Cite as: 509 U. S. 292 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
claimant would not, as a general matter, be a prevailing party within the meaning of the EAJA merely because a court had remanded the action to the agency for further proceedings." 490 U. S., at 887. But that statement (like the holding of the case) simply failed to recognize the distinction between a sentence-four remand, which terminates the litigation with victory for the plaintiff, and a sentence-six remand, which does not. The sharp distinction between the two types of remand had not been made in the lower court opinions in Hudson, see Hudson v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, 839 F. 2d 1453 (CA11 1988); App. to Pet. for Cert. in Sullivan v. Hudson, O. T. 1988, No. 616, pp. 17a-20a (setting forth unpublished District Court opinion), was not included in the question presented for decision,5 and was mentioned for the first time in the closing pages of the Secretary's reply brief, see Reply Brief for Petitioner in Sullivan v. Hudson, O. T. 1988, No. 616, pp. 14-17. It is only decisions after Hudson—specifically Finkelstein and Melkonyan— which establish that the sentence-four, sentence-six distinction is crucial to the structure of judicial review established under § 405(g). See Finkelstein, 496 U. S., at 626; Melkonyan, 501 U. S., at 97-98.
Hudson's dicta that remand does not generally confer prevailing-party status relied on three cases, none of which supports that proposition as applied to sentence-four remands. Hanrahan v. Hampton, 446 U. S. 754, 758-759 (1980), rejected an assertion of prevailing-party status, not by virtue of having secured a remand, but by virtue of having obtained a favorable procedural ruling (the reversal on appeal of a directed verdict) during the course of the judicial proceedings. Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U. S. 755 (1987), held
5 As formulated in the Secretary's petition, the question on which the Court granted certiorari in Hudson was: "Whether Social Security administrative proceedings conducted after a remand from the courts are 'adversary adjudications' for which attorney fees are available under the [EAJA]." Pet. for Cert. in Sullivan v. Hudson, O. T. 1988, No. 616, p. I.
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