300
Opinion of the Court
noted in Melkonyan that Hudson was limited to a "narrow class of qualifying administrative proceedings" where "the district court retains jurisdiction of the civil action" pending the completion of the administrative proceedings. 501 U. S., at 97. We therefore do not consider the holding of Hudson binding as to sentence-four remands that are ordered (as they should be) without retention of jurisdiction, or that are ordered with retention of jurisdiction that is challenged.4
Schaefer's second argument is that a sentence-four remand order cannot be considered a "final judgment" for purposes of § 2412(d)(1)(B) because that provision requires the party seeking fees to submit an application "show[ing] that [he] is a prevailing party." That showing, Schaefer contends, cannot be made until the proceedings on remand are complete, since a Social Security claimant does not "prevail" until he is awarded Social Security benefits. The premise of this argument is wrong. No holding of this Court has ever denied prevailing-party status (under § 2412(d)(1)(B)) to a plaintiff who won a remand order pursuant to sentence four of § 405(g). Dicta in Hudson stated that "a Social Security
Secretary's Hudson reply brief—that a sentence-four remand order is a "final judgment" in the civil action. Id., at 16. Essentially, the Secretary in Hudson wanted it both ways: He wanted us to regard retention of jurisdiction as proper for purposes of determining prevailing-party status, but as improper for purposes of awarding fees on remand.
4 Justice Stevens says that our holding "overrul[es]" Sullivan v. Hudson, 490 U. S. 877 (1989). Post, at 304, 311. We do not think that is an accurate characterization. Hudson remains good law as applied to remands ordered pursuant to sentence six. And since the distinction between sentence-four and sentence-six remands was neither properly presented nor considered in Hudson, see supra, at 299, and n. 3, and infra this page and 301, limiting Hudson to sentence-six cases does not "overrule" the decision even in part. See Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619, 631 (1993). We agree with Justice Stevens that until today there has been some contradiction in our case law on this subject. In resolving it, however, we have not simply chosen Melkonyan's dicta over Hudson, but have grounded our decision in the text and structure of the relevant statutes, particularly § 405.
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