Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-14-05138/USCOURTS-caDC-14-05138-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 10, 2015 Decided September 1, 2015

No. 14-5138

SHELBY COUNTY, ALABAMA,

APPELLANT

v.

LORETTA E. LYNCH, IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS ATTORNEY 

GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:10-cv-00651)

Bert W. Rein argued the cause for appellant. With him on 

the briefs were Brendan J. Morrissey and J. Michael 

Connolly. William S. Consovoy and Thomas R. McCarthy

entered appearances.

Dale Ho argued the cause for intervenor-appellees. With 

him on the brief were Jon M. Greenbaum, Sherrilyn Ifill, 

Janai S. Nelson, Christina A. Swarns, Ryan P. Haygood, 

Natasha M. Korgaonkar, Leah C. Aden, and Deuel Ross. 

Moffatt L. McDonald, Arthur B. Spitzer, and John M. Nonna

entered appearances.

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Nathaniel S. Pollock, Attorney, U.S. Department of 

Justice, argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief 

was Mark L. Gross, Attorney.

Before: TATEL and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges, and 

SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH. 

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

Opinion concurring in the judgment filed by Senior 

Circuit Judge SILBERMAN.

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: 

Shelby County, Alabama, prevailed in a challenge to the 

constitutionality of section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 

(VRA) and now seeks attorneys’ fees from the Government 

under the Act’s fee-shifting provision. The district court 

found that Shelby County was not entitled to receive fees 

because its victory did not advance any of the goals Congress 

meant to promote by making fees available. We agree.

I

The historical and legal background to this dispute has 

been set out several times over the history of this case. See 

Shelby Cnty., Ala. v. Holder, 133 S. Ct. 2612, 2619-21 (2013); 

Shelby Cnty., Ala. v. Holder, 679 F.3d 848, 853-58 (D.C. Cir. 

2012), rev’d, 133 S. Ct. 2612; Shelby Cnty., Ala. v. Holder, 43 

F. Supp. 3d 47, 50-52 (D.D.C. 2014); Shelby Cnty., Ala. v. 

Holder, 811 F. Supp. 2d 424, 428-41 (D.D.C. 2011), aff’d, 

679 F.3d 848 (D.C. Cir. 2012), rev’d, 133 S. Ct. 2612 (2013).

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We assume familiarity with those discussions and will cover 

only the topics relevant to this fee dispute.

A

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Nation ratified the 

Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the 

Constitution in an effort to stamp out the race-based forms of 

legal oppression that the states had imposed throughout the 

first century of the Republic. These amendments worked a 

profound change by sweeping away the most appalling forms 

of legal subjugation that had defined the pre-Civil War era. 

Black Americans now held the sovereign franchise and were 

entitled to equal treatment under the law. But racial prejudice 

is not only insidious, it is resilient. The serpent of statesponsored racism remained in the garden and “the blight of 

racial discrimination” simply switched its focus to a new 

battleground and “infected the electoral process” that black 

citizens had only begun to enter. South Carolina v. 

Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 308 (1966). Almost as soon as 

Reconstruction ended, a number of states adopted a variety of 

devices to suppress the newly established franchise of black 

citizens. Id. at 310. Literacy tests, grandfather clauses, poll 

taxes, and property qualifications prevented black Americans 

from voting at all. Id. at 310-11. And cunning district design 

and other tactics almost completely diluted the political power 

of black citizens. See Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 640 

(1993).

It was not until the 1950s that Congress began to take

action to secure the promise of equal citizenship extended 

after the Civil War; among other things, Congress passed 

three statutes authorizing individual suits to protect voting 

rights. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. at 313. But case-by-case 

litigation proved too slow, so Congress enacted a 

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further-reaching solution to “rid the country of racial 

discrimination in voting,” id. at 315: the Voting Rights Act of 

1965. The VRA contained two principal provisions. The first, 

section 2, created a permanent, nationwide replacement for

earlier civil rights statutes and authorized individual suits 

against any state or local jurisdiction that adopted a voting 

practice that had a discriminatory purpose or result. See 

Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 35 (1986). The second, 

section 5, was even more dramatic: It imposed on “covered 

jurisdictions” the requirement of obtaining “preclearance” for 

“all changes in state election procedure” from a three-judge 

federal district court in Washington, D.C., or from the 

Attorney General before they could take effect. Nw. Austin 

Mun. Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U.S. 193, 198, 203

(2009). The scope of section 5 was set by a formula in section 

4 of the Act that covered any state or political subdivision that 

met certain telltale criteria of discriminatory voting practices 

as of November 1, 1964. See Shelby County, 679 F.3d at 855. 

The scope of this intrusion onto state affairs, Congress found, 

was justified by the severity and intractability of the problem 

posed by racial discrimination in voting. Under the older caseby-case approach to litigating voting abuses, progress had 

been “painfully slow,” in part “because of the intransigence of 

[s]tate and local officials and repeated delays in the judicial 

process,” but also because “even after apparent defeat 

resisters [sought] new ways and means of discriminating.”

H.R. Rep. No. 89-439, at 9-10 (1965). “Barring one 

contrivance too often . . . caused no change in result, only 

methods.” Id. at 10. In the face of this record, Congress 

concluded that there was “little basis for supposing” that 

without legislative action “the [s]tates and subdivisions 

affected will themselves remedy the present situation . . . .” S. 

Rep. No. 89-162, at 19 (1965). “Thus, to keep minorities from 

continuing to be victimized by [s]tates and political 

subdivisions’ actions, Congress sought, through [sections 4 

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and 5] to ‘shift the benefit of time and inertia from the 

perpetrators of evil to the victim.’” H.R. Rep. No. 109-478, at 

8 (2006) (quoting Katzenbach, 383 U.S. at 328). 

“The historic accomplishments of the Voting Rights Act 

are undeniable.” Northwest Austin, 557 U.S. at 201. “The 

Act . . . proved immensely successful at redressing racial 

discrimination and integrating the voting process.” Shelby 

County, 133 S. Ct. at 2626. The change wrought by section 5 

in particular can hardly be overstated. As Congress put it 

when reauthorizing the VRA in 2006, section 5 was a “vital 

prophylactic tool[], protecting minority voters from devices 

and schemes that continue[d] to be employed by covered 

[s]tates and jurisdictions.” H.R. Rep. No. 109-478, at 21; see 

also id. at 24 (“[T]he existence of [s]ection 5 deterred covered 

jurisdictions from even attempting to enact discriminatory 

voting changes.”); S. Rep. No. 94-295, at 19 (1975) (“[I]t is 

largely [s]ection 5 which has contributed to the gains thus far 

achieved in minority political participation. Moreover, it is 

[s]ection 5 which serves to insure that this progress shall not 

be destroyed through new procedures and techniques.”).

The coverage formula in section 4 and the preclearance 

regime in section 5 of the VRA were both originally subject 

to five-year sunset clauses. Northwest Austin, 557 U.S. at 199. 

