The subcaption is wrong: “The case will determine whether an unnamed plaintiff can take the hospital and its doctors to federal court.”

The cert petition doesn’t have anything to do with doctors, this woman, or her freedom. This is the question presented: “Whether the Rooker-Feldman doctrine can be triggered by a state-court decision that remains subject to further review in state court.”

Rooker-Feldman is a general legal principle governing the allocation of power between state courts and federal courts. It says that, where a state court has rendered a judgment on a case within the state court’s jurisdiction, federal courts can’t second guess that determination—effectively exercising appellate jurisdiction—expect pursuant to a specific statutory power (such as the habeas statute).

This legal principle doesn’t even have particular application to medical or individual freedom cases. It arises all over the place, because state courts and federal courts have overlapping jurisdiction in most areas of law. State courts can hear federal-law claims, except in areas like patents or federal tax that Congress designates as exclusively federal. And federal courts can hear state-law claims either under diversity jurisdiction or as ancillary to a federal claim. So you often have a party that loses in state court then seeks to try and litigate the same action in federal court. It arises a lot in cases involving things like water rights, where there’s state-law property rights with interstate federal regimes often overlaid on top.

Notes of the Justina Pelletier case here. I am still horrified by what happened to her and her family.

Wow, some real terrible One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest stuff in the article. I didn't know people were still getting involuntarily committed to asylums and forced to take medication based on some doctor's vibes. Thought that ended decades ago!

And, of course, the hospital is successfully hiding behind a coerced "agreement" and court procedure technicalities. So there will be no justice because a State Court did this and a District judge said that, and a Federal Court moved this way and an Appellate Court moved that way. Typical Court-Chess without regard to the actual injured person.