Hensley v. Eckerhart

461 U.S. 424, 103 S. Ct. 1933, 76 L. Ed. 2d 40, 1983 U.S. LEXIS 160, 51 U.S.L.W. 4552, 32 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) 33,618, 31 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1169

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: May 16, 1983
• Docket: 81-1244
• Status: Published

Opinions

Justice Powell

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Title 42 U. S. C. § 1988 provides that in federal civil rights actions “the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs.” The issue in this case is whether a partially prevailing plaintiff may recover an attorney’s fee for legal services on unsuccessful claims.

I — I

A

Respondents brought this lawsuit on behalf of all persons involuntarily confined at the Forensic Unit of the Fulton State Hospital in Fulton, Mo. The Forensic Unit consists of two residential buildings for housing patients who are dangerous to themselves or others. Maximum-security patients are housed in the Marion 0. Biggs Building for the Criminally Insane. The rest of the patients reside in the less restrictive Rehabilitation Unit.

In 1972 respondents filed a three-count complaint in the District Court for the Western District of Missouri against petitioners, who are officials at the Forensic Unit and members of the Missouri Mental Health Commission. Count I challenged the constitutionality of treatment and conditions at the Forensic Unit. Count II challenged the placement of patients in the Biggs Building without procedural due process. Count III sought compensation for patients who performed institution-maintaining labor.

Count II was resolved by a consent decree in December 1973. Count III largely was mooted in August 1974 when petitioners began compensating patients for labor pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U. S. C. §201 et seq. In April 1975 respondents voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit and filed a new two-count complaint. Count I again related to the constitutionality of treatment and conditions at the Forensic Unit. Count II sought damages, based on the Thirteenth Amendment, for the value of past patient labor. In July 1976 respondents voluntarily dismissed this back-pay count. Finally, in August 1977 respondents filed an amended one-count complaint specifying the conditions that allegedly violated their constitutional right to treatment.

In August 1979, following a three-week trial, the District Court held that an involuntarily committed patient has a constitutional right to minimally adequate treatment. 475 F. Supp. 908, 915 (1979). The court then found constitutional violations in five of six general areas: physical environment; individual treatment plans; least restrictive environment; visitation, telephone, and mail privileges; and seclusion and restraint.¹ With respect to staffing, the sixth general area, the District Court found that the Forensic Unit’s staffing levels, which had increased during the litigation, were minimally adequate. Id., at 919-920. Petitioners did not appeal the District Court’s decision on the merits.

B

In February 1980 respondents filed a request for attorney’s fees for the period from January 1975 through the end of the litigation. Their four attorneys claimed 2,985 hours worked and sought payment at rates varying from $40 to $65 per hour. This amounted to approximately $150,000. Respondents also requested that the fee be enhanced by 30 to 50 percent, for a total award of somewhere between $195,000 and $225,000. Petitioners opposed the request on numerous grounds, including inclusion of hours spent in pursuit of unsuccessful claims.

The District Court first determined that respondents were prevailing parties under 42 U. S. C. § 1988 even though they had not succeeded on every claim. It then refused to eliminate from the award hours spent on unsuccessful claims:

“[Petitioners’] suggested method of calculating fees is based strictly on a mathematical approach comparing the total number of issues in the case with those actually prevailed upon. Under this method no consideration is given for the relative importance of various issues, the interrelation of the issues, the difficulty in identifying issues, or the extent to which a party may prevail on various issues.” No. 75-CV-87-C, p. 7 (WD Mo., Jan. 23, 1981), Record 220.

Finding that respondents “have obtained relief of significant import,” id., at 231, the District Court awarded a fee of $133,332.25. This award differed from the fee request in two respects. First, the court reduced the number of hours claimed by one attorney by 30 percent to account for his inexperience and failure to keep contemporaneous records. Second, the court declined to adopt an enhancement factor to increase the award.

The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed on the basis of the District Court’s memorandum opinion and order. 664 F. 2d 294 (1981). We granted certiorari, 455 U. S. 988 (1982), and now vacate and remand for further proceedings.