When their scheduled expiration drew near in 1970, Congress 

renewed both provisions and once again set an expiration date 

for five years later. The House supported the reauthorization 

by a vote of 272 to 132, the Senate by a margin of 64 to 12. J. 

Morgan Kousser, The Strange, Ironic Career of Section 5 of 

the Voting Rights Act, 1965-2007, 86 TEX. L. REV. 667, 687 

(2008). When the next deadline approached in 1975, Congress 

reauthorized both provisions yet again with a seven-year 

sunset clause, this time by a vote of 346 to 56 in the House 

and 77 to 12 in the Senate. Id. at 705-06. In 1982, with the 

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seven-year window coming to an end, Congress reauthorized 

both provisions a third time, but added a twenty-five-year 

sunset clause. The House voted for reauthorization 389 to 24 

and the Senate 85 to 8. Id. at 707. Finally, in 2006, Congress 

again reauthorized both provisions for another twenty-five 

years. In the House, 390 members supported reauthorization, 

with 33 opposed. Id. In the Senate, the vote was 98 to 0 in 

favor of reauthorization. Id. When he signed the 

reauthorization into law, President George W. Bush 

remarked: “The Voting Rights Act . . . broke the 

segregationist lock on the ballot box . . . . Today, we renew a 

bill that helped bring a community on the margins into the life 

of American democracy.” Press Release, Office of the Press 

Secretary, The White House, President Bush Signs Voting 

Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006 

(July 27, 2006), 2006 WL 2076688, at *1-2. Because of this 

series of reauthorizations, neither section 4 nor section 5 ever 

expired. Congress made some changes to the provisions along 

the way, twice altering the basic coverage formula in section 

4 so that it would include even more jurisdictions. Shelby 

County, 133 S. Ct. at 2620.

B

Shelby County, Alabama, was covered by the section 5 

preclearance regime under the formula set out in section 4 of 

the VRA and challenged the constitutionality of both in a suit 

filed in district court in the District of Columbia.

After losing in the district court and before us, Shelby 

County ultimately prevailed when the Supreme Court ruled 

the coverage formula unconstitutional. Shelby County, 133 S. 

Ct. at 2631. The Court explained that “‘the Framers of the 

Constitution [also] intended the [s]tates to keep for 

themselves, as provided in the Tenth Amendment, the power 

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to regulate elections.’” Id. at 2623 (quoting Gregory v. 

Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 461-62 (1991)). Moreover, “[n]ot only 

do [s]tates retain sovereignty under the Constitution, there is 

also a ‘fundamental principle of equal sovereignty’ among the 

[s]tates.” Id. (quoting Northwest Austin, 557 U.S. at 203). The 

Court held that the VRA constituted a departure from those 

principles by infringing on the sovereignty of the states to 

design their own electoral process and burdening only some 

states while leaving others unaffected. Id. at 2623-24.

Congress could only impose burdens that departed so 

significantly from constitutional norms if the burdens were 

justified under “current conditions.” Id. at 2627. But, the 

Court explained, the coverage formula had never evolved to 

match the Nation’s social and political changes. Congress had 

“ignore[d] these developments, keeping the focus on decadesold data relevant to decades-old problems, rather than current 

data reflecting current needs.” Id. at 2629. Congress could not, 

the Court explained, impair the equal dignity of the states and 

infringe on their sovereignty simply by relying on the 

existence of a problem in the past. Id. Because the coverage 

formula did not adequately target contemporary conditions, 

the Court struck it down. Id. at 2631.

On remand to the district court, Shelby County filed a 

motion for attorneys’ fees, seeking $2 million in fees and 

$10,000 in costs. The 1975 amendments to the VRA had 

introduced a fee-shifting provision at section 14(e) of the Act, 

which provides:

In any action or proceeding to enforce the voting 

guarantees of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment, 

the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing 

party, other than the United States, a reasonable 

[attorneys’] fee, reasonable expert fees, and other 

reasonable litigation expenses as part of the costs.

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52 U.S.C. § 10310(e).1 Shelby County insisted that it had 

prevailed in an “action or proceeding to enforce the voting 

guarantees” of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments 

(which, for ease of reference, we shall term the 

Reconstruction Amendments) and so should receive fees 

under section 14(e). The Government opposed. The district 

court sided with the Government, concluding that Shelby 

County was not entitled to fees because, far from helping 

ensure compliance with the VRA, its lawsuit had explicitly 

opposed Congress’s enforcement mechanism by trying—and 

succeeding—to have the coverage formula declared 

unconstitutional. 

Shelby County timely appealed. We have jurisdiction over 

a final order of the district court under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. As 

the question in this case is whether the district court correctly 

applied the proper legal standard to determine whether Shelby 

County should receive fees, we review the decision de novo. 

See Conservation Force v. Salazar, 699 F.3d 538, 542 (D.C. 

Cir. 2012). 

II

 1 The Voting Rights Act was originally codified in Title 42 of 

the United States Code. Section 14(e) was first codified as 42 

U.S.C. § 1973l(e). On September 1, 2014, the Office of the Law 

Revision Counsel recodified the VRA and other provisions related 

to voting and elections into a new Title 52. See Editorial 

Reclassification, Office of the Law Revision Counsel,

http://uscode.house.gov/editorialreclassification/t52/index.html (last 

visited Sept. 1, 2015). We will cite to the current version of the 

Code.

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We agree with the district court that Shelby County is not 

entitled to fees.

A

The rules governing this dispute are straightforward. Feeshifting provisions set out the criteria a court must use to 

determine whether a party is even eligible for fees. In addition 

to those statutory criteria, the Supreme Court has also created 

an additional requirement: A party can only receive fees if it 

also shows that it is entitled to them, meaning that its victory 

in court helped advance the rationales that led Congress to 

create fee-shifting provisions in the first place. Though the 

entitlement requirement does not appear in the text of any feeshifting provision, the Supreme Court has enforced it on a 

number of occasions and both this court and Congress have 

accepted that a prevailing party must show entitlement to 

receive a fee award. See Christiansburg Garment Co. v. 

EEOC, 434 U.S. 412, 418 (1978) (“The terms of [the feeshifting provision in Title VII] provide no indication whatever 

of the circumstances under which [a prevailing party] should 

be entitled to attorney’s fees.” (emphasis added)).

The Court has also explained that the primary rationale for 

such fee-shifting provisions—and the only rationale on which 

Shelby County relies to justify its entitlement to fees here—is

encouraging private parties to bring civil rights lawsuits by 

protecting them from the costs of litigation. In no 

circumstances is a fee award a prize. Nor is it a bonus form of 

compensation to a litigant whose position the court finds 

sympathetic. It is an inducement to private parties to engage in 

favored activity. A party is entitled to fees only when it shows 

that its success in litigation advanced the goals Congress 

intended the relevant fee-shifting provision to promote. When 

a party’s success did not advance those goals, it is not entitled 

to fees. 

