Opinion ID: 222780
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Meaning of Prevailing Party in the Context of Preliminary Injunctions

Text: The Supreme Court set forth the general standard governing the prevailing-party determination in Texas State Teachers Ass'n v. Garland Independent School District ( TSTA ), 489 U.S. 782, 109 S.Ct. 1486, 103 L.Ed.2d 866 (1989). There, the Court stated that [t]he touchstone of the prevailing party inquiry must be the material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties in a manner which Congress sought to promote in the fee statute. Id. at 792-93, 109 S.Ct. 1486. The Court explained that a material alteration in the parties' legal relationship occurs when the plaintiff has succeeded on any significant issue in litigation which achieved some of the benefit the parties sought in bringing suit. Id. at 791-92, 109 S.Ct. 1486 (internal alteration and quotation marks omitted). This standard requires that `a plaintiff receive at least some relief on the merits of his claim before he can be said to prevail.' Id. at 792, 109 S.Ct. 1486 (quoting Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U.S. 755, 760, 107 S.Ct. 2672, 96 L.Ed.2d 654 (1987)). This Court has twice addressed whether a plaintiff who secured a preliminary injunction could satisfy the standard set forth in TSTA. In Dahlem v. Board of Education, 901 F.2d 1508 (10th Cir.1990), Scott Dahlem, a high-school senior, desired to participate in interscholastic gymnastics. Id. at 1510. But Dahlem's school only had a girls' gymnastics team, and the state high-school activities association did not allow boys to join girls' athletics teams. Id. Dahlem filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that this situation amounted to unconstitutional gender discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. After an initial hearing, the district court granted Dahlem a preliminary injunction that allowed him to participate in interscholastic gymnastics during the pendency of the case. Id. The defendants appealed the district court's interlocutory ruling to this Court, but while the appeal was pending, the gymnastics season ended. Id. This rendered the case moot because Dahlem was scheduled to graduate before the beginning of the next season. Id. After the district court vacated the injunction and dismissed the case per our instructions, Dahlem filed a motion for attorney's fees, which the district court denied. Id. On appeal, we considered whether the preliminary injunction rendered Dahlem a prevailing party even though the injunction was vacated on mootness grounds before the defendants could challenge its validity in this Court. Id. at 1511. We began by stating that [f]or the purpose of deciding whether a plaintiff is a prevailing party, a preliminary injunction is considered a decision on the merits so long as it represents an unambiguous indication of probable success on the merits, and not merely a maintenance of the status quo. Id. (internal alteration and quotation marks omitted). The injunction at issue there met that standard because the district court's order granting preliminary relief explicitly stated that there was a substantial likelihood that Dahlem would ultimately prevail on his claim. Id. We next observed that TSTA requires a plaintiff to receive at least some relief on the merits of his claim before he may be deemed a prevailing party, but that nothing in TSTA or any other Supreme Court case precludes a plaintiff from obtaining that relief by some means other than a final judgment. See id. at 1512. Thus, we adopted the rule that a party which achieves the objective of its suit by means of an injunction issued by the district court [after an unambiguous finding of probable success on the merits] is a prevailing party in that court, notwithstanding the fact that the case becomes moot, through no acquiescence by the defendant, while the order is on appeal. Id. (footnote omitted). Under that rule, Dahlem qualified for prevailing-party status because the preliminary injunction afforded him all of the relief he sought in bringing suit: [Dahlem] brought suit so that he could participate in interscholastic gymnastics during his senior year. Because of the district court's preliminary injunction, he did so participate. No subsequent judicial proceedings could have given him any more relief on his claim. It cannot be suggested that Dahlem's foray into the legal system was anything but completely successful. Id. at 1513. We reached a different