Reed v. Goertz/Opinion of the Court
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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 Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the Court.
In many States, a convicted prisoner who still disputes his guilt may ask state courts to order post-conviction DNA testing of evidence. If the prisoner’s request fails in the state courts and he then files a federal 42 U. S. C. §1983 procedural due process suit challenging the constitutionality of the state process, when does the statute of limitations for that §1983 suit begin to run? The Eleventh Circuit has held that the statute of limitations begins to run at the end of the state-court litigation denying DNA testing, including the state-court appeal. See Van Poyck v. McCollum, 646 F. 3d 865, 867 (2011). In this case, by contrast, the Fifth Circuit held that the statute of limitations begins to run when the state trial court denied DNA testing, notwithstanding a subsequent state-court appeal. See 995 F. 3d 425, 431 (2021). We conclude that the statute of limitations begins to run at the end of the state-court litigation.
I
In 1996, Stacey Stites was strangled to death in Bastrop County, Texas. The State charged Rodney Reed with murdering Stites. At trial, Reed claimed that he was innocent and that Stites’s fiancé or another acquaintance had committed the murder. A jury rejected that defense theory and found Reed guilty. Reed was sentenced to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and death sentence. Reed’s state and federal habeas petitions were unsuccessful.
Then in 2014, Reed filed a motion in state court under Texas’s post-conviction DNA testing law. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Arts. 64.01–64.05 (Vernon 2018). Reed requested DNA testing on more than 40 pieces of evidence, including the belt used to strangle Stites. Reed contended that DNA testing would help identify the true perpetrator. The state prosecutor, respondent Bryan Goertz, agreed to test several pieces of evidence, but otherwise opposed the motion and refused to test most of the evidence.
The state trial court denied Reed’s motion. The court reasoned in part that (i) many items Reed sought to test—including the belt—were not preserved through an adequate chain of custody and (ii) Reed did not demonstrate that he would have been acquitted if the DNA results were exculpatory. On appeal, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the trial court and later denied Reed’s motion for rehearing.
Reed next sued in federal court under 42 U. S. C. §1983, asserting that Texas’s post-conviction DNA testing law failed to provide procedural due process. Among other things, Reed argued that the law’s stringent chain-of-custody requirement was unconstitutional and in effect foreclosed DNA testing for individuals convicted before “rules governing the State’s handling and storage of evidence were put in place.” App. 39.
The U. S. District Court for the Western District of Texas dismissed Reed’s complaint. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed on the ground that Reed’s §1983 suit was filed too late, after the applicable 2-year statute of limitations had run. The Fifth Circuit ruled that the statute of limitations began to run when the Texas trial court denied Reed’s motion (which occurred more than two years before Reed filed his §1983 suit in federal court), not when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied rehearing.
Because the federal Courts of Appeals disagree about when the statute of limitations begins to run for a §1983 suit regarding a State’s post-conviction DNA testing procedures, we granted certiorari. 596 U. S. ___ (2022).
II
Texas raises three threshold arguments.
First, Texas argues that Reed lacks standing. We disagree. Reed sufficiently alleged an injury in fact: denial of access to the requested evidence. The state prosecutor, who is the named defendant, denied access to the evidence and thereby caused Reed’s injury. And if a federal court concludes that Texas’s post-conviction DNA testing procedures violate due process, that court order would eliminate the state prosecutor’s justification for denying DNA testing. It is “substantially likely” that the state prosecutor would abide by such a court order. Utah v. Evans, 536 U. S. 452, 464 (2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, in “terms of our ‘standing’ precedent, the courts would have ordered a change in a legal status,” and “the practical consequence of that change would amount to a significant increase in the likelihood” that the state prosecutor would grant access to the requested evidence and that Reed therefore “would obtain relief that directly redresses the injury suffered.” Ibid.
Second, Texas invokes the State’s sovereign immunity. But the Ex parte Young doctrine allows suits like Reed’s for declaratory or injunctive relief against state officers in their official capacities. 209 U. S. 123, 159–161 (1908).
Third, Texas contends that Reed’s procedural due process claim contravenes the Rooker–Feldman doctrine. See Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U. S. 413 (1923); District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U. S. 462 (1983).
