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U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Fee Challenging Cases

February 1, 2016 | Posted in : Fee Award, Fee Dispute, Fee Entitlement / Recoverability, Fee Issues on Appeal, Fee Request, Fees in Statutes, Prevailing Party Issues

A recent NLJ story, “Three High Court Fee Challenges: One Winner, Two Losers,” reports that attempts by Texas and Shelby County, Alabama, to collect or to block attorney fees for successful challenges under the Voting Rights Act failed on when the justices refused to hear their petitions.

And in a third fee case, the justices, in an unsigned, unanimous opinion, reversed an Idaho Supreme Court ruling that awarded attorney fees to the city of Boise as the prevailing defendant in a civil rights lawsuit by a woman who was mauled by a police dog after police mistook her for a burglar.

The Shelby County fee fight flowed directly from the justices' 2013 decision in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder.  In that case, a 5-4 high court decision struck down the formula in the Voting Rights Act that determined which of the nation’s jurisdictions with a history of vote discrimination had to get any new voting practices approved by the Department of Justice or the federal district court in Washington.

By striking down the coverage formula, the majority, in effect, neutered the preclearance, or approval, requirement in another section of the act, Section 5, which was originally attacked in the lawsuit brought by Shelby County.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected arguments by Shelby County and its lawyers that they were "prevailing plaintiffs" entitled to more than $2 million in attorney fees under the act's fee provision.  Under the Voting Rights Act, fees may be awarded to the prevailing party "in any action or proceeding to enforce the voting guarantees of the Fourteenth or Fifteenth amendment."

"We find Shelby County not entitled because its lawsuit did not enforce compliance with the VRA and because Congress did not intend to use fees to encourage the invalidation of the Act’s provisions," the appellate panel wrote.

In Shelby County's high court petition, the county's counsel, Thomas McCarthy of Consovoy McCarthy Park in Arlington, Virginia, charged, that the appellate panel denied the fee request "based on nothing more than its value judgment about whether Congress would have wanted a party such as Shelby County to recover its attorney’s fees."  The justices did not comment in denying the county's petition for review, Shelby County, Ala. v. Lynch.

The Texas case, Texas v. Davis, was indirect fallout from the 2013 voting rights blockbuster.  The 2013 decision was issued while Texas was appealing a federal district court ruling that denied preclearance approval to the state's 2011 redistricting plan.  Because of the high court's decision, Texas' plan no longer required preclearance and so the Washington court's decision was vacated.

The Washington federal court, acting a year after the Shelby County decision, awarded more than $1 million to the challengers to the Texas redistricting plan: Texas state Senator Wendy Davis and civil rights groups.

In the Supreme Court, Texas solicitor general Scott Keller had argued that the Constitution did not permit attorney fees to be awarded because of the Davis group's earlier victory in Washington based on an unconstitutional law.  The justices also did not comment on the denial of Texas' petition.

In the third action in attorney fees—James v. City of Boise, Idaho— the justices wrote that the Idaho Supreme Court was wrong when it concluded that it was not bound by the justices' 1980 decision in Hughes v. Rowe interpreting the Civil Rights Act fee provision—Section 1988.  That high court held that the provision permits a prevailing defendant to recover fees only if “the plaintiff's action was frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation.”

The Idaho Supreme Court awarded $8,574 in fees and costs to the city without determining whether the lawsuit was frivolous, unreasonable or without foundation.

"The Idaho Supreme Court, like any other state or federal court, is bound by this Court’s interpretation of federal law," the justices wrote.  "The state court erred in concluding otherwise."