Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-04-04145/USCOURTS-ca8-04-04145-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 893
Nature of Suit: Environmental Matters
Cause of Action: 

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1

The HONORABLE KAREN E. SCHREIER, United States District Judge for

the District of South Dakota. 

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 04-4145

___________

Northern Cheyenne Tribe, et al., *

*

Plaintiffs - Appellants, *

*

v. * Appeal from the United States

* District Court for the

Alphonso Jackson, in his official * District of South Dakota.

capacity as United States Secretary *

of Housing and Urban Development, *

*

Defendant - Appellee, *

___________

Submitted: September 16, 2005

Filed: January 18, 2006

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, LAY and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

___________

LOKEN, Chief Judge.

Bear Butte is a mountain formation seven miles northeast of Sturgis, South

Dakota. It is a site of great spiritual significance for certain Native American tribes.

In February 2003, six tribes and an unincorporated association (collectively, “the

Tribes”) commenced this action against multiple defendants, seeking to enjoin

construction of a shooting range near Bear Butte. The district court1

 preliminarily

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enjoined the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

and its Secretary from disbursing additional funds to the State of South Dakota for

construction of the shooting range. When HUD later determined that the shooting

range would not generate necessary public benefits, South Dakota withdrew its

funding and the developers abandoned the project. The Tribes then dismissed their

claims as moot. The district court denied an award of attorneys’ fees, concluding the

Tribes are not prevailing parties under the Supreme Court’s decision in Buckhannon

Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dept. of Health & Human Resources, 532

U.S. 598 (2001). The Tribes appeal the denial of an award against HUD, arguing that

the relief afforded by the preliminary injunction made them “prevailing parties”

entitled to an attorneys’ fee award. We disagree and therefore affirm. 

I.

The City of Sturgis and its Industrial Expansion Corporation (collectively, “the

City”) planned to purchase land and construct the shooting range. To fund the project,

the City applied for and received a grant of $825,000 from funds allocated to the State

of South Dakota under the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program

established by Title I of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, 42

U.S.C. §§ 5301 et seq. Under that program, HUD allocates funds to each State to

support development projects by local governments. Once funds are allocated, the

State makes awards to local governments without prior HUD approval, but HUD

conducts periodic audits to ensure that the State is properly awarding grants and

administering the program. See 24 C.F.R. § 570.493. 

The Tribes filed their complaint against the Secretary of HUD, the City of

Sturgis, and two private parties. The Tribes promptly moved for a preliminary

injunction to prevent construction of the shooting range until the litigation was

resolved. The Secretary moved to dismiss. The other defendants agreed to stay

construction of the shooting range. The district court dismissed some claims but

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granted a preliminary injunction against the Secretary and HUD based on the Tribes’

claims under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and

the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). As the State had previously

transferred some CDBG funds to the City, the practical effect of the preliminary

injunction was to compel HUD to bar the State -- a non-party to the lawsuit -- from

accessing additional CDBG funds for the shooting range project.

In June 2003, after conducting a periodic review of South Dakota’s CDBG

program, HUD advised the State that the Bear Butte shooting range project failed to

satisfy any of the CDBG program objectives -- to benefit low and moderate income

persons, to aid in preventing or eliminating slums or blight, and to meet other urgent

community development needs. In September 2003, South Dakota responded by

cancelling its CDBG grant to the City. With this loss of funding, the City abandoned

its plans to build the shooting range. Defendants then moved to dismiss the lawsuit

as moot; the Tribes agreed except for the issue of attorneys’ fees. The court dismissed

the complaint as moot but granted the Tribes additional time to move for an award of

attorneys’ fees. This appeal followed denial of that motion.

II.

Congress has granted district courts discretion to award attorneys’ fees to a

“prevailing party” in an action to enforce RLUIPA or RFRA against the United States

or its officials. See 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b); 28 U.S.C. § 2412(b). In Buckhannon, the

Supreme Court rejected the “catalyst theory” then prevailing in the circuit courts,

which permitted a plaintiff to recover fees if the lawsuit achieved the desired result

through a voluntary change in the defendant’s conduct. Instead, the Court held that,

to be a prevailing party entitled to a statutory attorneys’ fee award, a party must obtain

a judicially sanctioned material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties to the

lawsuit. 532 U.S. at 604-05; see Cody v. Hillard, 304 F.3d 767, 772-73 (8th Cir.

2002). Citing prior decisions, the Court noted in Buckhannon that court-ordered

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The dissent in Christina A. and some of our sister circuits have misread that

decision as limiting prevailing party status under Buckhannon to those who obtain

consent decrees and judgments on the merits. See Christina A., 315 F.3d at 996

(Melloy, J., dissenting); Roberson v. Giuliani, 346 F.3d 75, 81-82 (2d Cir. 2003);

Smith v. Fitchburg Pub. Schs, 401 F.3d 16, 23 (1st Cir. 2005). The issue in Christina

A. was whether judicial approval of a private class action settlement under Fed. R.

Civ. P. 23(e) was the equivalent of a court-ordered consent decree under Buckhannon.

Our divided panel held it was not. As our later discussion in Sierra Club v. Little

Rock made clear, the majority in Christina A. did not consider, and certainly did not

foreclose, the question whether other types of court orders, such as declaratory

judgments and preliminary injunctions, may ever result in the requisite judicially

sanctioned material alteration in the parties’ legal relationship. 

