On February 25, 2025, the United States Supreme Court held that plaintiffs who obtain a preliminary injunction are not eligible for attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) because they do not qualify as “prevailing parties.” See Lackey v. Stinnie, 604 U.S. ___ (2025). Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the Court, explained that obtaining a preliminary injunction does not confer “prevailing party” status under § 1988. The Court reasoned that preliminary injunctions do not provide “enduring judicial relief on the merits.”
This case began in late 2018 when a group of Virginia drivers challenged a Virginia statute that permitted the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to suspend the licenses of individuals who failed to pay court fines. The drivers asserted that this statute violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause “as applied to people who cannot afford to pay due to their modest financial circumstances.” The United States District Court for the District of Virginia granted the drivers a preliminary injunction in December 2018, thereby prohibiting the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles from suspending licenses for failure to pay court fines.
Before trial began, the Virginia General Assembly repealed the challenged statute and ordered the Department of Motor Vehicles to reinstate licenses that were suspended under the statute. This prompted the parties to agree to dismiss the case as moot. The drivers then moved for attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, but the District Court denied this motion on the grounds that the drivers do not qualify as a “prevailing party” after “only” obtaining a preliminary injunction. Following an appeal, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari on April 22, 2024.
The question presented to the Supreme Court was “whether the term ‘prevailing party’ in § 1988(b) encompasses a party who is awarded a preliminary injunction,” even if the case becomes moot before a final judgment is issued. In a 7-2 decision, the Court ruled that the term “prevailing party” does not encompass a plaintiff who obtains a preliminary injunction, because a preliminary injunction does not provide “enduring judicial relief on the merits.” Put differently, the Court held that a plaintiff must obtain a final judgment or a court-ordered consent decree in order to be considered a “prevailing party” for purposes of § 1988.
The Court cited to its previous decision in University of Tex. V. Camenisch, 451 U.S. 390, 395 (1981), for the proposition that a preliminary injunction is a form of temporary relief that is intended to “preserve the status quo until a trial can occur,” and that extrajudicial events that render a case moot do not convert this temporary relief into a final judgment for purposes of § 1988. “A plaintiff who wins a transient victory on a preliminary injunction does not become a ‘prevailing party’ simply because external events convert the transient victory into a lasting one,” the majority explained. The majority also noted that this new standard, which eliminates preliminary injunctions from consideration when determining a prevailing party, would serve “the interests of judicial economy” by preventing extensive (and expensive) litigation concerning attorney’s fees.
Notably, this decision will likely have a significant impact on other areas of law that are governed by federal statutes that contain cost-shifting provisions for “prevailing parties,” such as the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Lanham Act of 1946. For example, 17 U.S.C. § 505, a provision of the Copyright Act, states that courts may award “reasonable attorney’s fee to the prevailing party” (emphasis added). In practice, copyright and trademark cases often settle after a preliminary injunction is entered. However, now that plaintiffs are not entitled to attorney’s fees if they only obtain a preliminary injunction, plaintiffs will likely reconsider settling cases after a preliminary injunction is entered. As a result, this decision will likely have far-reaching consequences on other areas of the law, such as copyright law, trademark law, and all other areas governed by federal statutes with cost-shifting provisions for “prevailing parties.”
How does this affect defendants? Well, the Court clarified in a footnote that this rule applies only to plaintiffs who obtain a preliminary injunction. The Court explained that its decision “should not be read to affect our previous holding that a defendantneed not obtain a favorable judgment on the merits to prevail, nor to address the question we left open of whether a defendant must obtain a preclusive judgment in order to prevail.” See CRST Van Expedited, Inc. v. EEOC, 578 U. S. 419, 431−434 (2016). To this end, the Court emphasized that “[p]laintiffs and defendants come to court with different objectives,” and thus the question of whether a plaintiff is a “prevailing party” requires different analysis than the question of whether a defendant is a “prevailing party.”
