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VIRGINIA DEPT. OF HEALTH AND HUMAN RESOURCES Ginsburg, J., dissenting
peals that our ill-considered dicta have misled them displays, it seems to me, not "disrespect," but a most becoming (and well-deserved) humility.
* * *
The Court today concludes that a party cannot be deemed to have prevailed, for purposes of fee-shifting statutes such as 42 U. S. C. §§ 1988, 3613(c)(2) (1994 ed. and Supp. V), unless there has been an enforceable "alteration of the legal relationship of the parties." That is the normal meaning of "prevailing party" in litigation, and there is no proper basis for departing from that normal meaning. Congress is free, of course, to revise these provisions—but it is my guess that if it does so it will not create the sort of inequity that the catalyst theory invites, but will require the court to determine that there was at least a substantial likelihood that the party requesting fees would have prevailed.
Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.
The Court today holds that a plaintiff whose suit prompts the precise relief she seeks does not "prevail," and hence cannot obtain an award of attorney's fees, unless she also secures a court entry memorializing her victory. The entry need not be a judgment on the merits. Nor need there be any finding of wrongdoing. A court-approved settlement will do.
The Court's insistence that there be a document filed in court—a litigated judgment or court-endorsed settlement— upsets long-prevailing Circuit precedent applicable to scores of federal fee-shifting statutes. The decision allows a defendant to escape a statutory obligation to pay a plaintiff's counsel fees, even though the suit's merit led the defendant to abandon the fray, to switch rather than fight on, to accord plaintiff sooner rather than later the principal redress sought in the complaint. Concomitantly, the Court's constricted
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