Court Opinion

ID: 9430005
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:35.404467+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:38.529165
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Blackmun joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The Court concludes today that attorney’s fees for work in optional state administrative proceedings are not “automatically” awardable to a prevailing civil rights litigant under 42 U. S. C. § 1988, but that fees may be awarded for a “discrete *245portion” of such work to the extent that it was “useful and of a type ordinarily necessary” to the successful outcome of the subsequent litigation. Ante, at 241, 243. I agree with these conclusions but write separately on two counts. First, it is important in light of the American Rule and the confusion among lower courts that we identify with precision the reason why such awards ever may be authorized pursuant to § 1988.1 Second, I disagree with the Court’s conclusion that the petitioner in this case presented insufficient evidence to justify a District Court award of fees for a “discrete portion” of his work at the state level. The District Court did not consider the evidentiary merits of this issue, holding instead as a matter of law that § 1988 bars prevailing plaintiffs from recovering fees for work in optional administrative proceedings. App. to Pet. for Cert. 40a. Because the Court rejects this reasoning, the judgment below should be reversed and the case should be remanded for consideration whether and to what extent Webb is entitled to additional fees under the standards announced today.
M
A
Although the Court decides that prevailing civil rights litigants may recover fees for “discrete” work in optional administrative proceedings, it does not seek to refute the arguments advanced by the respondents and the courts below that the language and policies of § 1988 affirmatively bar awards of such fees. The question of § 1988’s intended breadth arises in a variety of contexts, and lower courts have divided over the proper analysis to apply in considering fee requests for work beyond the four corners of civil rights *246litigation. See ante, at 239, n. 11. I believe that § 1988 should be viewed as prescribing two threshold requirements for recovery of fees for work in a proceeding collateral to a successful civil rights action: first, the collateral proceeding must have been an “action or proceeding” within the meaning of § 1988; and second, the work in the collateral proceeding must have demonstrably contributed “to enforce[ment of] a provision” of the civil rights laws.2 The proper application of this analytic framework supports the Court’s conclusion that § 1988 authorizes limited awards of fees for work performed in optional state administrative proceedings.
With respect to the first requirement, our decision in New York Gaslight Club, Inc. v. Carey, 447 U. S. 54 (1980), compels the conclusion that a state administrative hearing may be a “proceeding” within the meaning of § 1988. We held in Carey that state administrative proceedings fall within the definition of an “action or proceeding” as that phrase is used in the Title VII fee provision, § 706(k) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 261, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5(k). 447 U. S., at 61-66. We reasoned there that “[i]t cannot be assumed that the words ‘or proceeding’. . . are mere surplusage,” and that “Congress’ use of the broadly inclusive disjunctive phrase ‘action or proceeding’” demonstrated an intent to permit fees for work beyond the litigation itself. Id., at 61. This reasoning applies squarely to § 1988, which employs precisely the same phraseology as the Title VII fee provision. The relevant Committee Reports emphasize Congress’ intent to pattern § 1988 after the Title VII fee provision,3 and they *247include citations to Title VII cases in which fees were awarded for work in administrative proceedings.4 The respondents argue that §1988’s use of the phrase “or proceeding” could have been intended merely to refer to certain federal-court matters that are not technically “actions,” such as bankruptcy proceedings. Brief for Respondents 11. This argument presumably could be made about the Title VII fee provision as well; in either case, such a parsimonious construction would not accord with Congress’ general intent for “the courts to use the broadest and most effective remedies available to achieve the goals of our civil rights laws.” S. Rep. No. 94-1011, p. 3 (1976).
As the Court emphasizes today, there is an important distinction between Title VII cases and § 1983 cases that is relevant to the extent to which fees for collateral proceedings may be authorized: Title VII is governed by an administrative exhaustion requirement, while § 1983 generally is not. Ante, at 240-241; see also Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S. 992, 1011, n. 14 (1984).5 The issue of exhaustion does not bear on the definition of the phrase “action or proceeding,” however, *248but cuts instead to § 1988’s second threshold requirement: fees may be awarded only if the action or proceeding was pursued “to enforce a provision” of the civil rights laws. See n. 2, supra. Where Congress requires resort to administrative remedies as a predicate to invoking judicial remedies, the administrative remedies obviously are integral “to enforce[ment of] a provision” of the civil rights laws. That is precisely the point of Carey. See 447 U. S., at 63, 65.
