Opinion ID: 109919
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Court of Appeals Award

Text: Petitioners, as the losing litigants in the Court of Appeals, were ordered to pay an additional $2,500 to counsel for the prevailing parties for their services on this appeal. 548 F. 2d, at 743. The order does not expressly direct the Department of Correction to pay the award, but since petitioners are sued in their official capacities, and since they are represented by the Attorney General, it is obvious that the award will be paid with state funds. It is also clear that this order is not supported by any finding of bad faith. It is founded instead on the provisions of the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976. Pub. L. No. 94-559, 90 Stat. 2641, 42 U. S. C. § 1988 (1976 ed.). The Act declares that, in suits under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 and certain other statutes, federal courts may award prevailing parties reasonable attorney's fees as part of the costs. [21] As this Court made clear in Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U. S. 445, Congress has plenary power to set aside the States' immunity from retroactive relief in order to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. When it passed the Act, Congress undoubtedly intended to exercise that power and to authorize fee awards payable by the States when their officials are sued in their official capacities. The Act itself could not be broader. It applies to any action brought to enforce certain civil rights laws. It contains no hint of an exception for States defending injunction actions; indeed, the Act primarily applies to laws passed specifically to restrain state action. See, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 1983. The legislative history is equally plain: [I]t is intended that the attorneys' fees, like other items of costs, will be collected either directly from the official, in his official capacity, from funds of his agency or under his control, or from the State or local government (whether or not the agency or government is a named party). S. Rep. No. 94-1011, p. 5 (1976) (footnotes omitted). The House Report is in accord: The greater resources available to governments provide an ample base from which fees can be awarded to the prevailing plaintiff in suits against governmental officials or entities. H. R. Rep. No. 94-1558, p. 7 (1976). The Report adds in a footnote that: Of course, the 11th Amendment is not a bar to the awarding of counsel fees against state governments. Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer. Id., at 7 n. 14. Congress' intent was expressed in deeds as well as words. It rejected at least two attempts to amend the Act and immunize state and local governments from awards. [22] The Attorney General does not quarrel with the rule established in Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, supra . Rather, he argues that these plain indications of legislative intent are not enough. In his view, Congress must enact express statutory language making the States liable if it wishes to abrogate their immunity. [23] The Attorney General points out that this Court has sometimes refused to impose retroactive liability on the States in the absence of an extraordinarily explicit statutory mandate. See Employees v. Missouri Public Health & Welfare Dept., 411 U. S. 279; see also Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651. But these cases concern retroactive liability for prelitigation conduct rather than expenses incurred in litigation seeking only prospective relief. The Act imposes attorney's fees as part of the costs. Costs have traditionally been awarded without regard for the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity. The practice of awarding costs against the States goes back to 1849 in this Court. See Missouri v. Iowa, 7 How. 660, 681; North Dakota v. Minnesota, 263 U. S. 583 (collecting cases). The Court has never viewed the Eleventh Amendment as barring such awards, even in suits between States and individual litigants. [24] In Fairmont Creamery Co. v. Minnesota, 275 U. S. 70, the State challenged this Court's award of costs, but we squarely rejected the State's claim of immunity. Far from requiring an explicit abrogation of state immunity, we relied on a statutory mandate that was entirely silent on the question of state liability. [25] The power to make the award was supported by the inherent authority of the Court in the orderly administration of justice as between all parties litigant. Id., at 74. A federal court's interest in orderly, expeditious proceedings justifies [it] in treating the state just as any other litigant and in imposing costs upon it when an award is called for. Id., at 77. [26] Just as a federal court may treat a State like any other litigant when it assesses costs, so also may Congress amend its definition of taxable costs and have the amended class of costs apply to the States, as it does to all other litigants, without expressly stating that it intends to abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity. For it would be absurd to require an express reference to state litigants whenever a filing fee, or a new item, such as an expert witness' fee, is added to the category of taxable costs. [27] There is ample precedent for Congress' decision to authorize an award of attorney's fees as an item of costs. In England, costs as between solicitor and client, Sprague v. Ticonic Nat. Bank, 307 U. S. 161, 167, are routinely taxed today, and have been awarded since 1278. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U. S. 240, 247 n. 18. In America, although fees are not routinely awarded, there are a large number of statutory and common-law situations in which allowable costs include counsel fees. [28] Indeed, the federal statutory definition of costs, which was enacted before the Civil War and which remains in effect today, includes certain fixed attorney's fees as recoverable costs. [29] In Fairmont Creamery itself, the Court awarded these statutory attorney's fees against the State of Minnesota along with other taxable costs, [30] even though the governing statute said nothing about state liability. It is much too late to single out attorney's fees as the one kind of litigation cost whose recovery may not be authorized by Congress without an express statutory waiver of the States' immunity. [31] Finally, the Attorney General argues that, even if attorney's fees may be awarded against a State, they should not be awarded in this case, because neither the State nor the Department is expressly named as a defendant. Although the Eleventh Amendment prevented respondents from suing the State by name, their injunctive suit against prison officials was, for all practical purposes, brought against the State. The actions of the Attorney General himself show that. His office has defended this action since it began. See Holt I, 300 F. Supp., at 826. The State apparently paid earlier fee awards; and it was the State's lawyers who decided to bring this appeal, thereby risking another award. [32] Like the Attorney General, Congress recognized that suits brought against individual officers for injunctive relief are for all practical purposes suits against the State itself. The legislative history makes it clear that in such suits attorney's fee awards should generally be obtained either directly from the official, in his official capacity, from funds of his agency or under his control, or from the State or local government (whether or not the agency or government is a named party). S. Rep. No. 94-1011, p. 5 (1976). Awards against the official in his individual capacity, in contrast, were not to be affected by the statute; in injunctive suits they would continue to be awarded only under the traditional bad faith standard recognized by the Supreme Court in Alyeska. Id., at 5 n. 7. There is no indication in this case that the named defendants litigated in bad faith before the Court of Appeals. Consequently, the Department of Correction is the entity intended by Congress to bear the burden of the counsel-fees award. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is accordingly affirmed. It is so ordered.