conclusion in Biodiversity Conservation Alliance v. Stem, 519 F.3d 1226 (10th Cir.2008). In that case, the U.S. Forest Service authorized a sale of timber in the Cement Region of the Black Hills National Forest (the Cement Project). Id. at 1227-28. The Biodiversity Conservation Alliance (BCA) filed a complaint alleging that the Forest Service's actions in planning and developing the Cement Project violated various environmental statutes and the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). Id. at 1228. BCA also moved for a preliminary injunction to stop the imminent timber sale. Id. In ruling on BCA's motion, the district court found that BCA would suffer irreparable injury as a result of permanent species loss if the sale went forward. Id. Further, because the equities tipped heavily towards [BCA], the district court required only that BCA raise substantial questions on the merits rather than prove a substantial likelihood of success on the merits. Id. (internal alteration and quotation marks omitted). The court concluded that BCA satisfied the substantial questions standard and granted the preliminary injunction to maintain the status quo antebellum until the court could make a final ruling. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). During the pendency of the litigation, a forest fire destroyed approximately ten percent of the timber in the Cement Region that the Forest Service had planned to sell. Id. Consequently, the Forest Service withdrew the Cement Project, and the district court dismissed the case as moot. Id. BCA then moved for attorney's fees, relying in part on the preliminary injunction. Id. The district court granted the motion, and the Forest Service appealed. Id. at 1229. On appeal, we cited TSTA and explained that [a] preliminary injunction that does not provide a plaintiff with relief on the merits of her claim cannot serve as the basis for prevailing party status. Id. at 1232. Applying that rule, we held that the preliminary injunction obtained by BCA was insufficient to make BCA a prevailing party because the injunction did not provide any of the relief that BCA sought in its complaint. Id. BCA sought a determination that the Cement Project violated environmental statutes and the APA, but the district court's order granting preliminary relief did not address[] whether the Cement Project was arbitrary and capricious. Id. Instead, the court granted the injunction largely because the balance of equities favored BCA. Id. Therefore, in obtaining the preliminary injunction, BCA won nothing more than the right to have the status quo preserved, so that had [BCA] prevailed on the merits, its victory would have meaning. Id. In dicta in Biodiversity, we questioned whether Dahlem remains good law after the Supreme Court's decisions in Buckhannon Board and Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, 532 U.S. 598, 121 S.Ct. 1835, 149 L.Ed.2d 855 (2001), and Sole v. Wyner, 551 U.S. 74, 127 S.Ct. 2188, 167 L.Ed.2d 1069 (2007). Biodiversity, 519 F.3d at 1232. We declined to resolve that issue, however, because the validity of Dahlem was irrelevant to our conclusion that BCA failed to obtain relief on the merits and thus could not meet the stringent prevailing-party standard of TSTA. See id. at 1232. Having carefully analyzed Buckhannon and Sole, we now hold that Dahlem survives those decisions. The plaintiff in Buckhannon sought to recover attorney's fees under the `catalyst theory,' which posits that a plaintiff is a `prevailing party' if it achieves the desired result because the lawsuit brought about a voluntary change in the defendant's conduct. 532 U.S. at 601, 121 S.Ct. 1835. But the Supreme Court explicitly rejected that theory as inconsistent with its prior cases recognizing that a prevailing party must obtain some form of judicial relief, such as a judgment on the merits or court-ordered consent decree. Id. at 604-06, 121 S.Ct. 1835. The Court explained that [a] defendant's voluntary change in conduct, although perhaps accomplishing what the plaintiff sought to achieve by the lawsuit, lacks the necessary judicial imprimatur on the change. Id. at 605, 121 S.Ct. 1835. Buckhannon thus stands for the proposition that there must be a judicially sanctioned alteration in the legal relationship between the parties before a plaintiff can be deemed a prevailing party. [3] In Dahlem, we held that the plaintiff attained prevailing-party status on the basis of a preliminary injunction. Buckhannon does not undermine that conclusion. A preliminary injunction is a form of court-ordered relief. Thus, [a] preliminary injunction issued by a judge carries all the `judicial imprimatur' necessary to satisfy Buckhannon.  