Although §1983 generally does not require exhaustion of state remedies, prevailing litigants nevertheless may be able to demonstrate that ancillary state proceedings played a critical role in “enforcing] a provision” of the civil rights laws. For example, courts sometimes choose to make ancillary proceedings a part of the civil rights litigation. Federal courts occasionally have exercised their discretion to abstain and have required litigants to clarify state-law issues in state forums before proceeding with the federal actions.6 Similarly, resort to state administrative proceedings might be necessary in developing and implementing a remedial plan to comply with a federal court’s injunction in a complex civil rights case.7 Reliance on these collateral proceedings may frequently accord with Congress’ general intent for courts to “ ‘use that combination of Federal law, common law and State law as will be best adapted to the object of the civil rights laws.’” S. Rep. No. 94-1011, at 3, n. 1. Where a court incorporates such proceedings as part of the adjudicatory or remedial scheme, surely they function demonstrably “to enforce a provision” of the civil rights laws within the meaning of § 1988. If we adopted the respondents’ definition of the term “or proceeding,” however, and concluded that the term *249includes only bankruptcy and certain other federal-court cases not technically “actions” and normally touching only tangentially on civil rights, such reliance on ancillary state proceedings would be severely undermined. As the Ninth Circuit reasoned in Bartholomew v. Watson, 665 F. 2d 910, 913 (1982), a case holding that fees incurred in state court pursuant to Pullman abstention are recoverable under § 1988, a contrary rule “would encourage forum shopping and interfere with efficient allocation of issues and cases between the state and federal systems.”8 The legislative history of § 1988 cannot be read as supporting such an anomolous result.
Where the decision to pursue administrative proceedings rests solely with the plaintiff, it cannot be presumed that the proceedings are integrally related to the enforcement of federal civil rights. As the Court observes, school board hearings should not “automatically” be viewed as part of the § 1983 remedial scheme. Ante, at 241. Nothing in the logic of Carey, Smith, or our other cases, however, compels the contrary conclusion that all fees for such proceedings “automatically” be excluded. Once it is recognized that state administrative proceedings may fall within the rubric “action or proceeding” in appropriate circumstances, courts must strike a necessarily uneasy balance between two arguably conflicting considerations. On the one hand, Congress clearly intended to enable civil rights litigants to proceed expeditiously to court, and time spent in optional state proceedings may therefore frequently be unnecessary to vindication of civil rights claims. On the other hand, if a successful litigant can demonstrate that the fruits of an antecedent *250administrative proceeding contributed directly to the successful outcome in federal court and obviated the need for comparable work in the federal action, there is nothing in the language or policies of § 1988 that would justify penalizing him for not having gone straight into court. A contrary rule would provide an unwise incentive for every potential litigant to commence a federal action at the earliest possible moment in order to steer himself into § 1988’s safe harbor.
There is certainly nothing in § 1988 that limits fee awards to work performed after the complaint is filed in court. For example, it is settled that a prevailing party may recover fees for time spent before the formal commencement of the litigation on such matters as attorney-client interviews, investigation of the facts of the case, research on the viability of potential legal claims, drafting of the complaint and accompanying documents, and preparation for dealing with expected preliminary motions and discovery requests. 2 M. Derfner & A. Wolf, Court Awarded Attorney Fees ¶ 16.02[2][b], p. 16-15 (1984). This time is “reasonably expended on the litigation,” Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U. S. 424, 433 (1983), in part because careful prefiling investigation of the facts and law is required by the ethical rules of our profession,9 the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,10 and the realities of civil rights litigation.11 This sort of preparatory *251work, along with discovery that typically occurs after litigation commences, may often be accomplished in the course of administrative proceedings that precede litigation. Taking testimony at an administrative hearing may reduce or eliminate the need for interviewing and deposing witnesses later after suit is filed, and negotiation with administrative officials may narrow disputes and sharpen issues in the very same way as settlement discussions held after the litigation begins. Once it is decided that any time spent before the filing of a complaint is compensable, there is no reason to draw artificial distinctions based on whether the time was spent preparing directly for the litigation or instead in an administrative proceeding that contributed and led directly to litigation.12
*250“Litigating a civil rights claim requires considerable preparation. An injured person must recognize the constitutional dimensions of his in-
