Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Resources
The Supreme Court ruled that a plaintiff whose lawsuit merely triggers a voluntary change in the other side's behavior is not a "prevailing party" entitled to attorney's fees, unless a court actually entered a judgment or a court-approved settlement in the plaintiff's favor.
The decision rejects the widely used "catalyst theory" that many federal appeals courts had accepted for decades, meaning plaintiffs whose suits succeed only by pressuring a defendant to change course - without ever getting a judge's formal sign-off - can no longer collect fees under many civil rights and consumer-protection statutes.
“A defendant's voluntary change in conduct, although perhaps accomplishing what the plaintiff sought to achieve by the lawsuit, lacks the necessary judicial imprimatur on the change.”
The majority's core reasoning for why a voluntary settlement without court action cannot make a plaintiff a "prevailing party."
How it got here: A federal trial court dismissed the case as moot and denied attorney's fees under Fourth Circuit precedent; the Fourth Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court took the case to resolve a circuit split.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Buckhannon Board and Care Home, an assisted-living facility, was ordered to close after failing a fire-safety inspection because some elderly residents could not evacuate on their own under West Virginia's "self-preservation" rule. Buckhannon and affected residents sued the state, arguing the rule violated federal disability and housing discrimination laws. While the suit was pending, West Virginia's legislature repealed the rule, and the case was dismissed as moot.
The question before the Court
If a lawsuit pushes a defendant to voluntarily fix the problem before any court ruling, can the person who sued still collect attorney's fees as the "prevailing party"?
The Court's answer
No — a plaintiff whose lawsuit merely causes the defendant to voluntarily change its conduct is not a "prevailing party" entitled to attorney's fees. The Court held that fee-shifting statutes using the term "prevailing party" require some judicially sanctioned outcome — either a judgment on the merits or a court-ordered consent decree — that materially changes the legal relationship between the parties.
A defendant's voluntary change in behavior, even if it gives the plaintiff exactly what the lawsuit demanded, does not count because no court ever approved or ordered that change. The Court rejected the "catalyst theory," under which many lower courts had allowed fee awards whenever a lawsuit was a substantial cause of a defendant's voluntary compliance, finding that theory inconsistent with the ordinary legal meaning of "prevailing party" and with the Court's own precedents.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Civil rights and disability-rights plaintiffs, often people without much money, rely on fee-shifting statutes to pay lawyers willing to take their cases. Because defendants can now avoid paying fees by voluntarily fixing the problem before a judgment or settlement is entered in court, some lawyers may be more cautious about taking cases where a quick, informal victory is the likely outcome.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision resolving a long-standing circuit split, so the judgment against Buckhannon's fee request stands and no further proceedings on the fee question are anticipated. Going forward, plaintiffs in cases governed by "prevailing party" fee-shifting statutes cannot recover fees based solely on a defendant's voluntary change in conduct; they must obtain an enforceable judgment or court-approved settlement. Congress remains free to amend these statutes to restore a catalyst-based standard if it chooses.
What this does not decide
The Court's holding is limited to interpreting "prevailing party" under fee-shifting statutes like the FHAA and ADA; it does not address whether Congress could write a statute that explicitly authorizes fees under a catalyst theory, and it leaves untouched fee awards based on enforceable judgments, nominal damages, or consent decrees.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Scalia
Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, wrote separately to argue at length that "prevailing party" has always been a term of art meaning the party who wins a judgment or a finding of liability, tracing the term through centuries of common-law and statutory usage. He argued the catalyst theory risks rewarding parties with financial or media leverage rather than legal merit, comparing it to rewarding an "extortionist," and defended the consent-decree rule in Maher as resting on some judicial sanction even without a full merits ruling.
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
“Nothing in history, precedent, or plain English warrants the anemic construction of the term "prevailing party" the Court today imposes.”The dissent's summary objection to the majority's narrow reading of the fee-shifting statutes.
Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer, argued that the majority's rule upsets decades of consistent circuit precedent and adopts an artificially narrow reading of "prevailing party" unsupported by history, legislative history, or the practical purpose of civil rights fee-shifting statutes. She argued that a plaintiff who achieves the actual relief sought through litigation has "prevailed" in the ordinary sense, regardless of whether a court formally blessed the outcome, and that the ruling will discourage poorer plaintiffs and their lawyers from bringing meritorious civil rights suits.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court treated "prevailing party" as a legal term of art carrying an established meaning, not an ordinary-language phrase, and looked to how the term had been used in judgments and litigation practice rather than to its everyday sense of simply getting what one wanted.
- Drawing on its own precedents, the Court explained that a party has previously been found to "prevail" only when it obtained a judgment on the merits (even a small one, like nominal damages) or a court-ordered consent decree - both of which involve some formal court action approving a change in the parties' legal relationship.
- The Court held that this pattern establishes a requirement of a "material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties" that is judicially sanctioned - meaning a court, not just the defendant on its own, must have brought about or blessed the change.
- Applying that requirement, the Court found that a defendant's purely voluntary change in conduct - even if it gives the plaintiff exactly what the lawsuit sought - lacks this judicial sanction, so the "catalyst theory," which treated such voluntary changes as enough to qualify for fees, does not fit the term "prevailing party."
- The Court also weighed and rejected policy arguments for the catalyst theory (such as concerns about defendants gaming mootness to dodge fees), reasoning that such policy concerns cannot override what it saw as the statute's clear textual meaning, and that any needed fix should come from Congress rather than the courts.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Hewitt v. Helms (482 U.S. 755)
The Court read Hewitt's dictum about voluntary-action fee awards narrowly, declining to extend it to support the catalyst theory.
Reaffirms Maher v. Gagne (448 U.S. 122)
The Court reaffirmed that a court-ordered consent decree, even without an admission of liability, can support a fee award.
Distinguishes Farrar v. Hobby (506 U.S. 103)
The Court noted Farrar involved an actual judgment and did not address the catalyst theory, so it does not control this case directly.