Opinion ID: 4020402
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Contempt request

Text: Approximately 130 hours (from ten attorneys) of the 532 hours spent on the motion to enjoin phase reference contempt. The district court denied the request to hold the Relators in contempt, instead giving the Relators a chance to comply with the injunction. Defendants therefore claimed that Plaintiffs’ request for contempt was premature. However, the district court agreed with Plaintiffs that seeking to hold the Relators in contempt was a reasonable alternative strategy, given the Relators’ “extraordinary actions in attempting to circumvent” the Decree, the short time frame, and Ohio Supreme Court proceeding. Sept. 29, 2014 Op., at 17-18. Nos. 14-4083/ 4084/ Northeast Ohio Coalition, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 32 4132/ 4133/ 15-3295/ 3296/ 3380/ 3381 Again, the district court’s factual determination is entitled to substantial deference, for good reason, because the district court was in the trenches of this litigation. Even if we thought the amounts were high, “the call was not initially delegated to us, and that makes all the difference.” Ohio ex rel. Skaggs v. Brunner, 629 F.3d 527, 532 (6th Cir. 2010). 10. Attempted Class Certification Counsel billed 115 hours for their attempt to certify a defendant class of all members of Ohio’s 88 Boards of Elections. Defendants assert that the time was unnecessary, because the SEIU Local 1 Plaintiffs voluntarily withdrew their certification attempt after the district court ruled that the Secretary has direct authority over Board members. See, e.g., Ohio Rev. Code § 3501.05(B). The district court held that although the motion was ultimately moot, given its conclusion that the county boards of elections are agents of the Secretary, Plaintiffs were not unreasonable in seeking to certify the class because one month earlier, in NEOCH, “the State legislators had argued that they were not bound by the Decree, and so could not be enjoined to comply with it.” Sept. 29, 2014 Op., at 16. Defendants claim that the district court’s holding rests on a confusing comparison of the county board members to the Relators who brought the Supreme Court mandamus action. However, as the district court explained, it was not unreasonable for Plaintiffs to seek a remedy that would apply statewide, given the Relators’ attempt the previous month to circumvent the Decree. Again, such work was of a sort that a reasonable attorney would have believed at the time was necessary to success. See Wooldridge, 898 F.2d at 1177. 11. NEOCH Motion to Modify Decree Lastly, Defendants complain that counsel should not have billed any hours, much less more than 300 hours, for the NEOCH motion to modify, which they claim was subsumed by the broader motion for preliminary injunction in SEIU Local 1. They point out that the NEOCH Plaintiffs filed their motion to modify on June 20, seeking to modify the Decree. The motion applied only to SSN-4 voters and was based on ongoing equal protection and substantive due process violations. Two days later, SEIU Local 1 Plaintiffs, represented by essentially the same Nos. 14-4083/ 4084/ Northeast Ohio Coalition, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 33 4132/ 4133/ 15-3295/ 3296/ 3380/ 3381 attorneys—ten of the twelve SEIU Local 1 attorneys were also NEOCH attorneys—filed a separate motion for a preliminary injunction. The SEIU Local 1 motion also rested on equal protection and substantive due process challenges to provisional ballot practices and sought the same injunctive relief. The district court recognized that the relief sought was overlapping, stating in its Plenary Opinion and Order that “the requested relief in the Motion to Modify is encompassed within the Plaintiffs’ proposed injunction in the Motion for Preliminary Injunction” and “the basis for relief in the Motion to Modify depends on the determination of the constitutional violations at issue in the SEIU case.” Aug. 27, 2012 Op., at 1. The NEOCH Plaintiffs admitted that the motions sought the same injunctive relief and requested that “these motions be heard together, so that the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of Ohio’s provisional ballot system may be adjudicated prior to the upcoming election.” Motion to Modify, NEOCH, 2:06-CV-896, at 5; ID# 6910. The district court found that the time spent pursuing a motion to modify the NEOCH Decree was reasonable, accepting Plaintiffs’ argument that the motion “was undertaken to prevent constitutional violations in the November 2012 implementation of the Decree that would have rendered it vulnerable to post-election attack and vacatur.” Sept. 29, 2014 Op., at 16-17 (internal quotations and citation omitted). Furthermore, the motion was not denied; the court’s ultimate order granted the same equitable relief requested by the motion to modify. Thus, the court found that the NEOCH Plaintiffs’ work was reasonably undertaken at the time performed. Id. at 17. The district court did not abuse its discretion. Modification of the Decree would have extended through 2013, whereas the SEIU Local 1 injunction only covered the November 2012 election. The motion to modify the Decree and the motion for a preliminary injunction arose in different cases, by different parties, in different procedural contexts. Furthermore, the NEOCH motion to modify involved distinct legal arguments regarding Rule 60, which was not at issue in the SEIU Local 1 preliminary injunction. As the district court noted, had Plaintiffs not moved for modification, the Decree would have been vulnerable to constitutional attack, since it provided protection for SSN-4 voters who cast wrong-precinct ballots due to poll-worker error Nos. 14-4083/ 4084/ Northeast Ohio Coalition, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 34 4132/ 4133/ 15-3295/ 3296/ 3380/ 3381 but not for others. Thus, that counsel sought overlapping relief for the 2012 election on behalf of their separate clients did not render the work in NEOCH unreasonable. 12. Recap Although Defendants vigorously and repeatedly tell us that requested hours are unreasonable, they never tell us how and why the hours were excessive except to say that they are “too high.” Other than aggregating numbers, Defendants have utterly failed to establish that the requested hours were unnecessary in the context of the litigation before the district court and this court and that counsel exercised poor billing judgment.11 In light of Plaintiffs’ detailed billing records and declarations, which provide a comprehensive picture of how the hours were spent, and the district court’s “concise but clear explanations,” Defendants have failed to show that the district court abused its discretion in awarding the requested hours. As detailed above, the record speaks for Plaintiffs. As the district court observed, “Plaintiffs’ victory in this case was . . . a substantial victory in a hugely complex case involving unsettled areas of both constitutional and procedural law.” Sept. 29, 2014 Op. at 26. In the course of just over six months, the NEOCH Plaintiffs defeated an effort to render the federal Decree void through state Supreme Court original proceedings; assembled “voluminous evidence” of poll-worker error causing voter disenfranchisement; defended the Decree against vacatur on appeal, including prevailing on both the Rule 60 standard and application of that standard to the Decree; and then, along with SEIU Local 1 Plaintiffs, obtained, and successfully defended on appeal, a major voting rights opinion from this court, a statewide injunction requiring state officials to count tens of thousands of ballots that would otherwise have been rejected in the then-imminent general election. That injunction was later converted to a permanent injunction. The SEIU Local 1 case involved complex and novel issues of equal protection and due process in the context of election administration. The Bush v. Gore equal 11 We find it curious, or perhaps not so, that Defendants did not attempt to establish unreasonableness by contrasting Plaintiffs’ hours with the time expended by their attorneys. In essence, Defendants are asking this court to cull through the records and conduct an atomized line-item review. But as stated throughout this opinion, the Supreme Court does not require district courts to conduct such an analysis and precludes us from micromanaging fee awards. Nos. 14-4083/ 4084/ Northeast Ohio Coalition, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 35 4132/ 4133/ 15-3295/ 3296/ 3380/ 3381 protection issues raised by the Decree itself were unprecedented and complex. Finally, the NEOCH Plaintiffs obtained an extension of the Decree through the end of the next Presidential cycle, until December 31, 2016. The district court not only had a front-row seat during these proceedings, but it actively participated by resolving the complex issues in this case in comprehensive written opinions produced on an expedited basis, with the aid of substantial expertise and effort from Plaintiffs’ counsel in the face of vigorous opposition by Defendants. The district court’s 31-page opinion explained the bases for its fee award as to the hours reasonably expended. That decision is entitled to substantial deference. We find no abuse of discretion. Given this conclusion, we need not address Defendants’ request for an across-the-board reduction.