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The Court first explained this standard in Newman v. 

Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U.S. 400 (1968). In Piggie 

Park, a district court had refused to award fees to parties who 

unmistakably prevailed in a suit brought under Title II of the 

Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Court found that refusal an 

error. The prevailing parties were entitled to fees and so the 

district court was required to award them. The Court 

explained that Congress meant for fee-shifting provisions in 

civil rights statutes to encourage private parties to bring their 

own civil rights litigation. Congress was well aware that “the 

Nation would have to rely in part upon private litigation as a 

means of securing broad compliance” with Title II, given the 

obvious impossibility of the federal Government identifying 

and prosecuting every violation. Id. at 401. Indeed, the Court 

continued, a private party bringing a civil rights suit “does so 

not for himself alone but also as a private attorney general, 

vindicating a policy that Congress considered of the highest 

priority.” Id. at 402 (internal quotation marks omitted). Yet 

without a provision enabling prevailing parties to recover their 

fees, “successful plaintiffs” would be “routinely forced to bear 

their own attorneys’ fees,” meaning that “few aggrieved 

parties would be in a position to advance the public interest”

by bringing civil rights litigation. Id. This obviously posed a 

problem, given congressional awareness that private litigation 

was an indispensable element of any successful enforcement 

program. See, e.g., Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U.S. 

544, 556 (1969) (“The achievement of the Act’s laudable goal 

could be severely hampered . . . if each citizen were required 

to depend solely on litigation instituted at the discretion of the 

Attorney General.”). Congress solved this problem with feeshifting provisions. In other words, Congress enacted feeshifting provisions to encourage victims of discrimination to 

invest the resources needed to litigate civil rights violations 

and to distribute the cost of successful enforcement among 

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lawbreakers. Because the prevailing parties in Piggie Park 

had acted as “the chosen instrument of Congress,”

Christiansburg Garment, 434 U.S. at 418, by helping to 

“secur[e] broad compliance” with Title II, Piggie Park, 390 

U.S. at 401, they were entitled to fees.

Decades ago, we held that the Piggie Park standard also 

governs claims for attorneys’ fees under the VRA. See 

Donnell v. United States, 682 F.2d 240, 245 (D.C. Cir. 1982) 

(“‘Congress depends heavily upon private citizens to enforce 

the fundamental rights involved [in the Voting Rights Act]. 

[Fee] awards are a necessary means of enabling private 

citizens to vindicate these Federal rights.’” (quoting S. Rep. 

No. 94-295, at 40 (1975))). Shelby County insists that it is 

entitled to fees under Piggie Park. We disagree. Shelby 

County is not entitled to fees because its challenge to the 

constitutionality of the coverage formula did not help 

“secur[e] broad compliance with” the VRA. Piggie Park, 390 

U.S. at 401. 

As a general matter, a plaintiff who prevails in a lawsuit in 

connection with a civil rights statute typically will have 

helped enforce that statute exactly as Congress hoped and so 

will usually be entitled to fees under Piggie Park. See Piggie 

Park, 390 U.S. at 402 (“[O]ne who succeeds in obtaining an 

injunction under [Title II] should ordinarily recover an 

attorney’s fee unless special circumstances would render such 

an award unjust.”). But the Court has made very clear that 

success in a lawsuit alone does not resolve the separate 

question of whether the successful party is entitled to fees. See

Christiansburg Garment, 434 U.S. at 418 (explaining that 

merely prevailing in an action under Title VII “provide[s] no 

indication whatever of the circumstances under which [the

prevailing party] should be entitled to attorney’s fees.”

(emphasis added)). Instead, entitlement turns on whether the 

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prevailing party’s success advanced the purposes Congress 

meant to promote by making fees available—in particular, 

under the Piggie Park standard, whether the prevailing party 

helped “secur[e] broad compliance” with the civil rights 

statute in question. Piggie Park, 390 U.S. at 401.

For example, in Christiansburg Garment, an employer 

was accused of wrongful discrimination in violation of Title 

VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 434 U.S. at 414. The 

defendant employer prevailed in the subsequent litigation, 

proving that it had not discriminated unlawfully. Having 

prevailed in a Title VII suit, the defendant was thus eligible 

for fees under the text of the statute’s fee-shifting provision. 

The defendant insisted that it was also entitled to fees under 

Piggie Park for the same reason: It had won in court and so 

should receive fees. The Court rejected this argument. The 

Piggie Park standard entitles parties to receive fees for which 

they may be eligible only when they shoulder the burden of 

acting as “the chosen instrument of Congress” and “vindicate 

‘a policy that Congress considered of the highest priority’” by 

enforcing compliance with a statute. Id. at 418 (quoting Piggie 

Park, 390 U.S. at 402). The defendant employer in

Christiansburg Garment did nothing more than prove it had 

not engaged in the alleged misconduct. Therefore, even 

though the defendant prevailed and was eligible for fees, it 

was not entitled to them under the Piggie Park standard. 

The Court came to effectively the same conclusion in a 

different context in Independent Federation of Flight 

Attendants v. Zipes, 491 U.S. 754 (1989). In Zipes, an 

intervenor union opposed the settlement of a Title VII class 

action by a class of employees against their employer, arguing 

that the collective bargaining agreement should preclude the 

employer from agreeing to the settlement. After the 

employees won judicial approval for the settlement of their 

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class action, they argued that they were entitled to have the 

intervenor pay their fees. Just as in Christiansburg Garment, 

the Court found that the plaintiffs were not entitled to fees, 

even though they had prevailed, because Congress did not 

mean to use fee-shifting provisions as a general reward for 

victory. Id. at 761-64. Instead, fee-shifting provisions are 

designed to further the “central purpose” of civil rights 

statutes—“vindicating the national policy against wrongful 

discrimination by encouraging victims to make the 

wrongdoers pay at law.” Id. at 761. The plaintiffs in Zipes had 

not helped enforce compliance with Title VII by fighting with 

the intervenor union over which of the employer’s legal 

obligations would take precedence. Therefore they were not 

entitled to fees from the intervenor under the Piggie Park 

standard.

In both Christiansburg Garment and Zipes, the Court also 

explained that Congress intended fee-shifting provisions in 

civil rights statutes to require parties who took “frivolous” or 

“unreasonable” positions to pay the fees of their successful 

opponents. Christiansburg Garment, 434 U.S. at 421; Zipes, 

491 U.S. at 761. In both cases, the Court relied on this 

secondary rationale to craft a separate standard for fee awards 

to a party that successfully defeats such vexatious arguments. 

But in neither case could the prevailing parties rely on the 

Piggie Park standard because, though each party had won an 

action brought under a civil rights statute, neither had helped 

ensure compliance with the civil rights laws.2

B

 2 In both Christiansburg Garment and Zipes, the Court went on 

to conclude that the prevailing plaintiffs were not entitled to fees 

under the alternative frivolous litigation standard.

