See
Feldman, 460 U. S.,
at 482–486, and n. 15; accord,
id., at, 489 (Stevens,
J., dissenting).
In holding otherwise, the majority improperly
separates the
Rooker-
Feldman and Article III
inquiries and applies a different theory of Reed’s claim to each.
But, Reed’s claim must satisfy two conditions at once: It must
implicate an Article III case or controversy between the parties to
this action,
and that case or controversy must fall within
the District Court’s “strictly original” jurisdiction.
Rooker, 263 U. S., at 416. The majority articulates no
theory of how Reed’s claim can satisfy both conditions. That is
because there is no such theory.
A useful way to view this is to work backwards
from the majority’s
Rooker-
Feldman holding. The
majority accepts Reed’s representation that he “does ‘not challenge
the adverse’ state-court decisions themselves,” but only
“ ‘targets as unconstitutional the Texas statute [Chapter 64]
they authoritatively construed.’ ”
Ante, at 4 (quoting
Skinner v.
Switzer,
562
U.S. 521, 532 (2011)). But this workaround to
Rooker-
Feldman raises a glaring
Article III
problem: As this Court has repeatedly explained, a federal court
may not entertain a free-floating challenge to a statute unmoored
from a concrete case or controversy. See,
e.g.,
California v.
Texas, 593 U. S. ___, ___–___
(2021) (slip op., at 7–9);
Valley Forge Christian College v.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc.,
454 U.S.
464, 471–472 (1982);
Massachusetts v.
Mellon,
262 U.S.
447, 488 (1923);
Muskrat v.
United States,
219 U.S.
346, 360–362 (1911). Unless Reed merely seeks an advisory
opinion, his due process challenge to Chapter 64 must seek relief
from some concrete enforcement or application of that law that
affects him. More specifically, Reed must be challenging either (1)
some conduct of the district attorney constituting enforcement of
Chapter 64 against him or (2) the CCA’s application of Chapter 64
as a rule of decision in his case.[
4] If it is the former, Reed’s suit is original; if it is
the latter, it requires an exercise of appellate jurisdiction.
So, which is it? As already indicated, the
correct answer is the latter: Fundamentally, Reed’s complaint—like
his certiorari petition before it—contests how “the Texas courts”
“interpreted, construed[,] and applied” Chapter 64 “to deny his
motion for DNA testing,” App. 14, ¶3, which is why the
only
relief he requests is an abstract “declaration that the CCA’s
interpretation and application of [Chapter] 64 . . . is
unconstitutional.”
Id., at 49. The idea that his claim “does
not challenge the adverse state-court decisions,”
ante, at 4
(internal quotation marks omitted), cannot survive even a cursory
examination of his complaint. See
supra, at 9–10.
Nor would the other possibility make any sense.
Reed cannot be seeking relief from the
district attorney’s
enforcement of Chapter 64, because the district attorney has not
enforced that law against Reed at all. The sum total of the
district attorney’s relevant conduct is as follows. First, he
declined to order Reed’s desired testing in his executive
discretion, independent of Chapter 64. Next, when Reed asked the
Texas courts to grant testing under Chapter 64, the district
attorney opposed his motion. Finally, after Reed’s motion proved
unsuccessful, the district attorney continued to decline to order
Reed’s desired testing. To say that this conduct amounts to
enforcing Chapter 64 makes as much sense as saying that a party to
a discovery dispute, who defeats a motion to compel, in effect,
“enforces” the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure by continuing not
to turn over the demanded documents. Again, any due process injury
that Chapter 64 has caused Reed is traceable to the CCA’s judicial
application of that law in his case, not to any executive acts or
omissions of the district attorney.
The majority permits Reed to evade that problem
by framing his Article III injury as the mere lack of access to his
desired evidence, independent of any alleged due process denial.
See
ante, at 3. But, if framing Reed’s injury that way helps
with
traceability, it only worsens his
redressability
problem. Suppose that the District Court accepted Reed’s due
process arguments and issued his requested relief: an abstract
declaration that the interpretation of Chapter 64 that the CCA
applied in his case is unconstitutional. How, exactly, would that
redress Reed’s injury of not having the evidence tested? The CCA’s
Chapter 64 judgment would remain untouched; Reed would have
obtained an opinion disapproving its reasoning, but without any
appellate “revis[ion] and correct[ion]” to disturb its finality.
Bollman, 4 Cranch, at 86. Nor would a declaration that the
CCA’s construction of Chapter 64 was unconstitutional imply
anything about
the district attorney’s duties or
liabilities.
The majority asserts that such a declaration
would cause “ ‘a significant increase in the
likelihood’ ” that the district attorney would grant Reed’s
desired testing.