*251A rule requiring potential plaintiffs absolutely to bypass administrative proceedings if they wished to become eligible for attorney’s fees would create skewed incentives that Con*252gress could not possibly have intended. The Committee Reports to § 1988 emphasize that plaintiffs should not be denied fees for work that enables them to prevail short of full-blown litigation of their federal claims and that thereby “help[s] to lessen docket congestion.”13 It is at least debatable whether administrative proceedings may sometimes offer a swifter and cheaper means of sharpening issues and discovering relevant evidence than litigation in. federal court. Moreover, although notions of comity properly have not led Congress or the courts to impose an exhaustion requirement, surely it can be conceded that prior administrative proceedings may sometimes enhance federal-court resolution of civil rights disputes.14 Unless we are willing to conclude that Congress not only intended not to require reliance on state administrative proceedings, but positively to discourage resort to such proceedings in all circumstances in the § 1983 context, reasonable standards for limited recovery of fees should be fashioned.15
*253B
This analysis leads me to concur with the Court’s conclusion that fees may be recovered for administrative work that is “useful and of a type ordinarily necessary” to successful civil rights litigation. Ante, at 243. A standard for determining what is useful and necessary should encompass three factors. First, a court must conclude that the claimed portions of administrative work were independently reasonable.16 Second, the court must find that the administrative work, or some “discrete” portion of it, ibid., significantly contributed to the success of the federal-court outcome and eliminated the need for work that otherwise would have been required in connection with the litigation.17 Finally, fees should be awarded only to the extent that the administrative work was equally or more cost-effective than the comparable work that would have been required during the course of liti*254gation. A 1-day administrative hearing eliciting testimony that eliminates the need for three days of depositions is something to be encouraged and rewarded, but if instead that hearing took three days and produced the same information as could have been obtained during one day of depositions, the claimant should not recover for more than the one day it would have taken to conduct the depositions. In these as in all § 1988 matters, the district court must have a broad “zone of discretion” in resolving disputes. Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U. S., at 442 (Brennan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Mathematical precision is impossible, and it should be enough if the court “has articulated a fair explanation” for its award after reviewing the request and the supporting documentation and applying its own experience and common sense. Id., at 455.
HH hH
The District Court in this case held as a matter of law that § 1988 bars recovery of all fees associated with optional state administrative proceedings. App. to Pet. for Cert. 33a-40a. Today the Court rejects such an absolute prohibition and holds instead that fees may be awarded in the informed discretion of a district court if the work was “useful” and substituted for work at the judicial stage that would have been “ordinarily necessary” to a successful outcome. Ante, at 243. I believe this conclusion requires a reversal and remand so that the District Court may apply the correct legal rule and exercise its informed discretion regarding Webb’s possible entitlement to additional fees.
Webb’s fee application and supporting evidence amply establish a prima facie entitlement to fees for at least some portion of the administrative work under the standards discussed above. First, Webb’s application specified in detail the work performed in the course of the administrative proceedings, and along with the supporting affidavits and testimony would enable the District Court to make an informed *255decision regarding the independent reasonableness of this work.
Second, Webb made a strong showing that the fruits of the administrative proceedings eliminated the need for extensive discovery after the complaint was filed and significantly contributed to the settlement of the federal litigation. During the Board proceedings, Webb’s attorney was able to elicit substantial testimony from administrators, teachers, and students supporting Webb’s allegation that he had been fired from his teaching job for racially discriminatory reasons.18 With this record in hand, Webb’s counsel had to devote virtually no time to discovery after litigation commenced. After motions to dismiss and for summary judgment were filed against Webb, he sought to meet his burden of “set[ting] forth specific facts showing that there [was] a genuine issue for trial,” Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56(e), by filing a transcript of the administrative hearings along with a supporting brief in opposition. Thereafter, the parties reached a full settlement while the motions were under advisement and several weeks *256before trial was scheduled to commence. As several experienced civil rights attorneys testified at the fee hearing, a “substantial part” of the administrative work therefore appears to have obviated the need for Webb to rely on interrogatories, depositions, extensive affidavits, and other discovery devices that unquestionably would have been com-pensable under §1988.19 The testimony elicited by Webb’s counsel during the administrative proceedings presumptively contributed to the settlement; as a matter of common sense, a defendant is not likely to settle a case prior to a ruling on its motion for summary judgment and only weeks before the scheduled commencement of trial if the plaintiff has not developed and presented a credible case.20