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1

Section 14(e) of the VRA permits district courts to award 

fees to a party who prevailed in an “action or proceeding to 

enforce the voting guarantees of the fourteenth or fifteenth 

amendment.” 52 U.S.C. § 10310(e). To show that it is eligible 

for fees under the statute, Shelby County must demonstrate 

that it prevailed in an action to enforce the voting guarantees 

of the Reconstruction Amendments. The Government 

concedes that Shelby County is a “prevailing party,” but 

argues that it is nonetheless not eligible for fees because its 

lawsuit did not enforce the “voting guarantees” of the 

Reconstruction Amendments. As it turns out, this is a 

difficult question. The Government submits that the only 

“voting guarantees” secured by those amendments are 

individual voting rights and that Shelby County’s lawsuit was 

aimed instead at vindicating the structural rights of states and 

other political jurisdictions. Shelby County insists to the 

contrary that the Reconstruction Amendments “reflect 

guarantees to individuals and states alike: to individuals, to be 

free from discrimination; and to states, to be free from 

unwarranted regulation.” To settle this dispute we would need 

to determine what voting rights the Reconstruction 

Amendments actually guarantee. 

However, Shelby County could not win fees even if it 

were correct about the contours of the Reconstruction 

Amendments. Section 14(e) serves only to identify those 

eligible for fees. As we have explained, the prevailing party 

must also show that it is entitled to fees. See Christiansburg 

Garment, 434 U.S. at 418 (“The terms of [the fee-shifting 

provision in Title VII] provide no indication whatever of the 

circumstances under which [a prevailing party] should be 

entitled to attorney’s fees.” (emphasis added)); cf. Nationwide 

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Bldg. Maint., Inc. v. Sampson, 559 F.2d 704, 710 (D.C. Cir. 

1977) (explaining that a prevailing party’s “eligibility for an 

award of attorney fees does not mean that it is necessarily 

entitled to such an award” (emphasis added)). 

As we will explain below, Shelby County is not entitled to 

attorneys’ fees because its lawsuit did not advance any of the 

purposes that Congress meant to promote by making fees 

available. Therefore we do not need to determine whether 

Shelby County or the Government is correct about what 

“voting guarantees” are secured by the Reconstruction 

Amendments. Resolving that question is immaterial to the 

outcome of this case. And because we need not answer that 

constitutional question, we will not do so. See, e.g., Elk Grove 

Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 11 (2004) (advising 

courts “to guard jealously and exercise rarely our power to 

make constitutional pronouncements”); PDK Labs. Inc. v. 

U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, 362 F.3d 786, 799 (D.C. Cir. 

2004) (Roberts, J., concurring in part and concurring in the 

judgment) (“[T]he cardinal principle of judicial restraint—if it 

is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not to decide 

more—counsels us to go no further.”). 

2

We agree with the district court that Shelby County is not 

entitled to fees under Piggie Park. Shelby County’s argument 

boils down to the proposition that Congress introduced the 

fee-shifting provision into the VRA in 1975 with the express 

goal of inducing a private party to bring a lawsuit to neuter 

the Act’s central tool. But that makes no sense. As we know 

from numerous statements by the Supreme Court, Congress 

enacted fee-shifting provisions in civil rights statutes to 

“secur[e] broad compliance” with those statutes, not to 

immobilize them. Piggie Park, 390 U.S at 401. Nor did 

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Congress need to enlist private suits to challenge the 

constitutionality of the coverage formula in the way that it 

needed to rely on private parties to pursue individual 

enforcement litigation. See id. (“[T]he Nation would have to 

rely in part upon private litigation as a means of securing 

broad compliance with the law.”); see also Allen, 393 U.S. at

556 (“The achievement of the Act’s laudable goal could be 

severely hampered . . . if each citizen were required to depend 

solely on litigation instituted at the discretion of the Attorney 

General.”). To the contrary, Congress carefully preserved the

power to invalidate the coverage formula by repeatedly 

including a sunset provision that would ensure the formula’s 

expiration at some point in the future absent new 

authorization. Because of these successive sunset clauses, 

invalidating provisions of the Act did not even require both 

houses of Congress and the President to agree. Either house of 

the legislature could have refused to pass reauthorizing 

legislation, or the President could have refused to sign it, and 

thereby invalidated the coverage formula or forced alteration 

to the provision by insisting on revisions before agreeing to 

reauthorization legislation. 

In other words, Shelby County’s lawsuit neither advanced 

Congress’s purpose nor performed some service Congress 

needed help to accomplish. It defies common sense and 

ignores the structure and history of the Act to think otherwise. 

Therefore we conclude that Shelby County is not entitled to 

fees under the Piggie Park standard.

Shelby County tries to justify its entitlement to fees by 

relying on a number of counterarguments. None persuade us. 

Most importantly, Shelby County points to section 14(b) of 

the Act, which provides that “[n]o court other than the District 

Court for the District of Columbia shall have jurisdiction to

issue any declaratory judgment . . . or any restraining order or 

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temporary or permanent injunction against the execution or 

enforcement of any provision” of the VRA. 52 U.S.C. 

§ 10310(b). Shelby County argues that section 14(b) created a 

new cause of action authorizing constitutional challenges to 

the VRA. Therefore, the argument goes, Congress must have 

meant to encourage constitutional challenges. If not, it would 

have had no reason to establish a cause of action allowing 

private parties to bring such challenges. And if so, Shelby 

County insists that its success in striking down section 4 

advanced Congress’s purposes after all. On this peg Shelby 

County has hung its hopes. 

But it is by no means clear that section 14(b) creates a 

new cause of action. The more natural reading is that the 

provision simply limits jurisdiction over constitutional 

challenges to the VRA to the District Court for the District of 

Columbia. The available evidence supports this view. To 

begin with, Congress had no need to create a new cause of 

action. The grants of jurisdiction in 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and in 

the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2201, provide 

adequate authorization for any attack on the VRA’s 

constitutionality. Because parties already had all the 

authorization they needed to mount lawsuits arguing that the 

Act was not constitutional, Congress had no need to create a 

new cause of action for such suits. We also note that Attorney 

General Katzenbach’s testimony during the Senate hearings 

on the VRA strongly suggests that section 14(b) is a venue 

provision.3 During the Senate hearings, General Katzenbach

 3 Attorney General Katzenbach was one of the principal 

drafters of the VRA. See Dougherty Cnty., Ga., Bd. of Ed. v. White, 

439 U.S. 32, 37 (1978). The Court has often relied on his testimony 

to Congress regarding the Act to help illuminate the statute’s terms. 