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consent decrees and enforceable judgments on the merits create the requisite material

alteration in the parties’ relationship. 532 U.S. at 604. By contrast, we have held that

a judicially approved class action settlement, and a declaratory judgment awarding no

relief, do not. See Christina A. v. Bloomberg, 315 F.3d 990, 992-93 (8th Cir. 2003);

Sierra Club v. City of Little Rock, 351 F.3d 840, 845 (8th Cir. 2003).2

Here, the only relief the Tribes obtained in the lawsuit was a preliminary

injunction that barred HUD from providing funds for construction of the shooting

range from the time the injunction was entered until South Dakota canceled its block

grant to the City. The issue, then, is whether that judicially sanctioned injunction

effected the requisite material alteration in legal relationship to make the Tribes

prevailing parties against the federal defendant. We review this issue de novo.

Christina A., 315 F.3d at 992. 

The Tribes first argue that they are prevailing parties because they “obtain[ed]

an interim order granting them relief, even though their complaint ultimately [was]

dismissed.” It is of course literally true that every preliminary injunction effects some

judicially sanctioned change in the parties’ legal relationship. If that were all

Buckhannon requires, then every recipient of a preliminary injunction becomes a

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prevailing party eligible for an attorneys’ fee award. But when dealing with a nonfinal order such as a preliminary injunction, the argument ignores an important

principle established by the Supreme Court well before Buckhannon and reemphasized in the Buckhannon opinion:

Congress intended to permit the interim award of counsel fees only when

a party has prevailed on the merits of at least some of his claims. For

only in that event has there been a determination of the “substantial

rights of the parties,” which Congress determined was a necessary

foundation for departing from the usual rule in this country that each

party is to bear the expense of his own attorney. 

Hanrahan v. Hampton, 446 U.S. 754, 758 (1980), quoted in Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at

603. Applying this principle, it is apparent that a preliminary injunction that grants

only temporary relief pendente lite is not, without more, a judicially sanctioned

material alteration of the parties’ legal relationship within the meaning of

Buckhannon. Thus, virtually every circuit court to consider the question has

concluded that a preliminary injunction granting temporary relief that merely

maintains the status quo does not confer prevailing party status. See Thomas v. Nat’l

Sci. Found., 330 F.3d 486, 493 (D.C. Cir. 2003); John T. Ex Rel. Paul T. v. Delaware

Cty., 318 F.3d 545, 558-59 (3rd Cir. 2003); Dubic v. Green Oak Township, 312 F.3d

736, 753-54 (6th Cir. 2002); Race v. Toledo-Davila, 291 F.3d 857, 858 (1st Cir.

2002); Smyth v. Rivero, 282 F.3d 268, 276-77 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 825

(2002). We agree.

The Tribes further argue that they are entitled to prevailing party status because

they obtained relief based on the merits of their claims. Most of our sister circuits

have concluded that some preliminary injunctions are sufficiently akin to final relief

on the merits to confer prevailing party status. See, e.g. Dupuy v. Samuels, 423 F.3d

714, 723 & n.4 (7th Cir. 2005). We are inclined to agree. For example, the grant of

a preliminary injunction should confer prevailing party status if it alters the course of

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a pending administrative proceeding and the party’s claim a for permanent injunction

is rendered moot by the impact of the preliminary injunction. See Role Models

Amer., Inc. v. Brownlee, 353 F.3d 962, 966 (D.C. Cir. 2004); Watson v. County of

Riverside, 300 F.3d. 1092, 1096 (9th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 538 U.S. 923 (2003).

That type of preliminary injunction functions much like the grant of an irreversible

partial summary judgment on the merits. 

Here, on the other hand, although the district court before issuing the

preliminary injunction considered whether the Tribes were likely to prevail on the

merits, as we required in Dataphase Sys., Inc. v. C L Sys., Inc., 640 F.2d 109, 113 (8th

Cir. 1981) (en banc), the court granted only interim relief that preserved the status quo

until it could resolve the merits of the Tribes’ claims. Moreover, in granting the

preliminary injunction, the court primarily considered the merits of those claims

against the other defendants, who had agreed voluntarily to stay construction of the

shooting range. The court did not discuss whether those claims would entitle the

Tribes to final relief on the merits against the Secretary, given HUD’s relatively

remote and indirect role in the shooting range project.

In the end, the Tribes achieved their desired result because of a regulatory

action taken by HUD under the CDBG program for reasons unrelated to the merits of

the Tribes’ RFRA and RLUIPA claims, and because of voluntary decisions by the

other defendants to abandon the shooting range project. In these circumstances, it

would be ironic, to say the least, if the Tribes were awarded attorneys’ fees against the

defendant whose voluntary action triggered this result. We conclude that such an

award is not authorized by the governing statutes and Supreme Court decisions. The

Tribes obtained no relief on the merits of their claims against the Secretary. The

preliminary injunction preserved one limited aspect of the status quo without in any

way effecting a judicially sanctioned material alteration in the relationship between

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the Tribes and HUD. Accordingly, under Buckhannon, the Tribes may not be

awarded attorneys’ fees as prevailing parties. 

The order of the district court dated September 28, 2004, is affirmed. 

______________________________

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