Opinion ID: 2768865
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: VSU and Morgan (Counseling Center Director)

Text: Barnes’s brief does not specifically challenge the district court’s ruling that his claims against Morgan and VSU were frivolous. Thus, Barnes has abandoned any challenge to the judgment awarding those attorney’s fees. See Timson v. Sampson, 518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008). Nonetheless, because the district court awarded the attorney’s fees in a lump sum to VSU, Keppler, Mast, and Morgan, and did not distinguish the amount of attorney’s fees awarded as to each Defendant, we must remand to allow the district court to recalculate the attorney’s fees award to reflect only “reasonable attorney’s fees incurred because of, but only because of, frivolous claim[s]” against Morgan and VSU. Fox, 131 S. Ct. at 2215. In sum, because there was evidence showing that each of the first four Defendants took part in the decision to withdraw Barnes, the district court erred in finding that the claims were frivolous. Compare Richardson v. Bay Dist. Sch., 560 F. App’x 928, 930 (11th Cir. 2014) (explaining that “[j]ust because this evidence 35 Case: 13-13800 Date Filed: 01/12/2015 Page: 36 of 36 was ultimately not enough to create a jury question with respect to discrimination on the basis of gender discrimination does not make [the plaintiff’s] claim frivolous”), with Cazares, 638 F.2d at 1290 (upholding award of attorney’s fees because “there was no material, admissible evidence to support [the plaintiff’s] civil rights claim”). We therefore hold that the district court abused its discretion in ruling that Barnes’s claims against McMillan, Keppler, Mast, and Gaskins were frivolous, and we reverse the court’s judgment awarding attorney’s fees to those Defendants. With respect to the fees awarded to Morgan and VSU, we vacate the judgment awarding those fees and remand to allow the district court to recalculate the attorney’s fees award to reflect only the attorney’s fees incurred because of the frivolous claims against Morgan and VSU.