OPINION
This сase requires us to determine whether 11 U.S.C. § 524(a) makes a state-court judgment void ab initio when entered against a debtor whose dischargeable debts had been discharged, or whether the Rooker-Feldman doctrine compels federal courts to respect the state-court judgment. We conclude that § 524(a) prevails and state court judgments that modify a discharge order are void ab initio.
Defendant-Appellant Alicia Hamilton Herr (“Herr”) aрpeals a district-court order reversing the bankruptcy court’s dismissal of Plaintiff-Appellee James Stewart Hamilton’s (the “Debtor’s”) complaint seeking to enjoin Herr from enforcing a Kentucky judgment lien against the Debt- or. Specifically, the Debtor argued that the bankruptcy court’s 1998 discharge order precluded the Pike Circuit Court of Kentucky from holding that the Debtor must indemnify Herr for payments made on a promissory note that Herr and thе Debtor jointly obtained in 1990. The bankruptcy court concluded that the Rook-er-Feldman doctrine barred the bankruptcy court from enjoining the Pike Circuit Court’s judgment, and the district court reversed. For the reasons discussed below, we VACATE the district court’s judgment and REMAND to the district court so that court may remand to the bankruptcy court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
I. BACKGROUND
A. Factual Background
The focus of this case concerns the unresolved obligations of Herr and the Debtor in relation to a loan they obtained during their marriage. On December 11, 1990, Herr and the Debtor signed a promissory note in the principal amount of $14,500 (“the Note”) in order to obtain funding for Herr’s vending-machine business. The Debtor and his father, James J. Hamilton (“Hamilton”), secured the Note with a certificate of deposit in the amount of $110,500.03.
On June 16, 1992, the Debtor and Herr’s divorce became final. Their divorce decree did not address the status of the Note. It appears that the Kentucky divorce court was under the impression that the Debtor had paid off the Note with proceeds from the sale of his Mercedes. See Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) at 28 (Divorce Decree ¶ 13) (“That 1984 Mercedes was purchased for $41,000.00 and sold for approximately $25,000.00, those proceeds being used to pay off approximately $14,000.00 in debts owed by the vending company, with the remaining going to the Respondent [i.e., the Debtor here].”). In fact, it appears that the Mercedes-sale proceeds (if any) were not used to pay off the Note; instead, Hamilton paid off the Note himself.
Regardless of what actually happened to the Note, on March 10, 1995, Hamilton sued Herr to recover the money Hamilton allegedly used to pay off the Note. While Hamilton’s suit against Herr was pending, on July 19, 1996, the Debtor filed for relief under Chaptеr 7 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. The Debtor’s bankruptcy- *370 court filings did not mention the Note but did list Herr as a creditor in the amount of $44,000.00. Despite Herr’s attempts to get the bankruptcy court to hold that the Debtor’s debt to her was non-dischargeable, the bankruptcy court declared the debt dischargeable.
On March 27, 1998, the bankruptcy court discharged all of the Debtor’s “dis-chargeable debts,” and stated that:
Any judgment heretofore or hereafter obtained in any court other than this court is null and void as a determination of the personal liability of the debt- or with respect to any of the following:
(a) debts dischargeable under 11 U.S.C. § 523;
(b) unless heretofore or hereafter determined by order of this court to be nondischargeable, debts alleged to be excepted from discharge under clauses (2), (4), (6) and (15) of 11 U.S.C. § 523(a);
(c) debts determined by this court to be discharged.
J.A. at 51 (Discharge of Debtor ¶ 2) (emphasis added). This order enjoined “[a]ll creditors whose debts are dischаrged by this order and all creditors whose judgments are declared null and void by [the paragraph] above ... from instituting or continuing any action or employing any process or engaging in any act to collect such debts as personal liabilities of the above-named debtor.” J.A. at 51 (Discharge of Debtor ¶ 3).
On August 18, 1998, in Hamilton’s state-court suit against Herr, Herr filed a third-party complaint seeking indemnification from the Debtor on the Note. In respоnse to the third-party complaint, the Debtor filed a pro se answer that made no reference to his discharge in bankruptcy. Both Hamilton and Herr moved for summary judgment on their respective complaints. On November 27, 2001, the state court ordered Herr to pay Hamilton’s estate $14,771.74 plus interest and ordered the Debtor to indemnify Herr “for any amounts paid by her to the Estate of James J. Hamilton.” J.A. at 73 (Nov. 27, 2001, Judgment at 2). On May 9, 2003, the Kentucky Court of Aрpeals affirmed the judgment. In response to the Debt- or’s argument that his bankruptcy discharge barred Herr’s indemnification claim, the Kentucky Court of Appeals held that discharge in bankruptcy was an affirmative defense that the Debtor had failed to raise. The Kentucky Court of Appeals went on to say that the Debtor’s “failure to affirmatively plead discharge in bankruptcy as a defense amounts to a waiver of the defense.” J.A. at 147 (May 9, 2003, Op. at 7).
