Reed v. Goertz/Opinion of Justice Thomas

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Opinion of the Court
Rodney Reed v. Bryan Goertz
Supreme Court of the United States
Alito, J., dissenting
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4198277Rodney Reed v. Bryan GoertzSupreme Court of the United States
​

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.

  1. ↑ One example encapsulates the meritlessness of those attempts. In one of his many state postconviction proceedings, Reed submitted an affidavit from his own father, Walter, stating that an acquaintance had told him that he knew where Stites was the night she died. Reed submitted no affidavit from the acquaintance. The State then obtained an affidavit from the acquaintance, in which he swore that he “ ‘never told Walter Reed that I knew where Stacey Stites was on the night she was killed. All I ever told Walter was that Rodney Reed was a crackhead who raped girls on the [railroad] tracks. I have no idea where Stacey Stites was when she died.’ ” Ex parte Reed, 271 S. W. 3d, at 736.
  2. ↑ See District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U. S. 462 (1983); Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U. S. 413 (1923).
  3. ↑ The limited exceptions to these generalizations only prove the rules. Appellate courts sometimes issue remedies that operate directly on the parties (e.g., injunctions pending appeal), but such remedies are “extraordinary” and appropriate only when “ ‘in aid of ’ ” the court’s primary appellate jurisdiction. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. Federal Election Comm’n, 542 U. S. 1305, 1305–1306 (2004) (Rehnquist, C. J., in chambers) (quoting 28 U. S. C. §1651(a)). And, while certain original remedies, like declaratory judgments and quiet title decrees, do not necessarily impose new duties on the losing defendant, they conclusively establish the parties’ legal relations from which such duties flow. See Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U. S. 249, 261–265 (1933). Significantly, this Court has long held that an action for declaratory relief alone implicates the same constitutional “case or controversy” as would an action for coercive relief involving the same parties and subject matter, see ibid., and that declaratory relief “cannot alone supply jurisdiction otherwise absent,” California v. Texas, 593 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 9); see also R. Fallon, J. Manning, D. Meltzer, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 841 (7th ed. 2015).
  4. ↑ I acknowledge that our most recent DNA-testing precedent, Skinner v. Switzer, 562 U. S. 521 (2011), contains loose language suggesting that Skinner’s due process claim challenged neither “the [defendant] prosecutor’s conduct [n]or the decisions reached by the CCA” in his case, but only “Texas’ postconviction DNA statute ‘as construed’ by the Texas courts.” Id., at 530. But, the majority surely cannot think that federal courts have subject-matter jurisdiction over challenges to statutes in the abstract, nor does Skinner actually stand for that proposition. Skinner’s only jurisdictional holding was that the petitioner’s claim was not barred by Rooker–Feldman. See 562 U. S., at 532–533. Skinner did not address Article III standing and thus has “ ‘no precedential effect’ ” on that issue. Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 511 (2006). Yet, for the curious, Skinner’s complaint did in fact allege that the defendant prosecutor was violating his due process rights through her conduct, and it expressly requested injunctive relief against her. See App. in Skinner v. Switzer, O. T. 2010, No. 09–9000, pp. 5–6, ¶¶1–2; 20–21, ¶33; 22, ¶37. Thus, Skinner’s claim as pleaded clearly was original in nature, but for precisely the same reasons that Reed’s is not: Where Skinner claimed injury from and sought relief against the party whom he had sued, Reed claims injury from and seeks relief against an adverse judicial decision.
  5. ↑ This failure will have troubling consequences if Reed’s claim ever progresses beyond the pleading stage. To survive summary judgment, Reed cannot “rest on mere allegations, but must set forth by affidavit or other evidence specific facts” showing that his requested relief will make it likelier that he obtains the desired testing. Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U. S. 398, 412 (2013) (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted). It is far from clear what such a showing would entail, and the majority leaves the parties in the dark.
  6. ↑ This case is thus very different from Utah v. Evans, 536 U. S. 452 (2002), on which the majority relies heavily (indeed, exclusively). There, as earlier in Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U. S. 788 (1992), we held that a State had standing to sue the Secretary of Commerce for injunctive and declaratory relief against an allegedly improper census report that would have diminished the State’s congressional delegation. See Utah, 536 U. S., at 459–464; Franklin, 505 U. S., at 801–803 (plurality opinion). In both cases, Justice Scalia argued in dissent that redressability was lacking because the causal link between the Secretary’s preparation of a new report and redress of the States’ apportionment injuries depended on the actions of other officials not bound by the court’s judgment. See Utah, 536 U. S., at 511; Franklin, 505 U. S., at 824–825. The Court answered that objection by “assum[ing]”—in large part because “the Solicitor General ha[d] not contended to the contrary”—that it was “substantially likely” that those other officials would cooperate with a judgment in the suing State’s favor. Franklin, 505 U. S., at 803 (plurality opinion); see Utah, 536 U. S., at 460–461, 463–464. Utah and Franklin thus represent nothing more than a context-specific application of the settled rule that “standing is not precluded” (although it is “more difficult to establish”) when the connection between the defendant’s court-ordered remedial conduct and ultimate redress of the plaintiff ’s injury partly depends on the actions of third parties. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 562 (1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, by contrast, the majority finds redressability in an abstract declaration—in truth, an advisory opinion—that would not require any change in conduct on the part of the only defendant in this case. Nothing in our precedents supports that holding.
  7. ↑ Young cautioned that,
    “[i]n making an officer of the State a party defendant in a suit to enjoin the enforcement of an act alleged to be unconstitutional[,] it is plain that such officer must have some connection with the enforcement of the act, or else it is merely making him a party as a representative of the State, and thereby attempting to make the State a party.” 209 U. S., at 157 (emphasis added).

    Invoking this language, the district attorney argues that Reed’s suit is independently barred by state sovereign immunity, in addition to Article III and the Rooker–Feldman doctrine. It appears fairly debatable whether the “connection” requirement described in Young is best understood as a precondition to Young’s sovereign-immunity exception or as a simple application of Article III traceability. Compare Okpalobi v. Foster, 244 F. 3d 405, 410–424 (CA5 2001) (en banc) (plurality opinion) (taking the former view), with id., at 439 (Benavides, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (arguing that “modern standing doctrine has subsumed the connection inquiry”). I see no need to tackle that question here, since Article III and Rooker–Feldman amply establish the jurisdictional impropriety of Reed’s suit. I add only that, on either interpretation, Young makes it clear that a state officer cannot be sued “as a representative of the State” writ large—rather, he can only be sued for legal violations attributable to his own office.

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