No. 22-2388 ___________________________

Katie Gatewood

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellant

v. City of O’Fallon, Missouri, a municipality and political subdivision of the State of Missouri; O’Fallon Board of Impeachment; Bill Hennessy, in his official capacity as Mayor of O’Fallon, Missouri; Dale Kling, in his individual capacity; Dave Hinman, in his individual capacity; Jeff Keuhn, in his individual capacity

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendants - Appellees ____________

Appeal from United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis ____________

Submitted: January 10, 2023 Filed: June 14, 2023 ____________ Before SMITH, Chief Judge, WOLLMAN and LOKEN, Circuit Judges. ____________ SMITH, Chief Judge.

Katie Gatewood, an O’Fallon City, Missouri council member, sued the City of O’Fallon (City), its mayor, Bill Hennessy, and the O’Fallon City Council (City Council) based on their alleged violation of her civil rights. The district court1 initially stayed Gatewood’s suit because impeachment proceedings initiated by the defendants were underway, citing Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971). Gatewood was eventually impeached by the City Council but declined to pursue any available state remedies. The district court subsequently lifted the stay. The defendants moved for dismissal on abstention grounds as well as claim preclusion. The district court dismissed Gatewood’s case under claim preclusion principles based on her failure to pursue judicial review in the state courts. For the reasons stated below, we affirm.

I. Background Katie Gatewood was elected to the City Council in 2020 for a three-year term. She previously served the City as a law enforcement officer and as a corrections officer. On January 7, 2021, the City Council voted to approve the Mayor Hennessy’s appointment of Philip Dupuis as its chief of police. As a City Council member, Gatewood had concerns about Dupuis’s appointment based on information that she claimed to have received suggesting that Dupuis had allegations of misconduct as a private investigator in Texas in 2019.

On January 14, 2021, Gatewood made a public statement asserting that certain “concerns brought to me by fellow police officers” should have been examined before Dupuis’s hiring. R. Doc. 2, at 7. Despite the City Council’s final decision, Gatewood continued to inquire in Texas, where Dupuis had previously been a police chief. She also continued to publicly question his appointment. Meanwhile, Dupuis and others, including Curtis Sullivan of the St. Charles County Police Department, asked her to reveal the identity of the police officers who had purportedly told Gatewood about Dupuis’s history. According to Sullivan, Gatewood had said that a citizen, not a

1 The Honorable Audrey G. Fleissig, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

-2- police officer, had raised these concerns to Gatewood. Sullivan took the statement to be false.

In early March 2021, another City Council member, Dale Kling, moved the City Council to hire a law firm to investigate Gatewood’s conduct. Mayor Hennessy and Kling told Gatewood in a private conversation that if she revealed the identity of the persons who had shared their concerns, the bill would be set aside. Gatewood recorded the conversation and later played it at a City Council meeting and publicly stated her belief that both Kling and Mayor Hennessy had committed a felony and should be crimi