See, e.g., Reno v. Bossier Parish Sch. Bd., 528 U.S. 320, 376 

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18

was asked the purpose of section 14(b). He explained that it 

would channel all significant VRA litigation, enforcement 

suits and constitutional challenges alike, into one court, and 

prevent multiple parallel constitutional challenges unfolding 

in courts throughout the country. To Enforce the 15th 

Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: Hearing 

on S.1564 Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 89th Cong. 

at 144 (1965) (statement of Nicholas Katzenbach, Attorney 

General of the United States) (“[T]he [preclearance] 

determinations are to be made in the three-judge court in the 

District of Columbia . . . . And it seems to us that if the 

integrity of that practice were to be preserved, then you had to 

have a corresponding provision here, otherwise you are going 

to have the act tested in a variety of different courts. So it 

seemed to us that the important thing was to get this act 

tested, to get it tested in one court, and not to interfere with 

the jurisdiction of that court, and provide an appeal to the 

Supreme Court.” (emphasis added)). General Katzenbach said 

nothing about encouraging or authorizing constitutional 

challenges. 

The Supreme Court seems to have put this issue to rest in 

Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U.S. 544 (1969). In 

Allen, the Court held that private citizens can sue for

declaratory judgment that a jurisdiction must obtain 

preclearance for any change in voting practices. The Court 

also held that citizens could file such actions anywhere in the 

country, not only in the District of Columbia. In reaching this 

conclusion the Court explained that section 14(b) imposed a 

“restriction” on lawsuits authorized by some other cause of 

 

(2000); McCain v. Lybrand, 465 U.S. 236, 247 (1984); United 

States v. Bd. of Comm’rs of Sheffield, Ala., 435 U.S. 110, 128 n.15, 

142-46 (1978); Allen, 393 U.S. at 567. 

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19

action; it never suggested that the provision authorized or 

created a cause of action for suits. Id. at 560 (emphasis 

added). The Court also noted that section 14(b) presented a 

“question involving the jurisdiction of the district courts,” not 

involving the right of parties to bring lawsuits. Id. at 557

(emphasis added). The discussion in Allen strongly indicates 

that section 14(b) is only a venue provision. And a number of 

other Supreme Court cases that mention section 14(b) in 

passing also uniformly refer to it as a venue provision, not as 

a cause of action. See Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 637 (1993) 

(noting that section 14(b) “vests the District Court for the 

District of Columbia with exclusive jurisdiction to issue 

injunctions against the execution of the Act”); Hathorn v. 

Lovorn, 457 U.S. 255, 267 (1982) (noting that section 14(b) 

raised a “jurisdictional” issue); Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 

U.S. 641, 645 (1966) (noting that, “[p]ursuant to [section] 

14(b),” parties challenging the VRA’s constitutionality had 

“commenced [their] proceeding in the District Court for the 

District of Columbia”).4

Shelby County points to a single sentence in Allen, in 

which the Court referred to section 14(b) as one of the “Act’s 

enforcement provisions” and said that a suit of the kind 

identified in section 14(b) “would involve an attack on the 

 4 The Fifth and Ninth Circuits have also referred to section 

14(b) solely as a venue provision. See Brown v. City of Shreveport, 

158 F.3d 583, *1 (5th Cir. 1998) (per curiam) (unpublished) (citing 

section 14(b) to explain that “[t]he district court for the District of 

Columbia has exclusive jurisdiction over actions against federal 

officers or employees challenging the enforcement of the Voting 

Rights Act”); Reich v. Larson, 695 F.2d 1147, 1149 (9th Cir. 1983)

(holding that, under section 14(b), constitutional challenges to the 

VRA “can only be brought in the District of Columbia district 

court”).

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constitutionality of the Act itself.” 393 U.S. at 558. We do not 

understand why Shelby County thinks this remark helps its 

case. Given that section 14(b) requires any attack on the 

constitutionality of a VRA provision to be filed in federal 

court in the District of Columbia, all such cases necessarily 

come under the heading of a “section 14(b) injunctive action,”

irrespective of whether that section also serves to create a 

cause of action. The Court’s remark in Allen therefore proves 

nothing either way.5 And as we have just said, the rest of the 

Court’s discussion of section 14(b) in Allen suggests much 

more strongly that the section is a jurisdictional venue 

provision, not a cause of action. 

In any event, even if Shelby County were right that 

section 14(b) creates a cause of action—a dubious proposition 

given the evidence—the County still would not be entitled to 

fees under the Piggie Park standard. Piggie Park does not ask 

whether Congress intended to authorize Shelby County’s 

challenge. The only question under Piggie Park is whether 

Congress intended to encourage constitutional challenges to 

the VRA as a way of “securing broad compliance” with the 

statute, Piggie Park, 390 U.S. at 401, and thus made 

attorneys’ fees available to promote such challenges. Shelby 

County has not given us any reason to believe that Congress 

 5 Shelby County also insists that the Supreme Court understood 

section 14(b) to create a cause of action when it mentioned in 

Katzenbach v. Morgan that “[p]ursuant to [section] 14(b),” the 

parties challenging the VRA’s constitutionality in that case 

had “commenced [the] proceeding in the District Court for the 

District of Columbia.” 384 U.S. at 645. Shelby County’s reliance 

on Katzenbach is even more mystifying than its reliance on Allen. 

As we have already said, this remark apparently indicates that the 

Court in Katzenbach perceived section 14(b) as no more than a 

venue provision. 

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did so. Shelby County’s lawsuit did not facilitate enforcement 

of the VRA; it made enforcing the VRA’s preclearance 

regime impossible. And as we have already explained, 

Congress did not need to rely on private challenges to the 

Act’s constitutionality. The fact that Congress may have 

created a cause of action permitting such a suit does nothing

to persuade us, in the face of these other considerations, that 

Congress also intended to use fees to encourage suits that 

sought to strike down its own carefully crafted enforcement 

program. Therefore Shelby County’s insistence that section 

14(b) creates a cause of action is irrelevant. 

Shelby County tries to bolster its argument by explaining 

all the reasons why Congress might have regarded 

constitutional challenges to the VRA as socially beneficial. 

But as we have already said, the Piggie Park standard does 

not determine fee entitlement based on whether Congress 

would applaud or condemn an individual litigant. Instead, 

entitlement under Piggie Park turns on whether Congress 

intended to use fees to encourage the prevailing party’s 

litigation as part of a program for ensuring compliance with 

the Act. Though Shelby County may have vindicated other 

values, invalidating one of the VRA’s central provisions did 

not promote compliance with the Act. 

Shelby County’s other arguments are no more persuasive.

For example, Shelby County insists we must find it entitled to 

fees because winning this lawsuit enforced the voting 

guarantees of the Reconstruction Amendments. This 

argument thoroughly misses the point. Whether Shelby 

County defended the rights secured in the Reconstruction 

Amendments is relevant to whether the County is eligible for 

fees, not whether it is entitled to them. We do not decide 

whether Shelby County is right about the contours of those 

Amendments because we do not need to do so. Shelby County 

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22

did not help secure compliance with the VRA by convincing

the Court to strike down the VRA’s signature statutory 

device. Therefore Shelby County is not entitled to fees under 

Piggie Park.

