Opinion ID: 109919
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The District Court Award

Text: Although the Attorney General argues that the finding of bad faith does not overcome the State's Eleventh Amendment protection, he does not question the accuracy of the finding made by the District Court and approved by the Court of Appeals. [13] Nor does he question the settled rule that a losing litigant's bad faith may justify an allowance of fees to the prevailing party. [14] He merely argues that the order requiring that the fees be paid from public funds violates the Eleventh Amendment. In the landmark decision in Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123, the Court held that, although prohibited from giving orders directly to a State, federal courts could enjoin state officials in their official capacities. And in Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, when the Court held that the Amendment grants the States an immunity from retroactive monetary relief, it reaffirmed the principle that state officers are not immune from prospective injunctive relief. Aware that the difference between retroactive and prospective relief will not in many instances be that between day and night, id., at 667, the Court emphasized in Edelman that the distinction did not immunize the States from their obligation to obey costly federal-court orders. The cost of compliance is ancillary to the prospective order enforcing federal law. Id., at 668. [15] The line between retroactive and prospective relief cannot be so rigid that it defeats the effective enforcement of prospective relief. The present case requires application of that principle. In exercising their prospective powers under Ex parte Young and Edelman v. Jordan , federal courts are not reduced to issuing injunctions against state officers and hoping for compliance. Once issued, an injunction may be enforced. Many of the court's most effective enforcement weapons involve financial penalties. A criminal contempt prosecution for resistance to [the court's] lawful . . . order may result in a jail term or a fine. 18 U. S. C. § 401 (1976 ed.). Civil contempt proceedings may yield a conditional jail term or fine. United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 305. Civil contempt may also be punished by a remedial fine, which compensates the party who won the injunction for the effects of his opponent's noncompliance. Id., at 304; Gompers v. Bucks Stove & Range Co., 221 U. S. 418. If a state agency refuses to adhere to a court order, a financial penalty may be the most effective means of insuring compliance. The principles of federalism that inform Eleventh Amendment doctrine surely do not require federal courts to enforce their decrees only by sending high state officials to jail. [16] The less intrusive power to impose a fine is properly treated as ancillary to the federal court's power to impose injunctive relief. In this case, the award of attorney's fees for bad faith served the same purpose as a remedial fine imposed for civil contempt. It vindicated the District Court's authority over a recalcitrant litigant. Compensation was not the sole motive for the award; in setting the amount of the fee, the court said that it would make no effort to adequately compensate counsel for the work that they have done or for the time that they have spent on the case. 410 F. Supp., at 285. The court did allow a substantial fee, however, because the allowance thereof may incline the Department to act in such a manner that further protracted litigation about the prisons will not be necessary. Ibid. [17] We see no reason to distinguish this award from any other penalty imposed to enforce a prospective injunction. [18] Hence the substantive protections of the Eleventh Amendment do not prevent an award of attorney's fees against the Department's officers in their official capacities. Instead of assessing the award against the defendants in their official capacities, the District Court directed that the fees are to be paid out of Department of Correction funds. Ibid. Although the Attorney General objects to the form of the order, [19] no useful purpose would be served by requiring that it be recast in different language. We have previously approved directives that were comparable in their actual impact on the State without pausing to attach significance to the language used by the District Court. [20] Even if it might have been better form to omit the reference to the Department of Correction, the use of that language is surely not reversible error.