On January 14, 2005, Herr filed a Motion for Entry of Judgment in Kentucky state court. On March 4, 2005, the state court declared that Herr could not collect indemnification from the Debtor because of the Debtor’s bankruptcy discharge. However, just one month later, the same court reversed itself in a supplemental judgment holding that the Kentucky Court of Appeals’s prior decision stipulated the effect of the Debtor’s discharge in bankruptcy: because the Debtor “had not asserted bankruptcy as an affirmative defense!,] that defense is no longer available to him.” J.A. at 85-86 (Supp. J. at 1-2). The state court entered judgment in favor of Herr in the amount of $38,329.70 and interest.
B. Procedural Background
On October 3, 2005, the Debtor filed a complaint in the bankruptcy court seeking to “temporarily and permanently enjoin! ]” *371 Herr and her attorneys 1 “from taking any further actions to attempt to collect on any judgments or debts аllegedly owing from [the Debtor] to the Defendant Herr, and [seeking] ... all attorney’s fees and costs incurred in prosecuting this action.” J.A. at 15 (Bankr.Compl^ 42). In response, Herr asked the district court to apply the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and abstain because “the Bankruptcy Court lacks jurisdiction to collaterally attack the [state-court] decision because the only way it could do so would be to, in effect, sit as an appellate сourt over the state trial court.” J.A. at 133 (Mem. in Supp. of Mot. for Abstention at 11). On February 2, 2006, the bankruptcy court concluded that “[i]t is clear that the injury alleged by the [Debt- or] herein resulted from the state court Judgment and thus Rooker-Feldman directs that the lower Federal Courts lack jurisdiction,” and the bankruptcy court dismissed the Debtor’s complaint. J.A. at 180 (Feb. 2, 2006, Bankr.Ct.Mem.Op). The Debtor appealed to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. The district court reversed the bankruptcy court’s application of the Rook-er-Feldman doctrine, holding that the state-court judgment was a modification of the discharge order, something that 11 U.S.C. § 524(a) barred state courts from doing. Herr filed a timely notice of appeal.
II. ANALYSIS
A. Standard of Review
When reviewing an order of a bankruptcy court on appeal from a decision of a district court, we review the bankruptcy court’s order directly and give no deference to the district court’s decision. We review the bankruptcy court’s findings of fact under the clearly erroneous standard, asking only whether we are left with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed. We review conclusions of law made by the bankruptcy court de novo.
Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. v. Shapiro (In re Lee),
B. The Rooker-Feldman Doctrine
The
Rooker-Feldman
doctrine emerged out of two cases,
Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co.,
After various circuits adopted differing interpretations of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the Supreme Court recently took the opportunity to clarify the doctrine’s limited scope:
The Rooker-Feldman doctrine, we hold today, is confined to cases of the kind from which the doctrine acquired its name: cases brought by state-court losers complaining of injuries caused by *372 state-court judgments rendered before the district court proceedings commenced and inviting district court review and rejection of those judgments. Rooker-Feldman does not otherwise override or supplant preclusion doctrine or augment the circumscribed doctrines that allow federal courts to stay or dismiss proceedings in deference to state-court actions.
Id.
at 284,
This distinction between cases that are covered by the
Rooker-Feldman
doctrine and those that are not, although clarified in
Exxon Mobil,
actually dates back to
Feldman.
In
Feldman,
at the same time that the Supreme Court stated that the district court lacked jurisdiction for some of the claims, the Court also noted that the district court possessed jurisdiction over the allegations that “involve[d] a general attack on the constitutionality of’ bar admittance rules.
Feldman,
C. The Bankruptcy Court’s Jurisdiction
This case requires us to elaborate upon the meaning of 11 U.S.C. § 524(a). That provision states in part that “[a] discharge in a case under this title — ... (2) operates as an injunction against the commencement or continuation of an action, the employment of process, or an act, to collect, recover or offset any such debt as a personal liability of the debtor, whether or not discharge of such debt is waived.” 11 U.S.C. § 524(a) (emphasis added). This provision was designed “to effectuate the discharge and make it unnecessary to assert it as an affirmative defense in a subsequent state court action.” 4 Collier on Bankruptcy (“Collier”) ¶ 524.LH[1], at 524-57 (Sept. 2005) (Lawrence P. King ed., 15th ed. rev.). The concern of the drafters of § 524 was that a creditor whose debt was discharged would bring suit “in a local court after the granting of the discharge, and if the debtor failed to plead thе discharge affirmatively, the defense was deemed waived and an enforceable judgment could then be taken against him or her.” Id. To avoid such abuses:
*373 [SJection 524(a) declares that any judgment on a discharged debt in any forum other than the bankruptcy court is null and void as it affects the personal liability of the debtor....
