Mohamed Khalil v. DCP&P ( 2015 )

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
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No. 14-1506
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MOHAMED KHALIL; SANDRA DAMRAH,
Appellants
v.
NEW JERSEY DIVISION OF CHILD PROTECTION AND PERMANENCY,
f/k/a DIVISION OF YOUTH AND FAMILY SEVICES;
KARA P. WOOD, IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS DIRECTOR OF DCP&P;
ALLISON BLAKE, IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS
THE COMMISSIONER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES;
KEVIN BELLI, IN HIS INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY;
GILLIAN BATTS, IN HER INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY;
JANET DASILVA, IN HER INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY;
ESPERANZA VARGAS, IN HER INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY;
ARLENE COHN, IN HER INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY;
EZEADI KELECHI, IN HIS INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY;
ALICE SCHAEFFER-NADELMAN, IN HER INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY;
GERALDINE LIVENGOOD, IN HER INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY;
FAMILY INTERVENTION SERVICES; JOHN DOES 1-15
_______________
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of New Jersey
(D.C. Civil No. 2-12-cv-07284)
District Judge: Honorable Katharine S. Hayden
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Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
December 8, 2014
BEFORE: VANASKIE, COWEN and VAN ANTWERPEN, Circuit Judges
(Filed: February 4, 2015)
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OPINION*
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COWEN, Circuit Judge.
The plaintiffs-appellants, Mohamed Khalil and Sandra Damrah (together,
“Appellants”), alleging federal and state law claims, filed suit in federal court against the
New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency (the “DCP&P”), certain of its
associates and employees, and other persons involved in the care and/or oversight of
Khalil’s son (collectively, “Appellees”). Appellants seek review of the District Court’s
order dismissing their complaint. Because we conclude that dismissal was appropriate,
we will affirm.
I.
Because we write solely for the parties, we will only set forth the facts necessary to
inform our analysis.
This case stems from two events. The first involved family court proceedings
regarding Khalil’s parental rights over his child, A.R.K, and does not appear to implicate
Damrah’s rights. Due to an incident that occurred at the home of A.R.K.’s biological
mother, the police were called and Khalil arrested. Following his arrest, the DCP&P
______________
*
This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not
constitute binding precedent.
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removed A.R.K. from his biological mother’s home, placed him in a foster home, and
restricted Khalil’s visitation with him. Despite Khalil’s alleged compliance with all
requirements placed on him, DCP&P successfully sought termination of his parental
rights. Khalil alleges that the termination of his parental rights was the culmination of
false statements made by Appellees throughout the family court proceedings.
The second event involved an encounter with defendant/appellee Ezeadi Kelechi,
a DCP&P child protective services worker. Asserting various federal and state law
claims, Appellants allege that while the two of them were dining at a public restaurant,
Kelechi harassed and threatened them, shouting loudly that Khalil is a terrorist and that
DCP&P has custody of his son and will never give him back. Kelechi also reportedly
knew how much Khalil had paid in attorney’s fees, mocked his religious and ethnic roots,
and questioned whether Damrah was born in the United States because she didn’t “look
like it.” (Compl. ¶¶ 107-11.) Appellants allege that this incident establishes a conspiracy
between Kelechi and Appellees to violate Khalil’s civil rights.
II.
We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We exercise plenary review
over a district court’s order dismissing a complaint and its application of the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine. Whiteford v. Reed, 155 F.3d 671, 672 (3d Cir. 1998). When
considering a motion to dismiss a complaint, a court must view the factual allegations as
true and dismiss only if the complaint does not allege “enough facts to state a claim to
relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007).
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A. Application of the Rooker-Feldman Doctrine
The federal courts “possess only that power authorized by Constitution and statute,
which is not to be expanded by judicial decree.” Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of
America, 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994) (citations omitted). “It is to be presumed that a cause
lies outside [the federal courts’] limited jurisdiction and the burden of establishing the
contrary rests upon the party asserting jurisdiction.” Id. (citations omitted). Pursuant to
the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, federal courts lack jurisdiction over suits that are
essentially appeals from state-court judgments. Great Western Mining & Mineral Co. v.
Fox Rothschild LLP, 615 F.3d 159, 165 (3d Cir. 2010). It therefore falls to Khalil, as the
party asserting jurisdiction, to demonstrate that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not
apply to his claims arising out of the family court proceedings.
