Simmons v. NYS Dept of Social Services

Background

Ricardo R. Simmons, Jr., proceeding without a lawyer and permitted to file without paying court fees, sued the New York State Department of Social Services, the New York State Department of Child Support Services, Rockland County child-support services, and Onondaga County child-support services. The court treated Simmons’s motion to “suspend action” by the New York State Department of Social Services and “restore his rights” as his amended complaint because he did not file the amended complaint the court had directed him to submit.

Simmons alleged that in 1989 he signed papers connected to paternity and child support without understanding that he was agreeing to pay support. He also challenged later child-support orders, arrests and warrants related to nonpayment, the calculation of child-support arrears, and enforcement actions. The records attached to his complaint showed an arrears balance of $4,483.83 as of 2017, with a later listed balance of $3,789.91 after a credit. Simmons alleged that $100 was taken from his Chase Bank account, sought to stop further enforcement, requested $100,000 in damages, and asked that the arrears information be removed from his credit history.

Rulings on Paternity and Arrears

The court applied the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which generally prevents a federal district court from acting as an appeals court over a state-court judgment. It held that the paternity acknowledgments had become final decades earlier and that Simmons’s request to avoid child-support obligations would require review and reversal of those state-court determinations. The court therefore dismissed his challenge to the validity of the paternity orders for lack of jurisdiction.

The court reached the same conclusion regarding Simmons’s challenge to the amount of child-support arrears. His arguments appeared to repeat issues presented to Family Court, including whether support should have accrued while his son was incarcerated and whether the arrears were calculated correctly after the child moved from Rockland County to Onondaga County. Because state-court orders had determined the arrears, the federal court dismissed the challenge and could not order the Department of Social Services to suspend enforcement. The court also noted that the Family Court’s 2017 dismissal of Simmons’s petition to modify arrears was stated to be without prejudice, and nothing in that order appeared to prevent him from filing another petition in Family Court.

Bank-Account Withdrawal

The court stated that Rooker-Feldman did not bar a separate challenge to the way child-support obligations were enforced. Simmons alleged that the Department of Social Services took more money in one withdrawal than the income-withholding order authorized. The court construed this allegation as a possible claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for denial of procedural due process.

The court held that Simmons could not state that claim. Nothing in the complaint suggested that the alleged overcharge resulted from an established Department of Social Services policy. The court therefore treated it as a random, unauthorized taking. In that situation, a later state-court remedy can satisfy due-process requirements, and the court found that Simmons had a state-court remedy for an overcharge. It dismissed the procedural-due-process claim based on the $100 withdrawal for failure to state a claim.

Driver’s-License Suspension

The court considered Simmons’s allegation about driver’s-license suspension as another possible procedural-due-process claim. It explained that New York law provides written notice and an opportunity to challenge a proposed suspension based on child-support arrears. The law also provides a review process if the required notice was not received.

Simmons attached a notice stating that his license would be suspended because of arrears and documents showing that he filed a Family Court petition to modify those arrears. The Family Court rejected that petition as inadequate on its face. The federal court held that these allegations did not show that Simmons was denied notice or an opportunity to be heard merely because he did not prevail in Family Court. It dismissed his Fourteenth Amendment claims concerning the license suspension for failure to state a claim. The court also stated that courts had rejected substantive due-process challenges based on driver’s-license suspensions connected to child-support arrears.

Credit Reporting

The court construed Simmons’s request to remove child-support arrears from his credit reports as a possible claim under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It explained that federal and New York law require reporting of past-due child support to consumer reporting agencies and provide notice and an opportunity to contest the accuracy of the information.

The court concluded that Simmons was challenging the underlying determination that he owed arrears, rather than showing that the reporting itself was unlawful. Because the state-court process remained the avenue for challenging the arrears and there was no basis to find the reporting unlawful, the court rejected his request for removal of the information and held that the allegations failed to state a Fair Credit Reporting Act claim.

Disposition

The court declined to give Simmons another opportunity to amend because he had already been allowed to amend and the defects could not be cured by another amendment. The court dismissed the amended complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii), declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over any state-law claims, and certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith. It therefore denied fee-free appeal status.