Archive for March 2025
41st Annual Section 1983 Conference: April 10-11, 2025, at Chicago-Kent College of Law
Chicago-Kent is holding its 41st Annual Section 1983 Conference on Thursday and Friday, April 10-11, 2025, at the Law School. This Conference covers many aspects of section 1983 and constitutional law.
I will speak on The Basics of Section 1983 Claims, along with other experts on section 1983 who will speak on immunities, local government liability, remedies and various constitutional provisions.
Here is the link with registration information and the schedule. https://ckcle.ce21.com/item/41st-annual-section-1983-civil-rights-litigation-conference-679246
As always, this is a not-to-be-missed conference for those litigating section 1983 cases.
Supreme Court Sets Out New “Prevailing Party” Rule in Lackey v. Holcomb, Attorney’s Fees Case Involving Preliminary Injunctions and Mootness
The Supreme Court, on February 25, 2025, reversed the Fourth Circuit in Lackey v. Holcomb, 145 S. Ct. – (2025)(No. 23-621), an attorney’s fees case dealing with preliminary injunctions and mootness, and answered the following Questions Presented in the affirmative:
“(1) Whether a party must obtain a ruling that conclusively decides the merits in its favor, as opposed to merely predicting a likelihood of later success, to prevail on the merits under 42 U.S.C. § 1988; and (2) Whether a party must obtain an enduring change in the parties’ legal relationship from a judicial act, as opposed to a non-judicial event that moots the case, to prevail under 42 U.S.C. § 1988.”
The Lower Court Decisions in Lackey
In Lackey, the § 1983 plaintiffs challenged a Virginia statute that required the automatic suspension of driver’s licenses when drivers fail to pay certain court fines and fees. Following an extensive hearing with briefing and argument, the district court granted the plaintiffs a preliminary injunction. This was not appealed by the state defendants but, shortly before bench trial in August 2019, the Virginia legislature suspended the enforcement of the statute for a year, and the defendants got the district court to stay the case until the next legislative session over the plaintiffs’ “strenuous objections”. Thereafter, the legislature repealed the challenged statute, the district court dismissed the action as moot and, applying established Fourth Circuit precedent, it denied plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees.
Subsequently, however, with four judges dissenting, the Fourth Circuit en banc vacated the district court’s denial of fees and rejected its circuit’s earlier “bright-line approach” holding that “a plaintiff who wins a preliminary injunction but—for whatever reason—does not secure a final judgment may never qualify as a prevailing party.” Instead, it announced its test going forward: “When a preliminary injunction provides the plaintiff concrete, irreversible relief on the merits of her claim and becomes moot before final judgment because no further court-ordered assistance proves necessary, the subsequent mootness of the case does not preclude an award of attorney’s fees.”
The Supreme Court’s Decision
The Supreme Court in turn reversed in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts. He began with the text and the Black’s Law Dictionary definition of prevailing party, and determined that that status depended on whether, at the end of the lawsuit, the party making a claim against another has successfully maintained it. He then reasoned that preliminary injunctions “do not conclusively resolve legal disputes.” Rather, they had a transient nature, especially where a court reached a different conclusion on full consideration of the merits, as in Sole v. Wyner, 551 U.S. 74 (2007), discussed below. Further, it was not sufficient for prevailing party status that the grant of a preliminary injunction has “something” to do with the merits: “The plaintiff must succeed on the merits.” This conclusion, according to Chief Justice Roberts, was consistent with its precedents that rejected the catalyst theory and insisted on a final victory on a material (“even if not predominant”) claim
Finally, the Court articulated its standard going forward: the change in legal relationship must be both judicially sanctioned and enduring in order for the plaintiff to be a prevailing party entitled to attorney’s fees. Specifically, “we establish that the enduring nature of that change [in the legal relationship between the parties] must itself by judicially sanctioned…. [B]oth the change in relationship and its permanence must result from a judicial order.” This standard, according to the Court, promoted judicial economy and did not, in most cases, create perverse incentives favoring defendants who could strategically moot litigation rather than proceed to the merits where they might lose and be required to pay attorney’s fees.
The Dissent
Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, dissented. Among other things, they pointed out that the plaintiffs had received meaningful relief through a preliminary injunction that was never reversed on the merits on appeal. As shown by the text and legislative history of §1988(b), Congress intended that in such cases, the plaintiffs should be entitled to prevailing party status and reasonable attorney’s fees. They argued that the majority “overreads our precedents to support its blanket rule that preliminary injunctions can never support fee awards.” Sole should be read narrowly as applying to preliminary injunctive relief that is superseded by a final judgment reversing such relief. Finally, they maintained that the Court’s approach would indeed create perverse incentives.
