United States First Circuit

In plaintiffs' 42 U.S.C. section 1983 suit against the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Psychologists, claiming multiple challenges to the constitutionality of the Board's actions and the regulations involving plaintiff-psychologist's evaluation of a seven-year-old boy, district court's dismissal of the action is affirmed where: 1) the members of the Board, individually, are shielded from the damages claims by reason of quasi-judicial immunity; 2) district court's dismissal on abstention ground is affirmed as this case is a paradigm for Younger abstention; and 3) third party lacks standing to pursue his nonmonetary claims as he suffered no legally cognizable injury in fact as a result of the Board's actions.

Appellate Information

• Decided 05/17/2010
• Published 05/17/2010

Judges

• * Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.), of the Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.   SELYA, Circuit Judge., Before Lipez, Circuit Judge, Souter,* Associate Justice, and Selya, Circuit Judge.

Court

• United States First Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Robert S. Wolfe, with whom Robert Wolfe Associates, P.C. was on brief, for appellants.


• For Appellees:
  
• Amy Spector, Assistant Attorney General, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with whom Martha Coakley, Attorney General, was on brief, for appellees.