Sherri Jefferson v. State Bar of Georgia

USCA11 Case: 22-12835 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 01/27/2023 Page: 1 of 9
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-12835
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
SHERRI JEFFERSON,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
STATE BAR OF GEORGIA,
SHARON L. BRYANT,
in her official capacity,
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, STATE BAR OF GEORGIA,
WILLIAM COBB,
in his official capacity as Bar Counsel,
PATRICK LONGAN,
in his official capacity as review panel
chairman, et al.,
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2 Opinion of the Court 22-12835
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Georgia
D.C. Docket No. 1:22-cv-01883-TCB
____________________
Before JORDAN, BRASHER, and HULL, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Plaintiff Sherri Jefferson is a former member of the State Bar
of Georgia who was disbarred by the Georgia Supreme Court on
October 7, 2019. See In re Jefferson, 834 S.E.2d 73 (Ga. 2019).
Jefferson, proceeding pro se, sued the State Bar of Georgia and
certain officials (collectively, “State Bar”) alleging, inter alia, that
they acted improperly when they disciplined and ultimately
disbarred her (and other African American lawyers).
The district court denied Jefferson’s motion to recuse,
granted the State Bar’s motion to stay discovery pending resolution
of its motion to dismiss, and later granted the State Bar’s motion to
dismiss. Jefferson appeals these three rulings. After careful review,
we affirm the district court’s denial of the recusal motion, its
staying of the discovery, and its dismissal of Jefferson’s claims.
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I. MOTION TO RECUSE
On appeal, Jefferson challenges the district court’s denial of
Jefferson’s motion to recuse. We review a denial of a motion for
recusal for abuse of discretion. In re Walker, 532 F.3d 1304, 1308
(11th Cir. 2008).
Under 28 U.S.C. § 455, a judge “shall disqualify himself in
any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be
questioned.” 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). A judge shall also disqualify
himself if “he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party,
or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the
proceeding.” Id. § 455(b). “[T]he general rule is that bias sufficient
to disqualify a judge must stem from extrajudicial sources.”
Thomas v. Tenneco Packaging Co., 293 F.3d 1306, 1329 (11th Cir.
2002) (quotation marks omitted). “The exception to this rule is
when a judge’s remarks in a judicial context demonstrate such
pervasive bias and prejudice that it constitutes bias against a party.”
Id. (quotation marks omitted).
Here, Jefferson moved to recuse the district court judge
because he previously had presided over two of her cases.1 The
district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Jefferson’s
1 In Jefferson v. Deal, Case No. 1:15-cv-02069-TCB (N.D. Ga. June 9, 2015),
Jefferson challenged the constitutionality of several Georgia criminal statutes
without success. In Doe v. Deal, Case No. 1:15-cv-02226-TCB (N.D. Ga. June
19, 2015), Jefferson initially listed herself as the attorney representing “Jane
Doe” but later sought to be the plaintiff, and she again challenged the
constitutionality of certain Georgia statutes without success.
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motion to recuse for three reasons. First, the alleged bias raised by
Jefferson pertained to the district court judge’s capacity as a judge
and was not extrajudicial in nature. 28 U.S.C. § 455(b); Thomas,
293 F.3d at 1329. Second, there was no evidence of remarks
suggesting, much less constituting, bias. Third, Jefferson provided
no other reason to suggest the district court judge’s impartiality
could reasonably be questioned. 28 U.S.C. § 455(a).
II. STAY OF DISCOVERY
On appeal, Jefferson also challenges the district court’s
staying of discovery pending the resolution of the State Bar’s
motion to dismiss. We review matters pertaining to discovery
under an abuse of discretion standard. Josendis v. Wall to Wall
Residence Repairs, Inc., 662 F.3d 1292, 1306 (11th Cir. 2011).
District courts have “broad discretion to stay discovery
pending a decision on a dispositive motion.” See Panola Land
Buyers Ass’n v. Shuman, 762 F.2d 1550, 1560 (11th Cir. 1985); see
also Chudasama v. Mazda Motor Corp., 123 F.3d 1353, 1366 (11th
Cir. 1997) (“[D]istrict courts enjoy broad discretion in deciding how
best to manage the cases before them.”). As outlined later, the
State Bar’s motion to dismiss raised numerous legal reasons why
Jefferson’s case must be dismissed. Jefferson has shown no abuse
of discretion in the district court’s staying discovery pending a
ruling on the State Bar’s motion to dismiss.
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III. MOTION TO DISMISS
The district court granted the State Bar’s motion to dismiss
on many grounds including: (1) the Rooker-Feldman doctrine; (2) a
lack of subject matter jurisdiction; (3) the statute of limitations;
(4) judicial, prosecutorial, and qualified immunity; (5) collateral
estoppel; and (6) failure to state a claim.
On appeal, Jefferson challenges both a procedural aspect and
the substantive merits of the district court’s order on the State Bar’s
motion to dismiss. We begin with Jefferson’s procedural
argument.
A. Procedural
In its order granting the State Bar’s motion to dismiss, the
district court noted—in a footnote—Jefferson’s prior actions
regarding her disbarment ruled on by the United States Supreme
Court and the Georgia Supreme Court:
Jefferson petitioned the Supreme Court of the United
States for a writ of certiorari, which was denied on
February 24, 2020. Jefferson v. Sup. Ct. of Ga., 140 S.
