Opinion ID: 485697
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: keokuk's attorney's fees

Text: 68 The only remaining issue on appeal arises from defendant Keokuk Community School District Board of Education's request for attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988. As the foregoing discussion reveals, plaintiffs utilized this case to challenge broad aspects of Iowa's compulsory school laws--a challenge very similar to that which the Iowa Supreme Court had rejected only three months before trial. Not only was the State of Iowa represented as a defendant in this litigation, however, but the Keokuk Community School District Board of Education was as well. 69 To be sure, the Keokuk District, like all local school districts, plays a role in implementing the state laws plaintiffs have challenged. The secretary sends out the reporting form which principals of private schools must fill out under Iowa Code Sec. 299.3, and the Board is responsible for reporting parents who violate Iowa Code Sec. 299.1 to the county attorney for possible truancy prosecution. The Keokuk Board also has the same interest as all other local school boards in the education of the children residing within its school district. 70 Only one of the plaintiff schools, the Calvary Baptist Christian Academy, is located in the Keokuk School District. The other school, the Central Iowa Christian Academy, is located in the Marshalltown School District. There is no evidence that the Keokuk Board had ever recommended for prosecution any parent whose child attended the Calvary Baptist Christian Academy. Unlike the Marshalltown School Board, however, the Keokuk Board had failed to agree that it would refrain from doing so. 71 Apparently based upon this failure, the district court denied Keokuk's motion to dismiss, and, at the end of the trial denied Keokuk's motion for attorney's fees, stating simply that [a]lthough the Keokuk Community School District was the prevailing party on the issues in which it was involved, the Court cannot hold that plaintiffs' position was so frivolous, unreasonable or groundless that the Keokuk Community School District is entitled to an award of attorney's fees. We believe the district court erred in this regard. 72 Section 1988 provides attorney's fees to a prevailing defendant upon a finding that the plaintiff's action was frivolous, unreasonable or without foundation. Buford v. Tremayne, 747 F.2d 445, 448 (8th Cir.1984); American Family Life Assurance Co. v. Teasdale, 733 F.2d 559, 569 (8th Cir.1984). See Eastway Construction Corp. v. City of New York, 762 F.2d 243, 252 (2d Cir.1985). In seeking to determine whether a suit is frivolous, unreasonable or groundless, courts have focused on several factors, including whether the issue is one of first impression requiring judicial resolution and whether the controversy is sufficiently based upon a real threat of injury to the plaintiff. Reichenberger v. Pritchard, 660 F.2d 280, 288 (7th Cir.1981). A suit which is meritoriously brought against some defendants may be frivolous or groundless as to others, and fees justified on this basis. Gerena-Valentin v. Koch, 739 F.2d 755, 761-62 (2d Cir.1984); Glass v. Pfeffer, 657 F.2d 252, 256-57 (10th Cir.1981); Waller v. Butkovich, 584 F.Supp. 909, 947 (M.D.N.C.1984). 73 In this case, plaintiffs and their counsel--who were also counsel for plaintiffs in the Charles City litigation--were aware that the arguments they presented to the district court did not present any issues of first impression, but in fact had been rejected by numerous courts. 10 Moreover, we fail to see the necessity of joining a local school district as a party when the gravamen of plaintiffs' complaint, the relief they requested, and all of the arguments they presented to the district court and to this Court on appeal are directed solely to actions of the State of Iowa. Plaintiffs' motivation in suing the Keokuk School Board can only be suggested by their failure to sue the Marshalltown School Board, or for that matter, either county attorney who would actually have been responsible for any charges brought against plaintiff parents under section 299.1. The expenses of trial were incurred only by the Keokuk School Board, which governs a small district of less than 20,000 people, apparently because plaintiffs sought to use their suit to coerce the Keokuk Board into agreeing to an informal accommodation of their religious views, such as they sought formally to obtain at trial. Plaintiffs nowhere rebut Keokuk's argument to this Court that Keokuk's failure to agree not to report parents of children attending plaintiffs' school to the county attorney was the only reason it was named as a defendant. 74 Litigation which presents only claims which have been previously rejected and which is brought against a party in no position to change the law short of an informal accommodation is, in our view, vexatious and unreasonable. Eastway Construction Corp. v. City of New York, supra, 762 F.2d at 252; Gerena-Valentin v. Koch, supra, 739 F.2d at 761-62. We find no relevant difference between the Keokuk School Board and the Marshalltown School Board, which the district court correctly determined was not an indispensable party, since the state adequately represented whatever interest either school district might have in the outcome of the litigation. Under all of these circumstances, we hold the district court erred in refusing to grant Keokuk's request for attorney's fees under section 1988, and we remand this issue to the court for a proper determination of the amount of such an award.