The doctrine requires that “(1) the federal plaintiff lost in state court; (2) the
plaintiff ‘complain[s] of injuries caused by [the] state-court judgments’; (3) those
judgments were rendered before the federal suit was filed; and (4) the plaintiff is inviting
the district court to review and reject the state judgments.” Id. at 166 (quoting Exxon
Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005)). We have counseled
that “[t]he second and fourth requirements are the key to determining whether a federal
suit presents an independent, non-barred claim.” Id.Here, the first and third requirements are clearly met. Khalil lost in state court, and
the family court’s decision to terminate his parental rights was rendered prior to initiation
of his federal suit. We therefore focus our inquiry on the second and fourth prongs. We
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have noted that these requirements are “closely related.” Id. at 168. Khalil argues that he
does not complain of injuries caused by the state-court judgment, but rather of injuries
caused by Appellees. He similarly asserts that he does not ask us to review and reject the
state-court judgment because he invites review only of Appellees’ conduct in the state-
court proceedings. We find these arguments unpersuasive.
That Khalil is really challenging the state court’s decision to terminate his parental
rights is evidenced by the allegations in the complaint. He complains that “[i]t was the
actions of the Defendants . . . that resulted in the termination of his parental rights,” and
contends that Appellees committed fraud upon the court “in terminating [his] parental
rights.” (Compl. ¶¶ 46, 117.) In fact, the termination of Khalil’s parental rights was the
result of a state-court order. Accordingly, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine applies, and the
District Court correctly concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to consider the majority of
Khalil’s claims against Appellees.
This conclusion is supported by our opinion in Great Western Mining & Mineral
Co. v. Fox Rothschild LLP. In Great Western, we declined to apply the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine to a lawsuit brought by the plaintiff-appellant alleging “an extensive conspiracy
among [a defendant], numerous attorneys, and various state-court judges to engineer [the
plaintiff’s] defeat in state court.” 615 F.3d at 171. While acknowledging that the suit
attacked state-court judgments, we concluded that we had jurisdiction over the claims
because the “people involved in the decision violated . . . [the plaintiff’s] right to an
impartial forum.” Id. at 172. In contrast here, Khalil does not allege any conspiracy on
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the part of the family court or state court judges who ultimately made the decisions
affecting his parental rights. Indeed, although Khalil alleges that Livengood, a New
Jersey deputy attorney general, falsely represented that Khalil’s stepson committed
suicide while in his custody, he has not alleged any “agreement [between Appellees and
the state court decisionmakers] to reach a predetermined outcome in [his] case,” such that
he has pled a constitutional claim independent of any harm he suffered as a result of the
state-court decisions. Id.Nor can Khalil find refuge in our decision in Ernst v. Child and Youth Servs. of
Chester County, 108 F.3d 486 (3d Cir. 1997). In Ernst, we concluded that the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine did not apply to a plaintiff’s claims of bias against employees of the
Chester County Children & Youth Services (“CYS”), who the plaintiff alleged harbored
improper motives for seeking an adjudication of dependency regarding her
granddaughter. Id. at 492. In so holding, we noted that a state court’s decision regarding
dependency is not based on any determination that the CYS employees were pursuing the
determination for an improper motive. Id. Here, however, Khalil directly attacks the
state-court judgment, claiming that it erroneously terminated his parental rights as the
result of allegedly false accusations, concealed facts, and wholly fabricated statements on
the part of the DCP&P employees. It is therefore impossible for us to grant Khalil relief
without concluding that the foundation for the state court’s opinion was incorrect, thereby
rejecting the state court’s judgment regarding his parental rights. This result is barred by
the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.
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Because, however, Appellants’ claims stemming from their encounter with Kelechi
arise from conduct that occurred after the state-court judgment was final, we consider
them separately.
B. Remaining Federal Claims Against Kelechi
The District Court dismissed the remainder of Appellants’ substantive
constitutional claims, concluding that they failed to plead any plausible claim that their
constitutional rights had been violated. Appellants have not appealed those
determinations. Rather, they challenge only the District Court’s dismissal of their claims
of constitutional conspiracy pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985, and 1986. Each of
these statutes requires, at base, an agreement to deprive an individual of some legal right.
The District Court concluded that dismissal of these claims was appropriate because the
“bare allegation of an agreement is insufficient to sustain a conspiracy claim.” Khalil v.
NJ Div. of Child Protection and Permanency, Civ. No. 12-7284 (KSH), 2014 WL
356604, at *11 (D.N.J. Jan. 31, 2014). We agree.
Appellants’ sole basis for the existence of a conspiracy is their allegation that
Kelechi had knowledge of information that he otherwise should not have known. They
surmise from this fact that he must have gained this information as part of a conspiracy
with the other Appellees to deprive Khalil his parental rights. Without more, such pure
conjecture is simply insufficient to state a plausible claim. See Twombly, 550 U.S. at 545(“Factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative
level”); see also Young v. Kann, 926 F.2d 1396, 1405 n.16 (3d Cir. 1991) (affirming the
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dismissal of a claim as legally frivolous because it was based “merely upon [the
plaintiff’s] own suspicion and speculation.”).
III.
In light of the foregoing, the order of the District Court entered on January 31,
2014, will be affirmed.
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