Shelby County also points out that “nothing in the 

legislative history suggests that Congress was disavowing 

promotion of other types of litigation authorized under the 

statute . . . .” Perhaps, but the legislative history does make 

clear that Congress intended for courts to award fees under 

the VRA, pursuant to the Piggie Park standard, when 

prevailing parties helped secure compliance with the statute. 

Most notably, the Senate Report explains that Congress was 

adopting section 14(e) because the Nation “depends heavily

on private citizens to enforce” the Act. S. Rep. No. 94-295, at 

40 (1975). Shelby County cannot plausibly argue that 

Congress “depend[ed] heavily on private citizens” to bring 

constitutional challenges to the coverage formula, especially 

because the sunset provision empowered even one house of 

the legislature to invalidate section 4 by refusing to support 

reauthorization.

Shelby County insists that if it is not entitled to fees, the 

incentives to bring VRA actions would be distorted. Other 

jurisdictions seeking to invalidate provisions of the VRA on 

constitutional grounds in the future would have to bear the 

costs of litigating those challenges, while facing the prospect, 

if they lost, of fee liability to private parties that intervened on 

the Government’s behalf. The distorted incentives of which 

Shelby County warns seem at best hypothetical. Shelby 

County has not identified any case in which an intervenordefendant has obtained fees from a plaintiff jurisdiction for 

helping the Government defend the VRA’s constitutionality, 

nor have we found such a case ourselves. Thus Shelby 

County’s fear that future unsuccessful challengers would face 

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23

the prospect of paying the fees of intervenor-defendants is 

mere speculation. Moreover, Shelby County does not seem to

believe that these distorted incentives would actually 

materialize. In its reply brief Shelby County maintained that it 

would not have been liable for fees as to the intervenordefendants in this case had Shelby County lost. But more to 

the point, even if we accepted Shelby County’s 

prognostication and overlooked the internal contradictions of 

its argument, this issue is not relevant to our decision here. 

We need not decide whether our legal conclusion would 

actually create unequal litigation incentives or weigh the 

undesirability of that consequence as a matter of policy. Such 

considerations are the province of Congress, not the courts.

Shelby County also argues that finding it not entitled to 

fees would merely constitute punishment because we dislike 

the results of Shelby County’s success even though 

“unsympathetic litigants” routinely win fees when they 

prevail under civil rights statutes. Appellant’s Br. 33-34. As 

an initial matter, we reject Shelby County’s premise. Our 

decision in no way rests on any assessment of the social value 

of Shelby County’s suit. Nor do we find Shelby County not 

entitled to fees based on the assumption that it brought this 

suit as an “opponent of individual voting rights.” Id. at 43.

What is more, Shelby County misapprehends the cases on 

which this argument relies. The “unsympathetic” litigants 

Shelby County identifies won fee awards when they helped to 

enforce the statute in question, irrespective of whether the 

legal theory or practical effect of that suit was universally 

appealing. Some observers may be surprised, puzzled, or even 

upset when, pursuant to a fee-shifting provision, a court 

awards fees to a Caucasian man in a VRA suit, see Maloney v. 

City of Marietta, 822 F.2d 1023, 1026 (11th Cir. 1987), or a 

large corporation in a § 1983 suit, see Sable Commc’ns of 

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24

Cal. Inc. v. Pac. Tel. & Tel. Co., 890 F.2d 184, 193 (9th Cir. 

1989), or even wealthy plaintiffs who sued a state 

government, see Lavin v. Husted, 764 F.3d 646, 650-51 (6th 

Cir. 2014). But when prevailing parties—no matter who they 

are—help enforce a civil rights statute, they are entitled to 

fees. Shelby County’s problem here is not that this lawsuit 

may have upset some observers. We find Shelby County not 

entitled because its lawsuit did not enforce compliance with 

the VRA and because Congress did not intend to use fees to

encourage the invalidation of the Act’s provisions.

In the same vein, Shelby County argues that we should be 

guided here by the analysis that persuaded the court to grant 

fees in Lawrence v. Bowsher, 931 F.2d 1579 (D.C. Cir. 1991). 

In that case, the district court dismissed a former federal 

employee’s claim that he had been unlawfully discharged 

from his job, finding that he had not first exhausted the

administrative remedies required under Title VII. Id. at 1580. 

The plaintiff successfully argued to us that Title VII did not 

apply to his class of federal employees and so he was not 

subject to an exhaustion requirement. Id. As a result, other

federal employees who belonged to the same category as the 

plaintiff were then excluded from the scope of Title VII and 

no longer benefitted from its protections. Id. After prevailing, 

the plaintiff sought attorneys’ fees under Title VII. Id. The 

district court refused to grant fees, concluding that a plaintiff 

whose lawsuit “was positively harmful to the civil rights of 

others” should not receive a fee award under a civil rights 

statute. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). We disagreed, 

holding that “[a] district court may not deny fees to a 

prevailing plaintiff simply because his litigating position, 

although a correct interpretation of the law, does not comport 

with the court’s vision of a position that would, in a broad 

sense, protect civil rights.” Id. (internal quotation marks 

omitted). Shelby County submits that this case is exactly 

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25

analogous to Lawrence v. Bowsher: We should not deny fees 

simply because some observers find the invalidation of the 

coverage formula undesirable as a matter of policy. We 

disagree with Shelby County’s reading of Lawrence v. 

Bowsher. We think that case helps illustrate exactly how 

Shelby County’s suit differs from those in which prevailing 

parties are entitled to fees. The plaintiff there contributed to 

enforcement of Title VII by defining the category of 

individuals that Congress intended to protect, ensuring that 

the actions Congress meant to prohibit—and no other 

actions—would be prosecuted. That is precisely the kind of 

private enforcement action Congress meant the fee-shifting 

provision to encourage. Not so here. Shelby County defeated 

Congress’s plans for enforcement of the VRA by invalidating 

the coverage formula and immobilizing section 5. Of course, 

as we have learned, Congress’s plans violated the 

Constitution. But Shelby County’s suit, unlike the suit in 

Lawrence v. Bowsher, did not contribute to enforcement of 

the VRA. For that reason Shelby County is not entitled to 

fees.

