Roshan v. Sunquist

Background

Peyman Roshan challenged the revocation of his real estate license after the California Department of Real Estate adopted an administrative law judge’s proposal to revoke the license and ordered him to pay $4,133.85 in costs. Roshan brought three claims: a civil-rights claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Chika Sunquist and Douglas McCauley; a declaratory-judgment claim against all defendants; and a state-law claim for a writ of administrative mandamus against the Department and Sunquist.

The case followed earlier federal proceedings involving Roshan’s State Bar disciplinary proceedings and a prior action concerning the Department’s disciplinary proceedings. In this action, Roshan challenged the revocation of his real estate license and also challenged the State Bar disciplinary order, State Bar rules, and procedures.

Request for judicial notice

The defendants asked the court to take judicial notice of 17 documents. The court denied the request as to Exhibits 15 and 16 because those documents were already on the docket. It granted the request as to Exhibits 1 through 15 and 17 as public records, limiting judicial notice to the existence of each document or the fact that a proceeding occurred—not the truth of the factual statements in those documents. The opinion’s wording is internally inconsistent because it both denies judicial notice of Exhibit 15 and says the court grants the request as to Exhibits 1 through 15 and 17.

Eleventh Amendment

The court held that the California Department of Real Estate, as a state agency, was immune from suit in federal court under the Eleventh Amendment. The court rejected Roshan’s arguments that the State had waived that immunity through a United States Supreme Court decision or through a California statute allowing administrative-mandamus actions in state court. The court stated that consent to suit in a state’s own courts does not waive immunity from suit in federal court.

The court therefore dismissed Roshan’s claims against the Department without prejudice to refiling them in a court with jurisdiction.

Rooker-Feldman doctrine

The court held that Roshan’s first two claims were barred for lack of jurisdiction to the extent they challenged his own State Bar disciplinary order. The Rooker-Feldman doctrine prevents federal district courts from acting as appellate courts reviewing state-court decisions. The court also stated that Roshan’s claims challenging the State Bar rules and procedures repeated issues addressed in an earlier related proceeding, including his lack of standing to pursue a facial challenge to those rules.

The court dismissed the first two claims for lack of jurisdiction, with leave to amend to state a claim concerning the Department’s proceedings. It warned that repeating claims concerning the State Bar proceedings would result in dismissal without leave to amend.

State-law mandamus claim

The court dismissed Roshan’s third claim, for a writ of administrative mandamus, because it lacked supplemental jurisdiction after dismissing the federal claims. The court considered whether the claim could instead proceed under federal-question jurisdiction because it raised due-process issues. It concluded that the federal issue was not sufficiently important to the federal system to support federal jurisdiction.

The court dismissed the third claim with leave to amend.

Disposition

The court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss. It dismissed Roshan’s claims with leave to amend and permitted him to file an amended complaint within 30 days, solely to correct the deficiencies identified in the order. The court continued the case-management conference from November 19, 2024, to February 14, 2025, at 2:00 p.m.