Accordingly, if a creditor brings a collection suit after discharge, and obtains a judgment against the debtor, the judgment is rendered null and void by section 524(a). The purpose of the provision is to make it absolutely unnecessary for the debtor to do anything at all in the collection action.
Id.,
at 524-61. And it is for that reason that the Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Ohio noted that a debtor need not raise his discharge in bankruptcy as an affirmative defense, because thanks to § 524(a) “such an affirmative defense is unnecessary and has been since 1970.”
Braun v. Champion Credit Union (In re Braun),
The case beforе us would seem to be highly analogous to the situation described in Collier’s Treatise. In the instant case, the Debtor received his discharge in bankruptcy and was subsequently brought into a state-court suit wherein the Debtor, appearing pro se, failed to plead his discharge in bankruptcy as an affirmative defense. According to Collier, that would be the exact situation that § 524 was designed to prevent; unfortunately, we cannot rest solely on Collier’s interpretation of § 524(a) as Collier’s Treatise is not law, and § 524(a) is not the only statute relevant to this question. Of particular importance, courts have interpreted 28 U.S.C. § 1334(b) as granting concurrent jurisdiction to state courts to determine the nondischargeability of debts and have recognized limited authority for state courts to construe a bankruptcy court’s discharge order.
Pavelich v. McCormick, Barstow, Sheppard, Wayte & Carruth LLP (In re Pavelich),
Collier resolved this tension in favor of the bankruptcy courts and § 524(a). Collier states: “Section 524(a) is meant to operate automaticаlly, with no need for the debtor to assert the discharge to render the judgment void. A bankruptcy court can find that a postpetition state court judgment is void despite the full faith and credit normally given to state court judgments.” Collier ¶ 4-524.02[l], at 524-14.8 to 524-14.9 (Sept.2005) (footnotes omitted) (emphasis added).
The Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (“B.A.P.”) of the Ninth Circuit resolved this conflict between state-court authority and § 524(a) in
In re Pavelich,
concluding that although state courts have unbridled authority to determine the dischargeability of debts, state courts have the authority to interpret a bankruptcy court’s discharge order only to the extent that the state court’s interpretation is correct.
In re Pavelich,
The Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, applied the logic of
In re Pavelich
in
In re Gruntz.
When addressing the automatic stay, the Ninth Circuit stated that “[a]ny state court modification of the automatic stay would constitute an unauthorized infringement upon the bankruptcy court’s jurisdiction to enforce the stay.”
In re Gruntz,
We have never addressed the exact question оf whether a lower federal court should abstain from reviewing a state-court judgment that modifies a discharge order or whether § 524(a) makes such a judgment void ab initio. The B.A.P. of the Sixth Circuit has, however, addressed a somewhat similar question in
Singleton v. Fifth Third Bank (In re Singleton),
We acknowledge that the Eighth Circuit interpreted
In re Singleton
as requiring the application of the
Rooker-Feldman
doctrine in nearly the same circumstances that we face today. The Eighth Circuit held that a bankruptcy court could not review a state-court judgment ordering the foreclosure of property to satisfy debts that may have been discharged.
Ferren v. Searcy Winnelson Co. (In re Ferren),
In the instant case, the relevant question is whether the Kentucky courts modified the Debtor’s discharge in bankruptcy by requiring the Debtor to indemnify Herr. The district court concluded that the Kentucky courts did modify the discharge order: “[T]he Pike Circuit Court and the Kentucky Court of Appeals did not attempt to construe the discharge or determine whether the debt at issue was within the bankruptcy court’s discharge. Instead, the state courts modified the bankruptcy court’s discharge of [the Debtor]’s debt to Herr.” J.A. at 112 (Sept. 28, 2007, Order at 7). The district court, however, skipped an important question: was this debt discharged? Under
In re Pavelich,
state courts are allowed to construe the discharge in bankruptcy, but what they are not allowed to do is construe the discharge incorrectly, because an incorrect application of the discharge order would be equivalent to a modification of the discharge order. Similarly, the state-court judgment in the case at hand would constitute a modification of the discharge in bankruptcy only if the debt was actually discharged pursuant to the bankruptcy court’s discharge order.
See Aguiluz v.
*376
Bayhi (In re Bayhi),
III. CONCLUSION
We hold that a state-court judgment that modifies a discharge in bankruptcy is void ab initio and the Rooker-Feldman doctrine would not bar federal-court jurisdiction over the Debtor’s complaint. For the reasons explained above, we VACATE the district-court judgment, and we REMAND to the district court so that court may remand to the bankruptcy court to determine whether the debt in question was discharged and for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Notes
. Herr’s attorneys, Thomas W. Goodman, Jr. and Lawrence R. Webster, were defendants in the bankruptcy complaint and are appellants here. For simplicity’s sake, we refer to Herr as the appellant because all three of the appellants appealed together and Webster argued the case for the appellants.
.
In re Singleton
cites
In re Gruntz
as a contrary opinion.
In re Singleton,