*257Finally, with the information about counsel’s services and the administrative transcripts before it, and given its general familiarity with federal discovery practices, the District Court would be able to exercise its sound discretion in determining whether and to what extent the fruits of the administrative work could have been obtained more expeditiously through standard discovery and to adjust any award accordingly.
At the very least, Webb would therefore appear to have established a prima facie entitlement to fees for the “discrete” portion of his counsel’s work relating to the Board hearings that were transcribed and relied upon in litigating and settling this action. Notwithstanding this showing, the Court today affirms the denial of all fees associated with the administrative proceedings. The Court reasons that “[t]he question argued below was whether the time spent on the administrative work. .. should be included in its entirety or excluded in its entirety.” Ante, at 243. I agree that the respondents consistently have argued that this time should be “excluded in its entirety” and that the courts below accepted this proposition as a matter of law, but I have been unable to find anything in the record suggesting that Webb himself argued for such an all-or-nothing resolution. Similarly, the Court chastises Webb for his failure to make a “suggestion below that any discrete portion of the work product from the administrative proceedings was work that was both useful and of a type ordinarily necessary to advance the civil rights litigation to the stage it reached before settlement.” Ibid. Webb’s counsel, however, submitted an affidavit detailing his services and presented substantial testimony that the administrative work in its entirety was “useful” and “necessary” to the outcome of the litigation, and I fail to see how this case differs from any in which a district court is required *258to exercise its discretion in sorting out the useful from the superfluous, the necessary from the unnecessary, and the reasonable from the unreasonable. It is precisely because this sorting process is required that evaluation of fee petitions is committed to the sound discretion of the district courts.21 Many meritorious fee petitions contain requests for time or rates that the district court may decide are excessive, and it is up to the court to make appropriate adjustments. Surely the submission of a good-faith petition requiring downward adjustment does not bar all recovery on the grounds that the claimant did not include a hierarchy of “next-best” requests or presumptively desired no recovery if he could not receive his petitioned amount “in its entirety.”22
*259The Court reasons, however, that “the district court’s consideration of a fee petition ‘should not result in a second major .litigation,’” ante, at 244, n. 20, quoting Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U. S., at 437, and it concludes that the District Court’s decision in this case “was well within the range of reasonable discretion,” ante, at 244. With all respect, the Court’s reasoning escapes me. I have previously argued that the district courts should enjoy a broad “zone of discretion” in awarding fees and that appellate deference accordingly should approach its zenith in this context. Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U. S., at 442 (concurring in part and dissenting in part). Such deference is appropriate, however, only where “a district court has articulated a fair explanation for its fee award in a given case.” Id., at 455. Here the District Court denied all fees for the administrative work solely on the premise that such awards are forbidden as a matter of law. App. to Pet. for Cert. 40a. Today the Court has rejected this reasoning, concluding instead that claimants are not barred from such recovery as a matter of law and that they may recover appropriate fees pursuant to the standards freshly coined in the Court’s opinion. I would have thought the logical conclusion would be that the District Court could not have properly exercised its discretion given that it proceeded on an erroneous legal premise. It is not our mission to exercise the district courts’ discretion for them or to conduct de novo evaluation of fee petitions; these are matters appropriately left to remand. See Hensley v. Eckerhart, supra, at 437 (remanding for application of proper *260standards) (discretion “appropriately]” lies in district court “in view of district court’s superior understanding of the litigation”). Where a civil rights litigant has successfully persuaded this Court to grant certiorari to resolve an important and unsettled issue of § 1988 fees entitlement, convinced us that the sole ground relied on by the courts below was erroneous, and submitted a fee request that may justify a further award by the District Court in the proper exercise of its discretion, I am at a loss why the Court should refuse to remand out of “deference” to the District Court’s errors or a desire to discourage further litigation however meritorious the claim for fees may be.23 Such legerdemain squares neither with the legislative policies behind § 198824 nor with the policies of fairness that undergird our legal system.