Watson v. Cnty. of Riverside, 300 F.3d 1092, 1096 (9th Cir. 2002); see also People Against Police Violence v. City of Pittsburgh, 520 F.3d 226, 233 n. 5 (3d Cir.2008) (We need not determine in this case the outer limits of the requisite `judicial imprimatur.' Whatever those may be, preliminary injunctions are certainly within them. (citation omitted)). We do not mean to suggest, of course, that every preliminary injunction will necessarily render the recipient a prevailing party. As we have already explained, to be a prevailing party on the basis of a preliminary injunction requires `relief on the merits.' Lorillard Tobacco Co., 611 F.3d at 1217 (quoting Biodiversity, 519 F.3d at 1232). We hold only that Buckhannon 's judicial imprimatur requirement does not make preliminary injunctions categorically insufficient to create prevailing-party status. In Sole, the Supreme Court addressed the question whether a plaintiff who gains a preliminary injunction after an abbreviated hearing, but is denied a permanent injunction after a dispositive adjudication on the merits, qualif[ies] as a `prevailing party' within the compass of § 1988(b). 551 U.S. at 77, 127 S.Ct. 2188. The Court answered that question in the negative, reasoning that whatever fleeting success a plaintiff may achieve when a court grants preliminary injunctive relief is negated if the court ultimately rules against the plaintiff on the merits. Id. at 83-86, 127 S.Ct. 2188. Thus, the Court held that [p]revailing party status ... does not attend achievement of a preliminary injunction that is reversed, dissolved, or otherwise undone by the final decision in the same case. Id. at 83, 127 S.Ct. 2188. Significantly, however, the Court explicitly declined to consider the issue involved in both Dahlem and Biodiversity: We express no view on whether, in the absence of a final decision on the merits of a claim for permanent injunctive relief, success in gaining a preliminary injunction may sometimes warrant an award of counsel fees. We decide only that a plaintiff who gains a preliminary injunction does not qualify for an award of counsel fees under § 1988(b) if the merits of the case are ultimately decided against her. Id. at 86, 127 S.Ct. 2188; see also Biodiversity, 519 F.3d at 1231 (Unlike the injunction in Sole, the preliminary injunction here was not undone by a final decision on the merits. It is thus in the area explicitly left open by Sole.  (citation omitted)); id. at 1232 ( Sole explicitly declined to decide the question in [ Dahlem ]....). Consequently, Sole, like Buckhannon, leaves our holding in Dahlem undisturbed. Given that both Dahlem and Biodiversity stand as controlling precedent in this circuit, we must consider both cases when deciding whether a plaintiff who has secured a preliminary injunction qualifies as a prevailing party eligible for an award of attorney's fees under § 1988. Those cases, along with the relevant Supreme Court precedent, establish two overarching principles: First, and most fundamental, in order for a preliminary injunction to serve as the basis for prevailing-party status, the injunction must provide at least some relief on the merits of the plaintiff's claim(s). A preliminary injunction provides relief on the merits when it (a) affords relief sought in the plaintiff's complaint and (b) represents an unambiguous indication of probable success on the merits. By contrast, a preliminary injunction does not provide relief on the merits if the district court does not undertake a serious examination of the plaintiff's likelihood of success on the merits but nonetheless grants the preliminary injunction to preserve the status quo because the balance of equities favors the plaintiff. Second, if a preliminary injunction satisfies the relief-on-the-merits requirement, the plaintiff qualifies as a prevailing party even if events outside the control of the plaintiff moot the case. If, however, the preliminary injunction is undone by a subsequent adverse decision on the merits, the plaintiff's transient success in obtaining the injunction does not render the plaintiff a prevailing party. These principles must constitute the beginning point (and, perhaps in many cases, also the ending point) of the prevailing-party inquiry when a plaintiff relies on a preliminary injunction as the basis for an award of attorney's fees.