Ct. 1148 (mem.), reh’g denied, 140 S. Ct. 2637 (2020)(mem.). She has since filed two unsuccessful actions
with the Georgia Supreme Court seeking the
reinstatement of her law license. See In re Jefferson,
No. S22O0785 (Ga. Apr. 19, 2022); In re Jefferson, No.
S22Y0949 (Ga. June 1, 2022).
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Jefferson argues the district court erred by considering cases
outside the instant litigation without converting the motion to
dismiss into a motion for summary judgment. We disagree.
Generally, a district court must convert a motion to dismiss
into one for summary judgment if it considers materials outside the
complaint. SFM Holdings, Ltd. v. Banc of Am. Sec., LLC, 600 F.3d
1334, 1337 (11th Cir. 2010). But there are exceptions to this general
rule. For example, a district court may consider matters of which
a court may take judicial notice. Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues &
Rts., Ltd., 551 U.S. 308, 322, 127 S. Ct. 2499, 2509 (2007).
As relevant here, a district court may take judicial notice of
another lawsuit to establish the fact of such lawsuit and related
filings, but not for the truth of the matters asserted in the other
lawsuit. See United States v. Jones, 29 F.3d 1549, 1553 (11th Cir.
1994) (“[A] court may take notice of another court’s order only for
the limited purpose of recognizing the ‘judicial act’ that the order
represents or the subject matter of the litigation.”). Here, by
referring to cases outside the instant litigation, the district court
merely noted the existence of those cases and whether they were
successful. The district court did not reference those cases for the
truth of the matters asserted in those cases. We thus conclude the
district court did not err in this respect.
B. Merits of Motion to Dismiss
Jefferson also challenges each substantive ground given by
the district court for granting the State Bar’s motion to dismiss.
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We begin with the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which bars
federal district courts from reviewing state-court decisions. 2 Behr
v. Campbell, 8 F.4th 1206, 1208 (11th Cir. 2021). It applies to “cases
brought by state-court losers complaining of injuries caused by
state-court judgments rendered before the district court
proceedings commenced and inviting district court review and
rejection of those judgments.” Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic
Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284, 125 S. Ct. 1517, 1521–22 (2005).
On appeal, Jefferson does not appear to dispute that she
qualified as a “state-court loser” and her October 2019 disbarment
was “rendered before the district court proceedings commenced”
in May 2022 in the instant case. Id. Rather, Jefferson claims she
was not seeking to overturn the state court judgment. So the
question is whether or not her instant claims are “inviting district
court review and rejection of [the state court] judgment[].” Id.A careful review of Jefferson’s amended complaint in this
case shows that she is seeking review and rejection of the state
2 This doctrine is named after two Supreme Court cases: Rooker v. Fidelity
Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S. Ct. 149 (1923), and District of Columbia Court
of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 103 S. Ct. 1303 (1983). In Rooker, the
Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs, who had lost in state court, could not
ask the federal district court to declare the state court judgment “null and
void.” 263 U.S. at 414–15, 44 S. Ct. at 149–50. Similarly, in Feldman, the
Supreme Court said that lower federal courts lacked jurisdiction to review a
decision by the District of Columbia’s highest court denying a waiver of a bar
admission rule that requires applicants to the District of Columbia Bar to have
graduated from an approved law school. 460 U.S. at 482, 103 S. Ct. at 1315.
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court judgment that disbarred her. Jefferson’s amended complaint
asked the district court to enjoin the State Bar from “[f]ailing or
refusing to take such steps as may be necessary to restore . . . the
victims of Defendants’ unlawful practices to the position they
would have been in but for the discriminatory conduct.” Jefferson
thus essentially asked the district court to overturn the state court
judgment and reinstate her law license. 3 See Feldman, 460 U.S. at
482 n.16, 103 S. Ct. at 1315 n.16 (“Orders of a state court relating to
the admission, discipline, and disbarment of members of its bar
may be reviewed only by the Supreme Court of the United States
on certiorari to the state court, and not by means of an original
action in a lower federal court.” (quotation marks omitted)).
Further, by claiming that during her disciplinary
proceedings the State Bar treated her unlike other similarly situated
individuals, Jefferson essentially asked the district court to reject
the state court judgment on the basis that it was rendered
incorrectly. That is akin to requesting a declaration that the state
3 Jefferson attempts to distinguish “restore” from “reinstate” by arguing that
restore means “to reestablish,” while reinstate means “to put somebody to a
former position or rank.” We are unpersuaded. There is little daylight
between restore and reinstate. Compare Restore, Merriam-Webster Online
Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/restore (last
visited Jan. 9, 2023) (defining restore as “to bring back to or put back into a
former or original state”), with Reinstate, Merriam-Webster Online
Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reinstate (last
visited Jan. 9, 2023) (defining reinstate as “to place again . . . in a former
position” or “to restore to a previous effective state”).
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court judgment was arbitrary and capricious, which this Court
recently held is barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See Behr,
8 F.4th at 1211. We thus affirm the district court’s dismissal of
Jefferson’s claims under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.
Because we affirm for this substantive reason, we need not,
and do not, address whether the other, alternate grounds relied on
by the district court for dismissal—lack of subject matter
jurisdiction; statute of limitations; judicial, prosecutorial, and
qualified immunity; collateral estoppel; and failure to state a
claim—were likewise correct.
AFFIRMED.