222442P.pdf   05/22/2023  Shafik Wassef  v.  Dennis Tibben
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  22-2442
   U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa - Central   
   [PUBLISHED] [Loken, Author, with Smith, Chief Judge, and Wollman, Circuit 
   Judge] 
   Civil case - Civil rights. Plaintiff seeks declaratory and injunctive 
   relief to stop ongoing physician disciplinary proceedings; the district 
   court dismissed the action, concluding that it must abstain under Younger 
   v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971); the court also dismissed plaintiff's due 
   process claim for failure to exhaust state remedies and failure to state a 
   claim; plaintiff appeals. Held: the Board's ongoing physician disciplinary 
   proceedings against plaintiff are quasi-criminal in nature, and thus 
   qualify for Younger abstention as a matter of law; plaintiff's argument 
   that the Department of Health and Human Services has exclusive authority 
   to enforce HIPPA and that the Supremacy Clause precludes state officials 
   from acting beyond their authority by determining whether plaintiff 
   violated HIPPA is rejected as the federal standards do not provide a 
   facially conclusive claim of complete federal preemption and therefore 
   this is not an extraordinary circumstance that counsels against Younger 
   abstention; the dismissal is modified to be without prejudice, leaving 
   plaintiff free to assert his Section 1983 procedural due process claim in 
   the pending disciplinary proceeding.