 This Court repeatedly has held that, with several narrow exceptions, the American Rule bars recovery of attorney’s fees in the absence of an express statutory authorization. See, e. g., Summit Valley Industries, Inc. v. Carpenters, 456 U. S. 717, 721 (1982); Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U. S. 240, 247 (1975).

 Section 1988 provides in relevant part that “[i]n any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of §§ 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985 and 1986 of this title, title IX of Public Law 92-318, or title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 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.”

 See, e. g., S. Rep. No. 94-1011, pp. 4, 6 (1976) (Title VII cases provide “appropriate standards” for applying § 1988); H. R. Rep. No. 94-1558, p. 8 (1976). See also New York Gaslight Club, Inc. v. Carey, 447 U. S. 54, 70, n. 9 (1980).

 In emphasizing that the phrase “prevailing party” was “not intended to be limited to the victor only after entry of a final judgment following a full trial on the merits,” for example, the House Report cited approvingly to Parker v. Matthews, 411 F. Supp. 1059 (DC 1976), aff’d sub nom. Parker v. Califano, 182 U. S. App. D. C. 322, 561 F. 2d 320 (1977). See H. R. Rep. No. 94-1558, at 7. The plaintiff in Parker had unsuccessfully pursued her administrative remedies before filing an action in federal court. Shortly after the complaint was filed, the agency reversed itself and the case was settled. The District Court awarded fees for both the administrative and court proceedings. 411 F. Supp., at 1065-1066.

 See generally Patsy v. Florida Board of Regents, 457 U. S. 496 (1982). Exceptions include a limited exhaustion requirement for adult prisoners that may be imposed at the discretion of the court, see 42 U. S. C. § 1997e; Patsy v. Florida Board of Regents, supra, at 507-512, and the rule that defendants in civil or administrative enforcement proceedings generally may not avoid those proceedings by filing a § 1983 action in federal court, see, e. g., Trainor v. Hernandez, 431 U. S. 434 (1977); Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U. S. 592 (1975).

 See, e. g., Harrison v. NAACP, 360 U. S. 167 (1969); Bartholomew v. Watson, 665 F. 2d 910 (CA9 1982); Neal v. Brim, 506 F. 2d 6, 9-11 (CA5 1975); Blouin v. Dembitz, 489 F. 2d 488, 491-492 (CA2 1973).

 See, e. g., Bond v. Stanton, 630 F. 2d 1231, 1233 (CA7 1980) (participation in state agency’s development of remedial plan); Northcross v. Board of Education, 611 F. 2d 624, 637 (CA6 1979), cert. denied, 447 U. S. 911 (1980).

 The court in Bartholomew also observed that under the contrary rule “[p]laintiffs seeking relief under section 1983 would be compelled to oppose any move from federal court, despite the fact that an initial determination of certain matters by the state court might simplify or even moot the federal action because of the loss of the right to claim attorney’s fees under section 1988. A plaintiff’s attorney would be penalized if some of his client’s section 1983 claims were disposed of in a state forum. The ability to obtain counsel would therefore suffer.” 665 F. 2d, at 913.

 See, e. g., ABA Model Code of Professional Responsibility EC 7-4, EC 7-25, DR 7-102(A), DR 2-109(A) (1980); ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 3.1 (1983).

 See, e. g., Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 11 (attorney’s signature constitutes a certification that the “pleading, motion, or other paper” is “well grounded in fact and is warranted by existing law or a good faith argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law”). See also Advisory Committee Note to Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 11, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 723 (1982 ed., Supp. I). Cf. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 27 (mechanism for deposing witnesses prior to initiation of action).

 In Burnett v. Grattan, 468 U. S. 42, 50-51 (1984), we recently observed: *251jury. He must obtain counsel or prepare to proceed pro se. He must conduct enough investigation to draft pleadings that meet the requirements of federal rules .... At the same time, the litigant must look ahead to the responsibilities that immediately follow filing of a complaint. He must be prepared to withstand various responses, such as a motion to dismiss, as well as to undertake additional discovery.”