Finally, Shelby County argues that the approach we have 

taken to understanding section 14(e) is in error. Shelby 

County accepts that the Supreme Court has several times, in 

Piggie Park, Christiansburg Garment, and Zipes, discussed

and relied on the purposes Congress intended to advance 

through fee awards. And Shelby County admits that in those 

cases the Court explained that prevailing parties are entitled to 

fees when their lawsuits advanced one or another purpose that 

Congress planned to advance by enacting the fee-shifting 

provision. Shelby County even acknowledges that we have 

adopted the Piggie Park standard to govern fee entitlement 

under section 14(e). See Donnell, 682 F.2d at 245. Yet Shelby 

County insists nonetheless that neither we nor the Court has 

ever taken the additional step of determining the specific kind

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26

of plaintiff, argument, or motivation that Congress had 

intended to reward with fees. But we have not based our 

approach on such considerations. Rather, we have applied the 

Piggie Park standard as directed by the Court and as urged by 

Shelby County. Under that standard, we have considered 

whether the outcome of Shelby County’s suit—the 

invalidation of the coverage formula of the VRA—was the 

kind of outcome that Congress thought would enhance 

enforcement of the VRA and made fees available to promote.

We think it was not. Therefore Shelby County is not entitled 

to fees.

C

Even though Shelby County has based its argument for 

fees entirely on Piggie Park, the district court considered

whether Shelby County might also be entitled to fees under 

the Christiansburg Garment standard, which would allow a 

fee award only if the Government’s defense of the coverage 

formula’s constitutionality was frivolous or without 

foundation. See Shelby County, 43 F. Supp. 3d at 68-71. But 

since Shelby County has never maintained that it could even 

theoretically obtain fees under that standard, we do not 

believe we should resolve whether Christiansburg Garment 

should sometimes apply in cases like this one. It is enough to 

resolve this fee dispute by holding that Shelby County is not 

entitled to fees under the only standard it has urged us to 

apply.

III

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s 

denial of Shelby County’s application for attorneys’ fees.

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TATEL, Circuit Judge, concurring: Although I agree with 

Judge Griffith that Shelby County is not entitled to recover 

attorneys’ fees, I find nothing at all “difficult” about the 

question whether the County is even eligible for fees under 

section 14(e) of the Voting Rights Act. See Op. at 14. 

Resolving this case on that threshold issue, moreover, would 

not require us “to decide more . . . [than] necessary,” id. at 15 

(internal quotation marks omitted)—or, for that matter, any

new question of law. 

Recall that Shelby County is eligible for fees only if its 

lawsuit—an action to invalidate the VRA’s preclearance 

regime—qualifies as an “action or proceeding to enforce the 

voting guarantees of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment.” 

52 U.S.C. § 10310(e). As filed and briefed, the County’s suit 

does not meet this standard. Neither in its complaint nor in 

any brief filed in the district court, this court, or the Supreme 

Court did Shelby County even hint that its suit would protect 

any voting right guaranteed by the Fourteenth or Fifteenth 

Amendment. Instead, as Judge Bates recognized in rejecting 

the County’s request for fees, Shelby County expressly and 

repeatedly stated that it sought to enforce the Tenth 

Amendment by “vindicat[ing] federalism interests and the 

‘fundamental principle of equal sovereignty’ among the 

states.” Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, 43 F. Supp. 3d 47, 

57 (D.D.C. 2014) (quoting Compl. ¶ 43); see also Br. for 

Shelby County at 23, Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, 133 

S. Ct. 2612 (2013) (contending that VRA preclearance 

provisions “encroach[ed] on Tenth Amendment rights”). 

Indeed, in its cert petition, Shelby County framed the relevant 

question as whether Congress’s reauthorization of Section 5 

of the Voting Rights Act “exceeded its authority under the 

Fifteenth Amendment and thus violated the Tenth 

Amendment and Article IV of the United States 

Constitution,” and it was on this issue that the County

ultimately prevailed. See Shelby County, 133 S. Ct. at 2623, 

2631 (invalidating VRA’s preclearance coverage formula 

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2

under Tenth Amendment). But now seeking to qualify for fees 

under section 14(e), the County has changed its tune, claiming 

that its suit in fact sought to enforce the Fourteenth and 

Fifteenth Amendments’ “voting guarantees,” 52 U.S.C. 

§ 10310(e), by vindicating what it calls those Amendments’ 

“guarantee of local voting autonomy,” Appellant’s Reply Br. 

3. This claim is meritless.

Anyone wishing to discover what “voting guarantees” the 

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments protect must begin 

with the Amendments’ text. Section One of the Fifteenth 

Amendment provides that the “right of citizens of the United 

States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United 

States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous 

condition of servitude.” Section One of the Fourteenth 

Amendment declares, among other things, that “[n]o State 

shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal 

protection of the laws.” 

Obviously, neither of these provisions includes any 

guarantee of state autonomy over voting. By its plain terms, 

the Fifteenth Amendment enshrines only one “voting 

guarantee,” i.e., the “right of citizens of the United States to 

vote” free from discrimination based on “race, color, or 

previous condition of servitude.” Furthermore, and contrary to 

Shelby County’s claim that the Amendment protects “state 

autonomy over voting,” Appellant’s Reply Br. 14, the 

Amendment’s prohibition against discrimination is expressly 

directed at the states. And although the Fourteenth 

Amendment says nothing about “voting guarantees”—indeed, 

as adopted, the Amendment did not even protect the right to 

vote—the Supreme Court has subsequently interpreted the

Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause as “guarantee[ing] the 

opportunity for equal participation by all voters.” Reynolds v. 

Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 566 (1964). Like the Fifteenth 

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3

Amendment, moreover, it secures that right against the states.

The two Amendments thus “guarantee” not state autonomy, 

but rather the right of citizens to vote, and they expressly 

guarantee that right against state interference. 

Shelby County, however, claims to have found a 

“concomitant guarantee[]” of local voting autonomy lurking 

in the two Amendments’ enforcement provisions. Appellant’s 

Br. 14. That Congress may enforce the Amendments only by 

“appropriate” legislation, the County insists, means that the 

enforcement provisions guarantee “the constitutional right of 

sovereign States . . . to regulate state and local elections as 

they see fit.” Id. at 43. But this claim finds no support in the 

constitutional text. Section Two of the Fifteenth Amendment 

provides that “[t]he Congress shall have power to enforce this 

article by appropriate legislation.” Using virtually identical 

language, Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment 

provides that “[t]he Congress shall have power to enforce, by 

appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” By their 

plain text, neither clause “guarantees” any right, voting or 

otherwise. Rather, they give Congress power to enforce the 

“articles,” i.e., equal protection of the laws (Fourteenth 

Amendment) and the right of citizens to vote free from 

discrimination based on race (Fifteenth Amendment).

Shelby County cites nothing to support its argument that 

the two enforcement clauses somehow also protect state 

autonomy, and for good reason. Added to the Constitution in 

the wake of this nation’s bloody civil war to “take away all 

possibility of oppression by law because of race or color,” Ex 

parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 345 (1880), the Amendments 

were intended to limit state autonomy, not protect it. Owing 

largely to their enforcement provisions, see id., they 

“establish[ed] . . . the federal government as the main 

protector of citizens’ rights,” granting “the national state the 

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4

authority to intervene in local affairs to protect the basic rights 

of all American citizens,” Eric Foner, The Supreme Court and 

the History of Reconstruction—and Vice Versa, 112 

COLUMBIA L. REV. 1585, 1587 (2012).