Comments
Lackey addressed the unresolved question in Sole. Here, the Supreme Court unanimously held that “a plaintiff who gains a preliminary injunction after an abbreviated hearing, but is denied a permanent injunction after a dispositive adjudication on the merits, [does not] qualify as a ‘prevailing party’ within the compass of §1988(b).” The Court in Sole emphasized that prevailing party status requires a material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties pursuant to Texas State Teachers Ass’n v. Garland Independent School Dist., 489 U.S. 782 (1989), and that was not present in this case. It was not sufficient for prevailing party status that the plaintiff obtained a preliminary injunction after a hasty and abbreviated hearing that allowed her to display an antiwar artwork in a Florida state park: the state court had thereafter held after a full hearing that she was not entitled as a First Amendment matter to a permanent injunction against the enforcement of the state statute setting out the “Bathing Suit Rule” applicable to state parks. “Prevailing party status … does not attend achievement of a preliminary injunction that is reversed, dissolved, or otherwise undone by the final decision in the same case.” 127 S. Ct. at 2188 (footnote omitted). However, the Court went on to observe that it was expressing no view of a case in which a plaintiff obtains a preliminary injunction and there is no final decision on the merits of a claim for permanent injunction. As indicated, this was the issue that Lackey decided in favor of defendants.
I argued in an earlier post on Lackey that the Court should affirm the Fourth Circuit en banc under the unique facts of the case : there was a full hearing with briefing and oral argument that preceded the district court’s grant of the preliminary injunction; this grant was not appealed by the defendants, although it could have been. Furthermore, as a direct result of the preliminary injunction, the Virginia legislature suspended the enforcement of the statute for a year, the case was stayed over plaintiffs’ objections and the statute ultimately repealed, all of which effectively prevented the plaintiffs from proceeding to final judgment and was motivated by the defense’s strategy to create mootness. For these reasons, the legal relationship of the parties was materially altered in favor of the plaintiffs who were thus prevailing parties.
Moreover, as the dissenters point out, the Court’s bright-line approach may create perverse incentives: plaintiffs who seek preliminary relief may either be encouraged to include an otherwise unnecessary damages claim in order to preclude mootness (thereby complicating a simpler lawsuit) or to seek permanent injunctive relief even after they’ve received what they wanted through a preliminary injunction.
Nevertheless, the Court decided to set out a bright-line rule requiring a judicial imprimatur for both the merits and the enduring nature of the change in the legal relationship between the parties. In so doing, “it overrules the decisions of every Court of Appeals to consider the issue” as the dissenters observe.
Sole, Texas State Teachers Ass’n and Lackey, and attorney’s fees in general, are all addressed in Chapter 10 of my Treatise, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Litigation: The Law of Section 1983 (2024-25 ed.)(West/Westlaw).
Supreme Court in Williams v. Reed Reverses Alabama Supreme Court Narrowly on State Court Section 1983 Claims and Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies
Exhaustion of State Administrative Remedies: Background
It has been blackletter law since Patsy v. Fla. Bd. of Regents, 457 U.S. 496 (1982), and well before, that exhaustion of administrative remedies, like exhaustion of judicial remedies (see Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 473 (1961)), is not required as a condition precedent to filing a § 1983 claim in federal and state court. Even though Patsy itself involved a § 1983 claim filed in federal court, the opinion seemed to indicate that this was a matter of § 1983 statutory interpretation. Thus, by virtue of the Supremacy Clause, Patsy was almost universally understood as similarly applying to § 1983 claims filed in state court, just like the no-exhaustion of judicial remedies rule. Indeed, until recently, every state supreme court, except for that of South Dakota (in Reiff v. Avon School Dist., 458 N.W.2d 358 (S.D. 1990)), has ruled that exhaustion of administrative remedies is not required for § 1983 claims filed in state court.
Then, Alabama joined South Dakota and ruled the same way in Johnson v. Washington, 2023 WL 4281620 (S. Ct. Ala. 2023), cert granted sub nom Williams v. Reed, 144 S. Ct. — (2024)(No. 23-191), which the Supreme Court just reversed, 5-4, on February 21, 2025. Williams v. Reed, 604 U.S. — (2025).