 See, e. g., Ciechon v. Chicago, 686 F. 2d 511, 525 (CA7 1982) (sustaining award of fees for administrative work because “[t]he interest served by encouraging vigorous representation at an administrative proceeding” in the § 1983 context “is the same interest as that.. . . in the Title VII scheme of enforcement”); Brown v. Bathke, 588 F. 2d 634, 638 (CA8 1978) (“The awarding of attorney’s fees to a prevailing party in a civil rights action for work done in other proceedings lies in the sound discretion of the federal district court”; partial award sustained). Cf. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. EPA, 703 F. 2d 700, 713 (CA3 1983) (interpreting Equal Access to Justice Act as permitting recovery of fees incurred in obtaining information through the Freedom of Information Act even though “that route to information is not conventional discovery”; FOIA work “may well have been more expeditious than conventional discovery”); Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal, Inc., 670 F. 2d 760, 767 (CA7 1982) (awarding fees for administrative proceeding not required by Title VII, because proceeding “contributed to the ultimate termination of the Title VII action”), cert. denied, 461 U. S. 956 (1983).

 H. R. Rep. No. 94-1558, at 7 (“A ‘prevailing’ party should not be penalized for seeking an out-of-court settlement, thus helping to lessen docket congestion”). See also id., at 4, n. 7 (if constitutional claim is substantial and arises out of “common nucleus of operative fact” with noncon-stitutional claims, courts may award fees even though relief is obtained solely on nonconstitutional grounds); S. Rep. No. 94-1011, at 5 (“[P]arties may be considered to have prevailed when they vindicate rights through a consent judgment or without formally obtaining relief”).

 See generally Patsy v. Florida Board of Regents, 457 U. S., at 513 (“[T]he relevant policy considerations do not invariably point in one direction, and there is vehement disagreement over the validity of the assumptions underlying many of them”); id., at 516-517 (O’CONNOR, J., concurring); id., at 517-518 (White, J., concurring in part); id., at 519, 532-536 (Powell, J., dissenting).

 Carey supports rather than detracts from this analysis. Under Title VII, complainants may commence actions in federal court 240 days after they initiate state proceedings. A strict construction of the statute would suggest that fees be awarded only for the first 240 days of a state proceeding, for after that there is nothing preventing a suit in federal court. As we noted in Carey, however, “[i]t is doubtful that the systems of many *253States could provide complete relief within 240 days,” 447 U. S., at 66, n. 6; the state proceedings in that ease, for example, took three years. We nevertheless held that fees were properly awarded past the point of exhaustion, noting that “[t]he existence of an incentive to get into federal court, such as the availability of a fee award, would ensure that almost all Title VII complainants would abandon state proceedings as soon as possible.” Ibid. This sort of pragmatic approach should govern our analysis where civil rights plaintiffs have not been required to resort to state procedures for any length of time.

 The party requesting fees for such work must submit evidence documenting the hours claimed, and if the documentation is inadequate, or the claimed hours appear “excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary,” the court should reduce the award accordingly. Cf. Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U. S. 424, 433-434 (1983); Copeland v. Marshall, 205 U. S. App. D. C. 390, 401-402, 641 F. 2d 880, 891-892 (1980) (en banc). See generally 2 M. Derfner & A. Wolf, Court Awarded Attorney Fees ¶ 16.02[5], pp. 16-29 to 16-36 (1984).

 This requirement is consistent with the policy against awarding fees for redundant or unnecessary work, see n. 16, supra; as Congress has not required exhaustion of administrative remedies, fees for administrative work should not be awarded to the extent that work in litigation subsequently covered the same ground.

 Webb was discharged for allegedly unprofessional conduct and insubordination, without further specification of the charges. He contended that he had been dismissed as a result of white parents’ complaints about his paddling of their children. See App. 8-9. At the hearings, Webb’s counsel elicited testimony that paddling was a widely used and accepted means of discipline at Newborne Elementary School. Tr. 72, 99-100, 102-103, 113, 118, 122-123, 126, attached to Affidavit of Avon N. Williams, Jr., Record Doc. No. 73. School administrators, teachers, and students testified that Webb did not paddle students any more harshly than did other teachers, that Webb disciplined black and white students in an evenhanded manner, and that prior to Webb’s dismissal no other teacher ever had been reprimanded or disciplined for paddling students. Id., at 73-74, 78, 81, 83-84, 86, 113, 119, 123-124, 126, 150. There was significant testimony that, in the recent wake of desegregation, a number of white students misbehaved in Webb’s classroom, that school administrators did not assist Webb or other black teachers in maintaining classroom order, and that the administrators did not support Webb when white parents complained about Webb’s disciplining of their children. Id., at 29-30, 66, 77-78, 162, 208.

