Opinion ID: 199377
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the fact of the award

Text: 16 The Commonwealth's attack on the fact of the award hinges on its contention that the plaintiffs were not prevailing parties in the underlying litigation (and, thus, not entitled to recoup fees and expenses at all). The district court rejected this contention, and so do we. 17 Under the so-called American Rule, litigants generally pay their own way. Alyeska Pipeline Serv. Co. v. Wilderness Soc'y, 421 U.S. 240, 247 (1975). Sometimes, however, Congress provides otherwise. The Fees Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1988, constitutes such a proviso. In regard to cases brought under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, the Fees Act states in pertinent part that the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs. 42 U.S.C. §§ 1988(b). Although this fee-shifting provision is couched in permissive terminology, awards in favor of prevailing civil rights plaintiffs are virtually obligatory. See Stanton v. S. Berkshire Reg'l Sch. Dist., 197 F.3d 574, 576 (1st Cir. 1999) (explaining that the Supreme Court has interpreted section 1988 to require fees in favor of prevailing civil rights plaintiffs save for rare cases); Casa Marie Hogar Geriatrico, Inc. v. Rivera-Santos, 38 F.3d 615, 618 (1st Cir. 1994) (noting that prevailing civil rights plaintiffs are presumptively entitled to fee awards); see also Blanchard v. Bergeron, 489 U.S. 87, 89 n.1 (1989). The threshold question, then, is whether the plaintiffs are prevailing parties within the purview of the Fees Act. 18 Typically, achieving prevailing party status requires a plaintiff to show that he succeeded on an important issue in the case, thereby gaining at least some of the benefit he sought in bringing suit. Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 433 (1983); Nadeau v. Helgemoe, 581 F.2d 275, 278-79 (1st Cir. 1978). Put another way, a plaintiff 'prevails' when actual relief on the merits of his claim materially alters the legal relationship between the parties by modifying the defendant's behavior in a way that directly benefits the plaintiff. Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103, 111-12 (1992); accord Tex. State Teachers Ass'n v. Garland Indep. Sch. Dist., 489 U.S. 782, 791-92 (1989). 19 In this case, the plaintiffs prevailed in the sense that they secured declaratory and injunctive relief in their facial challenge to the constitutionality of Regulation 29. But obtaining equitable relief does not automatically confer prevailing party status for purposes of the Fees Act. See Tex. State Teachers, 489 U.S. at 792-93; Rhodes v. Stewart, 488 U.S. 1, 3-4 (1988) (per curiam). An inquiring court always must make a qualitative inquiry into the import of the relief obtained, and the Commonwealth posits that the relief obtained here was so trivial that the plaintiffs cannot be deemed prevailing parties. 20 Insofar as this argument attempts to bundle the plaintiffs' Regulation 29 claim with their other (generally unsuccessful) claims, it lacks force. [T]he degree of the plaintiff's success in relation to the other goals of the lawsuit is a factor critical to the determination of the size of a reasonable fee, not to eligibility for a fee award at all. Tex. State Teachers, 489 U.S. at 790 (emphasis omitted). Since the plaintiffs' effort to nullify Regulation 29 constituted a discrete claim within a larger case, our focus must not be on who won more claims, but on how the parties fared with respect to the Regulation 29 claim. If the plaintiffs' success on that discrete claim represented a meaningful victory, they are prevailing parties. Id. at 789-92; Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434-35. If, however, the plaintiffs' success on that claim was purely technical or de minimis, a court would be well within its rights to deny prevailing party status. Tex. State Teachers, 489 U.S. at 792 (dictum). Of itself, the moral satisfaction that results from any favorable statement of law cannot bestow prevailing party status. Farrar, 506 U.S. at 112 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). 21 Turning to this analysis, the Commonwealth asseverates that the plaintiffs are not prevailing parties with respect to their Regulation 29 claim because the regulation was an anachronism which the PRPD never enforced and, in fact, had intended to scrap long before the plaintiffs sought a judicial anodyne. This asseveration rests on the premise that winning an injunction against the enforcement of a moribund statute or regulation ordinarily is not enough to transform a plaintiff into a prevailing party. See id. We agree with that premise as an abstract statement of the law, but it has no application here for at least two reasons. 22 First, the PRPD never publicly repudiated the regulation before the plaintiffs challenged it, and the record contains evidence, credited by the district court, of its chilling effect on First Amendment rights. 3 Thus, even if the PRPD harbored an unexpressed intention not to enforce Regulation 29, neither gay officers nor gay civilians who wished to associate with police officers would have had any way to know of that intention. By convincing the court to strike the regulation down, therefore, the plaintiffs at the very least dispelled a pall that burdened associational rights. Cf. NAACP v. Ala. ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 461-62 (1958) (discussing government activity that unconstitutionally discouraged individuals or groups from exercising freedom of association). Viewed from that perspective, the plaintiffs' decision to litigate the validity of Regulation 29, and the results that they obtained in that endeavor, accomplished something worthwhile. 23 Second - and perhaps more salient - the record does not support the Commonwealth's self-serving protestation that, even before the plaintiffs sued, Regulation 29 was a dead letter. From the moment that the plaintiffs called the constitutionality of Regulation 29 into question, the Commonwealth vigorously defended it. Instead of disowning the regulation or announcing that it had outlived its usefulness, the Commonwealth stridently opposed the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment. When the court deemed the regulation unconstitutional, the Commonwealth did not acquiesce, but, rather, fought tooth and nail to reverse that decision. Even after the court declined to alter or amend the declaration of invalidity, the Commonwealth refused to abandon the regulation, preferring to tinker with its text in a benighted attempt to evade the thrust of the court's ruling. 24 It is trite, but true, that actions often speak louder than words. So it is here. The Commonwealth's course of conduct convincingly contradicts its current claim that Regulation 29 was an anachronism which the PRPD long had intended to rescind. 25 To sum up, the question of whether or not obtaining equitable relief is sufficiently meaningful to warrant prevailing party status is case-specific. In this instance, the record amply supports the district court's finding that Regulation 29 was extant when the plaintiffs took up the cudgels against it. Consequently, striking the regulation down achieved one of the plaintiffs' preeminent goals. 26 If more were needed - and we do not believe that it is - the Fees Act was intended to encourage citizens to vindicate rights that concern the public as a whole. See City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 574-75 (1986). This suit is a paradigmatic example of the kind of case that Congress had in mind when it enacted section 1988. See Aubin v. Fudala, 782 F.2d 287, 290-91 (1st Cir. 1986) (explaining that declaratory judgments can further the policies behind the Fees Act). The court's declaration that Regulation 29 was unconstitutional clearly benefitted both the plaintiffs and the public as a whole. Writing off the plaintiffs' victory as de minimis would ignore that reality. 27 We will not paint the lily. While many of the plaintiffs' other claims failed, the nisi prius court conclusively determined that Regulation 29 violated their First Amendment rights. That decision settled a significant issue whose resolution benefitted the plaintiffs and the public. Given this predicate, the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the plaintiffs were prevailing parties for purposes of the discrete Regulation 29 claim. A fee award therefore was due.