II

In Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U. S. 240 (1975), this Court reaffirmed the “American Rule” that each party in a lawsuit ordinarily shall bear its own attorney’s fees unless there is express statutory authorization to the contrary. In response Congress enacted the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976, 42 U. S. C. § 1988, authorizing the district courts to award a reasonable attorney’s fee to prevailing parties in civil rights litigation. The purpose of § 1988 is to ensure “effective access to the judicial process” for persons with civil rights grievances. H. R. Rep. No. 94-1558, p. 1 (1976). Accordingly, a prevailing plaintiff “ ‘should ordinarily recover an attorney’s fee unless special circumstances would render such an award unjust.’” S. Rep. No. 94-1011, p. 4 (1976) (quoting Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U. S. 400, 402 (1968)).²

The amount of the fee, of course, must be determined on the facts of each case. On this issue the House Report simply refers to 12 factors set forth in Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F. 2d 714 (CA5 1974).³ The Senate Report cites to Johnson as well and also refers to three District Court decisions that “correctly applied” the 12 factors.⁴ One of the factors in Johnson, “the amount involved and the results obtained,” indicates that the level of a plaintiff’s success is relevant to the amount of fees to be awarded. The importance of this relationship is confirmed in varying degrees by the other cases cited approvingly in the Senate Report.

In Stanford Daily v. Zurcher, 64 F. R. D. 680 (ND Cal. 1974), aff’d, 550 F. 2d 464 (CA9 1977), rev’d on other grounds, 436 U. S. 547 (1978), the plaintiffs obtained a declaratory judgment, then moved for a preliminary injunction. After the defendants promised not to violate the judgment, the motion was denied. The District Court awarded attorney’s fees for time spent pursuing this motion because the plaintiffs “substantially advanced their clients’ interests” by obtaining “a significant concession from defendants as a result of their motion.” 64 F. R. D., at 684.

In Davis v. County of Los Angeles, 8 E. P. D. ¶ 9444 (CD Cal. 1974), the plaintiffs won an important judgment requiring the Los Angeles County Fire Department to undertake an affirmative-action program for hiring minorities. In awarding attorney’s fees the District Court stated:

“It also is not legally relevant that plaintiffs’ counsel expended a certain limited amount of time pursuing certain issues of fact and law that ultimately did not become litigated issues in the case or upon which plaintiffs ultimately did not prevail. Since plaintiffs prevailed on the merits and achieved excellent results for the represented class, plaintiffs’ counsel are entitled to an award of fees for all time reasonably expended in pursuit of the ultimate result achieved in the same manner that an attorney traditionally is compensated by a fee-paying client for all time reasonably expended on a matter.” Id., at 5049.

Similarly, the District Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 66 F. R. D. 483, 484 (WDNC 1975), based its fee award in part on a finding that “[t]he results obtained were excellent and constituted the total accomplishment of the aims of the suit,” despite the plaintiffs’ losses on “certain minor contentions.”

In each of these three cases the plaintiffs obtained essentially complete relief. The legislative history, therefore, does not provide a definitive answer as to the proper standard for setting a fee award where the plaintiff has achieved only limited success. Consistent with the legislative history, Courts of Appeals generally have recognized the relevance of the results obtained to the amount of a fee award. They have adopted varying standards, however, for applying this principle in cases where the plaintiff did not succeed on all claims asserted.⁵

In this case petitioners contend that “an award of attorney’s fees must be proportioned to be consistent with the extent to which a plaintiff has prevailed, and only time reasonably expended in support of successful claims should be compensated.” Brief for Petitioners 24. Respondents agree that a plaintiff’s success is relevant, but propose a less stringent standard focusing on “whether the time spent prosecuting [an unsuccessful] claim in any way contributed to the ultimate results achieved.” Brief for Respondents 46. Both parties acknowledge the discretion of the district court in this area. We take this opportunity to clarify the proper relationship of the results obtained to an award of attorney’s fees.⁶

III

A plaintiff must be a “prevailing party” to recover an attorney’s fee under § 1988.⁷ The standard for making this threshold determination has been framed in various ways. A typical formulation is that “plaintiffs may be considered ‘prevailing parties’ for attorney’s fees purposes if they succeed on any significant issue in litigation which achieves some of the benefit the parties sought in bringing suit.” Nadeau v. Helgemoe, 581 F. 2d 275, 278-279 (CA1 1978).⁸ This is a generous formulation that brings the plaintiff only across the statutory threshold. It remains for the district court to determine what fee is “reasonable.”

The most useful starting point for determining the amount of a reasonable fee is the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate. This calculation provides an objective basis on which to make an initial estimate of the value of a lawyer’s services. The party seeking an award of fees should submit evidence supporting the hours worked and rates claimed. Where the documentation of hours is inadequate, the district court may reduce the award accordingly.

The district court also should exclude from this initial fee calculation hours that were not “reasonably expended.” S. Rep. No. 94-1011, p. 6 (1976). Cases may be overstaffed, and the skill and experience of lawyers vary widely. Counsel for the prevailing party should make a good-faith effort to exclude from a fee request hours that are excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary, just as a lawyer in private practice ethically is obligated to exclude such hours from his fee submission. “In the private sector, 'billing judgment’ is an important component in fee setting. It is no less important here. Hours that are not properly billed to one’s client also are not properly billed to one’s adversary pursuant to statutory authority.” Copeland v. Marshall, 205 U. S. App. D. C. 390, 401, 641 F. 2d 880, 891 (1980) (en banc) (emphasis in original).

