Court Opinion

ID: 9474429
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:57:02.568207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:04.752435
License: Public Domain

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I do not read the attorney’s fees provisions of the Voting Rights Act, their legislative history, or the cases interpreting them as narrowly as the majority does. In particular, I do not agree that compensable pre-clearance activity under the Act is limited to “services ... that [are] required and necessary to resolve the issues of [an] independent lawsuit.” Supra at 507 n. 1.
Participation in pre-clearance reviews may contribute to the advancement of litigation that indisputably gives rise to fee awards. The question is whether, because of its relation to prior litigation, the pre-clearance review in this case is an “action or proceeding” within the meaning of the Act, and whether appellant may be considered the “prevailing party.”
The government relies heavily on Gerena-Valentin v. Koch, 739 F.2d 755 (2d Cir.1984), in urging us to hold that pre-clearance reviews are never actions or proceedings and can therefore never give rise to fee awards. But in Gerena-Valentin the court stated merely that “The legislative history ... contains no suggestion that awards of attorney’s fees can be made for work solely in connection with preclearance reviews.” Id. at 760 (emphasis added).1 The court went on to note that “where the initiation of litigation is necessary to compel defendants to obtain pre-*513clearance before holding an election, lobbying efforts in a preclearance review might bring the litigation to a quick and successful end, a goal consistent with the statutory purpose_” Id. at 759. The Supreme Court has recently acknowledged that such activity may be compensable if it is “both useful and of a type ordinarily necessary to advance the civil rights litigation.” Webb v. Dyer County Board of Education, - U.S. -, 105 S.Ct. 1923, 1929, 85 L.Ed.2d 233 (1985).
This court has also recognized the importance of informal, administrative advocacy in advancing the ends of litigation under the Voting Rights Act. In Posada v. Lamb County, Texas, 716 F.2d 1066, 1071 (5th Cir.1983), we confirmed that “A ‘prevailing party’ is one whose ‘ends are accomplished as the result of the litigation even without formal judicial recognition’ ” (citing three 5th Circuit cases and one Supreme Court case).2 In the present case, moreover, the prevailing plaintiffs did have formal judicial recognition of their activities in the pre-clearance review process. As the majority concedes,
The plaintiffs ... filed an action under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1937c. They sought an injunction to prevent further elections under the 1975 plan and to order the county to develop a new plan_ MALDEF succeeded in enjoining further use of the 1975 plan in October 1979.... Because of the injunction, Jim Wells County then submitted three plans in succession to the Justice Department for preclear-ance_ In addition to submitting proposed plans, MALDEF undertook other activities in connection with the preclearance process, primarily lobbying with county and federal officials_ According to MALDEF, the suit for an injunction was not over because the district court retained jurisdiction and had a continuing obligation to secure compliance with the injunction.... [A]s MALDEF points out, the district court retained jurisdiction ... to insure compliance with the injunction....
Supra at 507, 508.
In order to recover attorney’s fees under the Voting Rights Act the prevailing party must show “a causal connection between the filing of the suit and the defendant’s action.” Williams v. Leatherbury, 672 F.2d 549, 551 (5th Cir.1982) (emphasis added). In Posada we provided the following gloss on the requisite causal connection:
Causal connection is established by evidence that the plaintiffs’ lawsuit was a “substantial factor or a significant catalyst in motivating the defendants to end their unconstitutional behavior”.... The plaintiffs do not have to prove that their efforts were the sole reason for the defendant’s rectifying actions. Some award is due so long as the plaintiffs’ actions made an important contribution to the improvements achieved.
Posada, 716 F.2d at 1072 (citing three 5th Circuit cases and one Supreme Court case) (emphasis added).
In sharp contradistinction to the authorities cited above, the district court in this case declined to award attorney’s fees because “there is no convincing tie-in between Plaintiffs’ complaints expressed in their comments to the Attorney General and his results.” Order Awarding Attorneys’ Fees, at 4 (emphasis added). As we acknowledged in Posada, plaintiffs must show that their work “had a substantial independent effect on the outcome of the preclearance review” and indeed “changed the result that the Attorney General would otherwise have reached.” 716 F.2d at 1075. But there is more than one way to change the Attorney General’s mind. The district court, and the majority opinion, fail to consider plaintiffs’ effects on the defendants in this case. The plaintiffs may have achieved some of the results they sought through the indirect route of influ*514encing the defendants to submit fairer redistricting plans. Although MALDEF pointed repeatedly to the striking similarity between the plan it advocated from the beginning and the plan eventually submitted by the county, the district court failed to make findings of fact on this issue.
Thus I would remand this case to the district court for a determination as to whether MALDEF achieved its objectives, at least in part, by persuading the county to submit an appropriate plan for approval. This is, as we noted in Posada, “an intensely factual, pragmatic” inquiry. 716 F.2d at 1072. But there can be little doubt that something of the sort described by MAL-DEF took place. As the majority concedes, “Because of the injunction, Jim Wells County ... submitted three plans in succession to the Justice Department for pre-clearance.” Supra at 507 (emphasis added). And the district court concludes that “Although Plaintiffs were not successful in all of their endeavors, they were successful in enforcing the rights of the Mexican-Americans to an undiluted vote.... ” Order Awarding Attorney’s Fees, at 8.3
The majority seems to acknowledge that Voting Rights Act plaintiffs can often obtain effective relief only by participating in preclearance submissions, but nevertheless denies that Congress intended for such plaintiffs to be compensated for attorney’s fees. I find that puzzling. If Congress intended the end, then Congress must be supposed to have intended the means to that end. McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 407-22, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819) (“It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, so far as human prudence could insure, their beneficial execution.”). And, in fact, Congress expressed its intentions in these matters quite well:
[I]n voting rights cases ... Congress depends heavily upon private citizens to enforce the fundamental rights involved. Fee awards are a necessary means of enabling private citizens to vindicate these Federal rights_ A party seeking to enforce the rights protected by the Constitutional clause or statute under which fees are authorized by these sections, if successful, “should ordinarily recover an attorney’s fee unless special circumstances would render such an award unjust.” Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 88 S.Ct. 964 [966], 390 U.S. 400, 402, 19 L.Ed. 1263 (1968).... Courts have been instructed, since the passage of our first civil rights laws, to use the broadest and most effective remedies available to achieve the goals of these laws, and these remedies have included awards of attorneys’ fees as costs.
S.Rep. No. 295, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. 40-42 (1975), reprinted in [1975] U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 774, 807-09.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.4

. See abo id. at 760 n. 2 (Congress did not contemplate fee awards for work done in administrative proceedings "unrelated to successful litigation ") (emphasis added).

. Cf. S.Rep. No. 295, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. 41 (1975), reprinted in [1975] U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 774, 808 ("for purposes of the award of counsel fees, parties may be considered to have prevailed when they vindicate rights through a consent judgment or without formally obtaining relief’).

. As the Supreme Court has recently admonished in a related context, "a plaintiff who has won substantial relief should not have his attorney’s fee reduced simply because the district court did not adopt each contention raised.... [T]he court’s rejection of or failure to reach certain grounds is not a sufficient reason for reducing a fee. The result is what matters." Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1943, 1940, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983) (emphasis added).

. I do, however, join in the discussion of costs and hourly rates contained in Part V of the court’s opinion.