Williams v. Reed In State Court
In Williams, the plaintiffs filed unemployment compensation claims with the Alabama Department of Labor. Because these claims were not processed in a timely manner, the plaintiffs then filed suit under § 1983 seeking prospective relief and alleging that the defendants’ failure to act on their applications and provide the notices and hearings to which they were entitled violated their federal constitutional and Social Security Act rights. The Supreme Court of Alabama dismissed plaintiffs’ amended complaint on the ground that state courts lacked jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ § 1983 suit. The sole basis for the court’s dismissal was plaintiffs’ failure to exhaust the administrative appeals process governing unemployment compensation claims provided for by Alabama law. The Supreme Court of Alabama discussed Patsy, but nevertheless ruled that § 1983 plaintiffs could not “compel State courts to adjudicate federal claims that lie outside the State courts’ jurisdiction.” The Supreme Court of Alabama ruled this way even though under its approach the plaintiffs could never sue under § 1983 to expedite the administrative process, thereby creating what the plaintiffs (and later the Court) called a “catch-22.”
The Supreme Court’s Narrow Decision
In an opinion by Justice Kavanaugh, the Court reversed. It expressly avoided deciding whether Patsy and Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131 (1988), “categorically bar both federal and state courts from applying state administrative-exhaustion requirements to § 1983 claims. We need not address that broader argument.” 604 U.S. at –, n. 2. Instead, it based its decision on preemption and declared:
“In the unusual circumstances presented here–where a state court’s application of a state exhaustion requirement in effect immunizes state officials from § 1983 claims challenging delays in the administrative process–state courts may not deny those § 1983 claims on failure-to-exhaust grounds.”
In the course of his opinion, Justice Kavanaugh rejected the state’s argument that Alabama’s exhaustion requirement was jurisdictional: such jurisdictional labels were not dispositive. It also rejected the state’s argument that the plaintiffs could seek a writ of mandamus from the state courts. This was simply “another way” of requiring a claimant to go through process provided by the state before suing under § 1983. He concluded by observing that the dissent (discussed next) primarily discussed issues that the majority did not have to address.
The Dissenters: Issues Raised But Not Decided by the Court
Justice Thomas, joined by Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett as to Part II of his opinion, dissented. In Part I, he criticized Haywood v. Drown, 556 U.S. 729 (2009), in which he had dissented (as did Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Alito, who separately contended that the majority had misinterpreted the Court’s precedents), and argued that Alabama had “plenary authority to decide which federal matters its state courts will have subject-matter jurisdiction to hear.” In Part II, he went on to to contend that the Court should affirm “under existing precedents.” In his view, there was neither discrimination against federal rights here, nor was there disfavored treatment. Finally, he criticized the majority for its purported narrow ruling which he asserted was incorrectly based on a “theory of futility.”
Comments
The Court reached the correct result in Williams, despite its narrow decision apparently prompted by the four-Justice dissent (was the dissent initially the majority opinion?). It would have been preferable, though, to have acknowledged that Patsy clearly was interpreting § 1983 when it rejected the Fifth Circuit’s “flexible” approach to exhaustion of administrative remedies in federal courts.
Furthermore, even though Alabama law does not discriminate against federal claims in its courts, its exhaustion of administrative remedies constitutes a severe burden on § 1983 claims and violates the Supremacy Clause for that reason alone. Compare Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131 (1988), where the Court held that a Wisconsin four-month notice of claim statute that applied to suits against state and local government agencies and their officers in state courts could not be applied to § 1983 claims filed in state court because it conflicted “in its purpose and effects with the remedial objectives of § 1983 … [and would] predictably produce different outcomes … depending on whether the claim is asserted in state or federal court ….”
The Court could also have relied on Howlett v. Rose, 496 U.S. 356 (1990), where the Court ruled unanimously that states cannot apply their sovereign immunity rules to bar § 1983 claims against local governments in state courts. The Court reasoned that under the Supremacy Clause state courts have coordinate authority and responsibility to enforce the supreme law of the land.
And it could further have relied on Haywood v. Drown, 556 U.S. 729 (2009), where the Court struck down under the Supremacy Clause a New York statute, as applied to § 1983 claims, providing that New York courts did not have jurisdiction over any claims for damages against correctional officers sued in their personal capacities for acts committed within the scope of their employment. The Court emphasized that nondiscrimination standing alone was not the equivalent of neutrality.
The majority in Washington thus deliberately left these broader issues for another day, which means there is apparently still some life left in the argument that exhaustion of state administrative remedies may sometimes apply to state court § 1983 claims, at least in those states that have such a general requirement. As a practical matter then, Alabama’s and South Dakota’s exhaustion of state administrative remedies requirements as applied to most § 1983 claims filed in state court have not been struck down.
Nahmod Law 