Standing

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: John J. Otrompke v. Bradley Skolnik et al

Case No.: 15-3875

Officials: POSNER, FLAUM, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Standing

Appellant cannot bring suit enjoining enforcement of Rule 12(3) of Indiana Rules for Admission to the Bar due to lack of standing.

“He lacks standing because he’s failed to show that unless he obtains a judgment against the defendants he will be harmed because until then Rule 12(3) will remain in effect and prevent his admission to the Indiana bar. The rule will harm him only if he would be admitted to the Indiana bar were the rule to be invalidated but not otherwise. And that is highly unlikely, as we know from our previous involvement in his tempestuous relations with the Illinois bar authorities. After the state’s Committee on Character and Fit‐ ness deemed him unfit to practice law, citing his failure to acknowledge on his bar and law school applications his multiple arrests and firings over the previous decade, he sought to obtain admission by suing the state’s Board of Admissions in federal district court. He lost, see Otrompke v. Chairman of the Committee on Character & Fitness for the First Judicial District of Illinois, 2005 WL 3050618 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 7, 2005), didn’t appeal, but ten years later again sued the Board of Admissions (along with the Illinois attorney general, who has however no authority with regard to bar admission standards), again lost, this time appealed—and lost still again. In Otrompke v. Hill, 592 F. App’x 495, 497 (7th Cir. 2014), affirming the district court’s dismissal of his suit after modifying the dismissal to base it on want of jurisdiction, we explained that the Rooker‐Feldman doctrine divested the district court of jurisdiction to review the state supreme court’s decision rejecting his application.”

Affirmed

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