Ante, at 3 (quoting
Utah v.
Evans,
536
U.S. 452, 464 (2002)). But the district attorney has made clear
that he does not understand Reed’s requested relief to “require any
change in conduct” from him and that it is not “likely to bring
about such change.” Brief for Respondent 38–39. If the majority
thinks the district attorney is wrong about that, it would only be
fair to explain exactly what change in conduct would be legally
required of him if Reed prevailed on his due process claim. The
majority fails to do so.[
5]
Instead, it offers a number of vague
pronouncements, all of which wilt under scrutiny. Consider the
claim that Reed’s victory in this action would “eliminate the
[district attorney’s] justification for denying DNA testing.”
Ante, at 3. If this means that Reed’s requested relief would
entitle him to testing under Chapter 64, it is wrong because the
CCA’s unreversed judgment would stand as a final, binding
determination of Reed’s Chapter 64 rights even if the District
Court were to declare that, in its opinion, the CCA had applied
that law unconstitutionally in Reed’s case. Alternatively, if the
majority means that the success of Reed’s due process claim would
require the district attorney to permit testing in his independent
executive discretion, it is also wrong because Reed is not
challenging the district attorney’s denial of discretionary testing
as unlawful—only the CCA’s “interpretation and application of
[Chapter] 64.” App. 49.
The majority also misses the mark when it
asserts that it is “substantially likely that the [district
attorney] would abide by [Reed’s requested] court order.”
Ante, at 3 (internal quotation marks omitted). Again, the
only “court order” Reed seeks is a declaration disapproving the
legal underpinnings of the CCA’s judgment. Such an “order” would
have no bearing on the district attorney’s future conduct; in a
literal sense, there would be nothing for him to “abide by.”
Finally, the majority says that the District
Court “ ‘would have ordered a change in a legal status’ ”
were it to grant the declaration Reed seeks.
Ibid. (quoting
Utah, 536 U. S., at 464). The intended meaning of this
statement is completely obscure. The “status” that the majority has
in mind cannot be that of Chapter 64 itself. See
California,
593 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8) (explaining that judicial
remedies “ ‘operate with respect to specific parties,’ ”
not “ ‘on legal rules in the abstract’ ”); see also
Mellon, 262 U. S., at 488 (explaining that courts “have
no power
per se to review and annul [statutes] on the
ground that they are unconstitutional,” only “the negative power to
disregard an unconstitutional enactment” when “declaring the law
applicable to [a justiciable] controversy”). Nor can the majority
mean that the District Court could change the “status” of the CCA’s
judgment. In reality, the only way that the District Court could
possibly help Reed obtain DNA testing is
by directly
controlling the district attorney’s actions. But, again,
Reed’s complaint neither requests nor sets forth a basis for any
such relief.[
6]
In sum, there is no getting around the essential
problem with Reed’s due process claim: To the extent he is not
merely seeking an advisory opinion, he is complaining about a
court-inflicted injury, and redressing that injury would require an
exercise of appellate jurisdiction that the District Court does not
possess. In substance, his complaint in this action is a mere
reprise of his prior certiorari petition, camouflaged as an
original action against the district attorney. Thus, I would vacate
the Fifth Circuit’s judgment and remand this case to the District
Court with instructions to dismiss the complaint for lack of
subject-matter jurisdiction.
B
The majority next holds that Reed’s §1983 due
process claim was timely because it did not accrue until the CCA
denied rehearing. The little reasoning the majority offers for this
conclusion helpfully accentuates its antecedent jurisdictional
errors.
First, the majority points out that a procedural
due process claim is not necessarily “ ‘complete when the
deprivation occurs,’ ” but “only when ‘the State fails to
provide due process.’ ”
Ante, at 5 (quoting
Zinermon v.
Burch,
494 U.S.
113, 126 (1990)). Yet, “the general rule” is that due process
itself “requir[es] predeprivation notice and hearing,” so
the truism for which the majority quotes
Zinermon matters
only in those “extraordinary situations” in which “[w]e tolerate”
postdeprivation process as sufficient.
United States v.
James Daniel Good Real Property,
510 U.S.
43, 53 (1993) (internal quotation marks omitted); see
Zinermon, 494 U. S., at 127–130. The majority proceeds
to show, however, that it does not regard this case as a
postdeprivation case at all, for it says that the State “deprived
Reed of his asserted liberty interest in DNA testing” at the very
moment when “the State’s alleged failure to provide Reed with a
fundamentally fair process was complete.”
Ante, at 5. Given
this understanding of Reed’s claim, the “[i]mportan[t]” proposition
with which the majority begins its analysis is doctrinally
irrelevant.