That doctrine prohibits federal courts from adjudicating cases brought by state-court losing parties challenging state-court judgments. But as this Court explained in Skinner v. Switzer, even though a “state-court decision is not reviewable by lower federal courts,” a “statute or rule governing the decision may be challenged in a federal action.” 562 U. S. 521, 532 (2011). Here, as in Skinner, Reed does “not challenge the adverse” state-court decisions themselves, but rather “targets as unconstitutional the Texas statute they authoritatively construed.” Ibid.
III
This Court’s case law “severely limits the federal action a state prisoner may bring for DNA testing.” Skinner v. Switzer, 562 U. S. 521, 525 (2011). The Court has “rejected the extension of substantive due process to this area, and left slim room for the prisoner to show that the governing state law denies him procedural due process.” Ibid. (citation omitted); see District Attorney’s Office for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U. S. 52, 69, 72 (2009).
Seeking to fit his §1983 suit within the “slim room” left by this Court’s precedent, Reed raised a procedural due process challenge to Texas’s post-conviction DNA testing law. The sole question now before this Court is whether Reed’s §1983 suit was timely. The parties agree that the statute of limitations for Reed’s claim is two years. But the parties disagree about when that 2-year limitations period began to run. That question is one of federal law. See Wallace v. Kato, 549 U. S. 384, 388 (2007).
As a general matter, the statute of limitations begins to run when the plaintiff has a “complete and present cause of action.” Bay Area Laundry and Dry Cleaning Pension Trust Fund v. Ferbar Corp. of Cal., 522 U. S. 192, 201 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted). To determine when a plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action, the Court focuses first on the specific constitutional right alleged to have been infringed. See McDonough v. Smith, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 4).
Here, the specific constitutional right allegedly infringed is procedural due process. A procedural due process claim consists of two elements: (i) deprivation by state action of a protected interest in life, liberty, or property, and (ii) inadequate state process. See Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U. S. 113, 125 (1990). Importantly, the Court has stated that a procedural due process claim “is not complete when the deprivation occurs.” Id., at 126. Rather, the claim is “complete” only when “the State fails to provide due process.” Ibid.
Reed contends that the State’s process for considering his DNA testing request was fundamentally unfair in violation of the Due Process Clause. Texas’s process for considering a request for DNA testing in capital cases includes not only trial court proceedings, but also appellate review by the Court of Criminal Appeals. Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 64.05. And under longstanding Texas rules of appellate procedure, the Court of Criminal Appeals’s appellate review process encompasses a motion for rehearing. Tex. Rule App. Proc. 79.1 (2022).
In Reed’s case, the State’s alleged failure to provide Reed with a fundamentally fair process was complete when the state litigation ended and deprived Reed of his asserted liberty interest in DNA testing. Therefore, Reed’s §1983 claim was complete and the statute of limitations began to run when the state litigation ended—when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Reed’s motion for rehearing.
The soundness of that straightforward conclusion is “reinforced by the consequences that would follow” from a contrary approach. McDonough, 588 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9). If the statute of limitations for a §1983 suit like Reed’s began to run after a state trial court’s denial of a plaintiff’s motion for DNA testing (or even after the appeal before the plaintiff’s rehearing proceedings), the plaintiff would likely continue to pursue relief in the state system and simultaneously file a protective federal §1983 suit challenging that ongoing state process. That parallel litigation would “run counter to core principles of federalism, comity, consistency, and judicial economy.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10). We see no good reason for such senseless duplication.
Moreover, significant systemic benefits ensue from starting the statute of limitations clock when the state litigation in DNA testing cases like Reed’s has concluded. If any due process flaws lurk in the DNA testing law, the state appellate process may cure those flaws, thereby rendering a federal §1983 suit unnecessary. And if the state appellate court construes the DNA testing statute, that construction will streamline and focus subsequent §1983 proceedings.
In sum, when a prisoner pursues state post-conviction DNA testing through the state-provided litigation process, the statute of limitations for a §1983 procedural due process claim begins to run when the state litigation ends. In Reed’s case, the statute of limitations began to run when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Reed’s motion for rehearing. Reed’s §1983 claim was timely.[1]
We reverse the judgment of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
- ↑ According to Reed, a plaintiff may forgo full appellate review in the state-court system and still bring a procedural due process suit challenging a State’s post-conviction DNA testing law. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 9–14. As this Court indicated in Osborne, it may be “difficult” as a practical matter “to criticize the State’s procedures when [the prisoner] has not invoked them.” 557 U. S., at 71. In any event, we need not address that hypothetical scenario.