The Supreme Court has long recognized this proposition. 

In Ex parte Virginia, decided just years after the Fifteenth 

Amendment’s ratification, the Court declared that the 

Reconstruction Amendments “were intended to be, what they 

really are, limitations of the power of the States and 

enlargements of the power of Congress.” 100 U.S. at 345. 

With respect to Congress’s power to enforce the 

Amendments, the Court explained:

Whatever legislation is appropriate, that is, adapted 

to carry out the objects the amendments have in 

view, whatever tends to enforce submission to the 

prohibitions they contain, and to secure to all persons 

the enjoyment of perfect equality of civil rights and 

the equal protection of the laws against State denial 

or invasion, if not prohibited, is brought within the 

domain of congressional power.

Id. at 345–46 (emphasis added). In Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, the 

Court, elucidating Congress’s authority to enforce the 

substantive guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, 

recognized that the Amendment “quite clearly contemplates 

limitations on [the states’] authority.” 427 U.S. 445, 453 

(1976). And in City of Boerne v. Flores, the Court, harkening 

back to Ex parte Virginia, emphasized that the Reconstruction 

Amendments’ enforcement provisions ensure that Congress 

has “the power to make the [Amendments’] substantive 

constitutional prohibitions against the States effective.” 521 

U.S. 507, 522 (1997). The Court explained that they

constitute a “positive grant of legislative power to Congress,” 

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5

authorizing “[l]egislation which deters or remedies 

constitutional violations . . . even if in the process 

it . . . intrudes into legislative spheres of autonomy previously 

reserved to the States.” Id. at 517–18 (internal quotation 

marks omitted).

Given this century and a half of precedent, rejecting 

Shelby County’s argument hardly requires that we “make 

constitutional pronouncements,” Op. at 15 (internal quotation 

marks omitted), or otherwise attempt to delimit, once and for 

all, the precise contours of the Reconstruction Amendments, 

see id. at 14, 21. It suffices to recognize, as the Supreme 

Court has time and again, that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth 

Amendments protect not state autonomy, but rather individual 

rights “against State denial or invasion.” Ex parte Virginia, 

100 U.S. at 346.

Of course, Congress’s remedial authority under the 

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments is “not unlimited,” as 

it “extends only to enforcing the provisions of [those] 

Amendment[s].” City of Boerne, 521 U.S. at 518–19

(emphasis added) (internal quotation marks and alteration 

omitted). But when Congress oversteps the limits of that 

power, it does not, as Shelby County contends, violate any 

“guarantee” of the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment.

Instead, as always happens when Congress exceeds its 

enumerated authority and breaches the bounds of federalism, 

it violates the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states 

all “powers not delegated to the United States by the 

Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States.” See, e.g., 

Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 919 (1997); New York 

v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 177 (1992). Indeed, as noted 

above, such was the basis for Shelby County’s original 

complaint in this very case, as well as for the Supreme 

Court’s decision in the County’s favor. Put in terms of the 

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6

VRA’s fee-shifting provision, then, Shelby County brought 

this case to enforce the federalism “guarantees” of the Tenth 

Amendment, not the “voting guarantees” of the Fourteenth or 

Fifteenth Amendment. Shelby County is thus ineligible for 

attorneys’ fees.

Finally, I agree with Judge Silberman that Shelby County 

would have been eligible for fees had it prevailed in a suit

brought on behalf of voters to vindicate their Fourteenth and 

Fifteenth Amendment rights to be free from discrimination in 

voting. But that is not the case the County filed.

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SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judge, concurring in the

judgment: At oral argument, I asked counsel for the NAACP

(originally the intervenor) the following hypothetical. Suppose

a new Congress were to pass a version of the Voting Rights Act

that was discriminatory to African-American voters. If you sued

and prevailed on grounds that the new statute violated both the

“right to vote” under the Fifteenth Amendment (which protects

against interference by both the states and the United States), as

well as the right to vote pursuant to the equal protection clause

of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S.

533 (1964), would you be entitled to attorney’s fees under the

Voting Rights Act. The answer was unequivocally yes, and I

think that is correct. 

But that dialogue demonstrates two logical flaws in the

court’s opinion. The first is that the attorney’s fees provision

does not speak to suits to enforce the Voting Rights Act, similar

to prior cases dealing with civil rights statutes, but “rather an

action or proceeding to enforce the voting guarantees of the

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.” In other words, a suit

that challenges the constitutionality of a version of the Voting

Rights Act can not be rejected merely because it challenges the

Voting Rights Act. Therefore, much of the court’s discussion on

this point is irrelevant.

The second logical flaw, similar to the first, which the

district court and Judge Griffith’s opinion emphasize, is that it

is allegedly inconceivable that any Congress would authorize

attorney’s fees for an action challenging the legality of the very

statute in which attorney’s fees are authorized. The problem is

that the statute authorizing attorney’s fees was passed in 1975,

whereas the recent statute challenged in this case was passed in

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2

2006.1

 So, whether attorney’s fees are allowed depends not on

the view of the recent Congress, but rather on the words of the

1975 Congress.

I also disagree with the government that Shelby County

could not have recovered fees because its lawsuit was inherently

one on behalf of state autonomy. Actually, the original case

could have been framed as one protecting the rights of

individual voters in governed jurisdictions not to be

discriminated against under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth

Amendments. After all, the Section 5 procedure did limit the

ability of voters to expeditiously change various voting practices

and insofar as the formula for inclusion of covered jurisdictions

was arbitrary, it was discriminatory. (Indeed, Section 2 of the

Fourteenth Amendment actually speaks of preventing the right

to vote of anyone being in any way “abridged.”2

)

Nevertheless, I concur in the judgment in this case

because I agree with Judge Tatel that the original suit was not

brought on behalf of the individual voting rights of the citizens

of Shelby County. Whether this goes to eligibility or

entitlement – the concepts are interrelated in the court’s opinion 

– it is sufficient to conclude the action was not brought to

enforce the voting guarantees of the Fourteenth or Fifteenth

Amendment. It is simply not enough to rely, as does Shelby

County, on their original argument that the statute was not

1

Section 14(e) was originally codified as 42 U.S.C. §1973l(e), but was

later recodified with the Voting Rights Act as a whole into Title 52. 

2

Although a specific remedy is provided. It is not clear whether, and

if so, how, it may be implemented by statute; in any event, it was not

relied upon by Shelby County. 

USCA Case #14-5138 Document #1570822 Filed: 09/01/2015 Page 34 of 35
3

“appropriate” within the meaning of those amendments, because

its claim of inappropriateness – at least originally – was only

based on precepts of federalism of the Tenth Amendment, not

individual voting guarantees. 

USCA Case #14-5138 Document #1570822 Filed: 09/01/2015 Page 35 of 35