Ibid.
After that red herring, the majority engages in
an obvious equivocation, conflating the Chapter 64 “process” that
Reed challenges as “fundamentally unfair” with the Texas courts’
generally applicable decisional procedures.
Ibid. But
of course, those procedures are not what Reed challenges. Instead
(and, again, exactly like the arguments in his prior certiorari
petition), his due process claim “ ‘targets as
unconstitutional’ ”
the substantive requirements of Chapter
64 as construed.
Ante, at 4. His claim plainly would be
no different if the CCA did not entertain rehearing motions.
Still, the majority’s confused accrual reasoning
is useful for the added light that it shines on Reed’s
jurisdictional problems. As the majority says, a procedural due
process claim has two elements: (1) a deprivation and (2)
inadequate process. The majority then acknowledges that the state
courts effectuated Reed’s
deprivation, and it treats the
state courts’ ordinary decisional mechanics as the allegedly
inadequate
process. But, after both elements of Reed’s claim
are thus laid at the feet of the state courts, what role is left
for the nominal defendant here, the district attorney? What part
did he play in violating Reed’s procedural due process rights, and
what makes him a proper defendant to Reed’s §1983 claim?
The majority has no answer. At bottom, its
approval of Reed’s claim is intelligible only upon the supposition
that the district attorney may be sued as a mere stand-in for the
State as a whole, such that Reed can urge
against him the
due process violations that the State allegedly committed
through its courts. That is a profound mistake. True, the
district attorney and the CCA are both state actors. But, States
act in different ways through their different entities and
officers, and the nature of a challenged state action determines
what federal-court remedy may be available.
As this Court has explained, “[a] State acts by
its legislative, its executive, or its judicial authorities,” and
“in no other way.”
Ex parte Virginia,
100 U.S.
339, 347 (1880). The Due Process Clause applies to action
through any of these agencies,
ibid., but not every alleged
due process violation may be asserted in an original §1983 action.
By itself, a State’s
legislative enactment of an
unconstitutional law does not give rise to a justiciable case or
controversy. See
California, 593 U. S., at ___–___
(slip op., at 7–9);
Muskrat, 219 U. S., at 361. Next,
when a State allegedly violates due process through
executive action, the aggrieved party may bring an original
action for appropriate relief against the relevant executive
officer. See
Mellon, 262 U. S., at 488;
Ex parte
Young,
209 U.S.
123 (1908).[
7] And, when a
State allegedly violates due process through its
judicial
actions—be it through the denial of a fundamentally fair judicial
procedure or through the application of a rule of decision that
itself violates due process—the remedy that Congress has provided
is appellate “review of the [challenged] judgmen[t] in this Court.”
Feldman, 460 U. S., at 482; see,
e.g.,
Rogers, 532 U. S., at 453;
Bouie, 378
U. S., at 349;
Brinkerhoff-Faris, 281 U. S., at
678; cf.
Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v.
Florida
Dept. of Environmental Protection,
560
U.S. 702 (2010) (reviewing judicial-taking claim on certiorari
to the challenged state-court judgment). But, if that remedy proves
unsuccessful—as it did for Reed—the aggrieved party cannot simply
substitute an executive officer as a defendant, charge the state
court’s errors to that officer, and seek redress for a
court-inflicted injury in a purported original action.
Properly understood, therefore, Article III, the
Rooker-
Feldman doctrine, and procedural due process
principles work in harmony. The majority’s piecemeal analysis
replaces this natural coherence with chaos. It dilutes Article
III’s traceability and redressability requirements to the point of
irrelevance. It creates a system in which the same state-court
actions simultaneously give rise to identical original and
appellate claims for relief. See this Court’s Rule 13.3 (“[T]he
time to file [a] petition for a writ of certiorari . . .
runs from the date of the denial of rehearing” by the lower court).
It allows Reed to convert his failed certiorari petition into a
§1983 complaint. And, in doing so, it authorizes a proceeding in
which the District Court can do nothing except opine on the
constitutional merits of a state-court adjudication.
* * *
If there is a mitigating factor to today’s
decision, it is that the §1983 action that the Court misguidedly
allows to proceed is no barrier to the prompt execution of Reed’s
lawful sentence. See
Hill v.
McDonough, 547 U.S. 573,
583–584 (2006). Indeed, Reed conceded at oral argument “that you do
not get a stay of execution just because you brought [a Chapter] 64
proceeding or just because you’re in [§]1983 proceedings
. . . challenging the adequacy of the procedures
available to you from the state.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 68. Texas is
free to take him at his word. But, because the majority undermines
vital principles of federal jurisdiction and destabilizes the
orderly working of our judicial system, I respectfully dissent.