 “You can look at the time spent on a matter such as this as to the discovery aspects, the prefiling investigation which there inevitably was in this case and which there almost always is where you have administrative proceedings that take place.
“Facts are discovered, positions taken, parties respond whether it is by one demand letter or a demand for a hearing, which is then held, and the parties state their positions regardless of the result, that is, part of the factual basis for the complaint and ultimately for the trial. So one could safely make the statement that at least a substantial part of that ground would not have to be plowed in actually litigating the ease.” Tr. of Fee Hearing 13-14.
See also id., at 8 (hours spent in administrative hearings were reasonable), 21 (hearings “part of the discovery process which leads to hopefully a settlement or, at least, enables you to foreshorten the formal discovery in federal court”), 41 (hearings were “essential” and “intrinsic” to success in litigation), 45 (hearings were “just part and parcel of the entire package of the case”). The defense counsel himself acknowledged that “after the complaint was filed no affirmative act of any kind was performed by counsel for the Plaintiff before settlement was made, that is, no discovery was taken . . . .” Id., at 19.

 With respect to the effect that the administrative discovery had on settlement, one veteran civil rights litigator testified: “I don’t think one would have occurred without the other. I think there is a record made. I think good counsel for the Defendant in the case obviously has access to that and is able to weigh, as perhaps a public body in the emotion of the moment can weigh, the risk of continued litigation as opposed to settlement and advise his client taking into account all the usual factors, *257what it is going to cost you to litigate and so forth. And I think that is one of the bases upon which competent counsel are going to look at to see what happened down below, in effect.” Id., at 16-17.

 See, e. g., Blum v. Stenson, 465 U. S. 886, 902, n. 19 (1984) (“[D]is-trict court is expressly empowered to exercise discretion in determining whether an award is to be made and if so its reasonableness”); Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U. S., at 433-437 (especially 437, district court “necessarily has discretion in making this equitable judgment”); id., at 443 (Brennan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); H. R. Rep. No. 94-1558, at 8 (Congress intended to “leav[e] the matter to the discretion of the judge”).

 The Court also notes that several years elapsed between the administrative hearings and the ultimate settlement of the federal litigation, and observes that “it is difficult to treat time spent years before the complaint was filed as having been ‘expended on the litigation.’” Ante, at 242. I agree with the Court that the passage of time may be one factor to be considered in deciding whether a portion of administrative work served “to enforce a provision” of the civil rights laws; as the elapsed time increases, it is more likely that administrative proceedings were pursued for other reasons and were not integrally related to the litigation itself. Reliance on this factor in the case before us is misplaced, however. The Board’s final evidentiary hearing was held in April 1978, and the complaint was not filed until August 1979. The delay appears to have resulted from at least two factors that were beyond Webb’s control: first, the Board’s long delay in rendering a final decision, and second, the Board’s delay in responding to Webb’s precomplaint settlement attempts. See App. 46-47 (summary of professional services). Another two years passed before the litigation was settled, but again much of that time appears to have been consumed by settlement discussions. Id., at 50-54. Given that the inquiry is whether any of the fruits of the administrative proceeding were “useful” and eliminated the need for other work that would have been “necessary” in the federal *259action, the relevance of the Court’s emphasis on a readily discernable “dividing line” between these proceedings is not immediately apparent. Ante, at 243. A petitioner’s entitlement to partial administrative fees should not turn in any way on whether the respondents were able to drag matters out or on whether the parties reasonably attempted to reach a settlement before going into court. Here again, it makes no sense to create incentives compelling potential litigants to get into court at the earliest opportunity without attempting to resolve a controversy through other means.

 And to the extent that the fee request did not precisely track the standards newly set forth in today’s opinion, it is inappropriate to penalize Webb for his lack of prescience.

 The purpose of § 1988 is to “promote the enforcement of the Federal civil rights acts, as Congress intended, and to achieve uniformity in those statutes and justice for all citizens.” H. R. Rep. No. 94-1558, at 9. See also S. Rep. No. 94-1011, at 2 (“[F]ee awards have proved an essential remedy if private citizens are to have a meaningful opportunity to vindicate the important Congressional policies which these laws contain”). These goals are not likely to be advanced if plaintiffs who successfully appeal erroneous interpretations of § 1988 are denied the opportunity to benefit from the application of the correct standards.