The product of reasonable hours times a reasonable rate does not end the inquiry. There remain other considerations that may lead the district court to adjust the fee upward or downward, including the important factor of the “results obtained.”⁹ This factor is particularly crucial where a plaintiff is deemed “prevailing” even though he succeeded on only some of his claims for relief. In this situation two questions must be addressed. First, did the plaintiff fail to prevail on claims that were unrelated to the claims on which he succeeded? Second, did the plaintiff achieve a level of success that makes the hours reasonably expended a satisfactory basis for making a fee award?

In some cases a plaintiff may present in one lawsuit distinctly different claims for relief that are based on different facts and legal theories. In such a suit, even where the claims are brought against the same defendants — often an institution and its officers, as in this case — counsel's work on one claim will be unrelated to his work on another claim. Accordingly, work on an unsuccessful claim cannot be deemed to have been “expended in pursuit of the ultimate result achieved.” Davis v. County of Los Angeles, 8 E. P. D., at 5049. The congressional intent to limit awards to prevailing parties requires that these unrelated claims be treated as if they had been raised in separate lawsuits, and therefore no fee may be awarded for services on the unsuccessful claim.¹⁰

It may well be that cases involving such unrelated claims are unlikely to arise with great frequency. Many civil rights cases will present only a single claim. In other cases the plaintiff’s claims for relief will involve a common core of facts or will be based on related legal theories. Much of counsel’s time will be devoted generally to the litigation as a whole, making it difficult to divide the hours expended on a claim-by-claim basis. Such a lawsuit cannot be viewed as a series of discrete claims. Instead the district court should focus on the significance of the overall relief obtained by the plaintiff in relation to the hours reasonably expended on the litigation.

Where a plaintiff has obtained excellent results, his attorney should recover a fully compensatory fee. Normally this will encompass all hours reasonably expended on the litigation, and indeed in some cases of exceptional success an enhanced award may be justified. In these circumstances the fee award should not be reduced simply because the plaintiff failed to prevail on every contention raised in the lawsuit. See Davis v. County of Los Angeles, supra, at 5049. Litigants in good faith may raise alternative legal grounds for a desired outcome, and the court’s rejection of or failure to reach certain grounds is not a sufficient reason for reducing a fee. The result is what matters.¹¹

If, on the other hand, a plaintiff has achieved only partial or limited success, the product of hours reasonably expended on the litigation as a whole times a reasonable hourly rate may be an excessive amount. This will be true even where the plaintiff's claims were interrelated, nonfrivolous, and raised in good faith. Congress has not authorized an award of fees whenever it was reasonable for a plaintiff to bring a lawsuit or whenever conscientious counsel tried the case with devotion and skill. Again, the most critical factor is the degree of success obtained.

Application of this principle is particularly important in complex civil rights litigation involving numerous challenges to institutional practices or conditions. This type of litigation is lengthy and demands many hours of lawyers’ services. Although the plaintiff often may succeed in identifying some unlawful practices or conditions, the range of possible success is vast. That the plaintiff is a “prevailing party” therefore may say little about whether the expenditure of counsel’s time was reasonable in relation to the success achieved. In this case, for example, the District Court’s award of fees based on 2,557 hours worked may have been reasonable in light of the substantial relief obtained. But had respondents prevailed on only one of their six general claims, for example the claim that petitioners’ visitation, mail, and telephone policies were overly restrictive, see n. 1, supra, a fee award based on the claimed hours clearly would have been excessive.

There is no precise rule or formula for making these determinations. The district court may attempt to identify specific hours that should be eliminated, or it may simply reduce the award to account for the limited success. The court necessarily has discretion in making this equitable judgment. This discretion, however, must be exercised in light of the considerations we have identified.

C

A request for attorney’s fees should not result in a second major litigation. Ideally, of course, litigants will settle the amount of a fee. Where settlement is not possible, the fee applicant bears the burden of establishing entitlement to an award and documenting the appropriate hours expended and hourly rates. The applicant should exercise “billing judgment” with respect to hours worked, see supra, at 434, and should maintain billing time records in a manner that will enable a reviewing court to identify distinct claims.¹²

We reemphasize that the district court has discretion in determining the amount of a fee award. This is appropriate in view of the district court’s superior understanding of the litigation and the desirability of avoiding frequent appellate review of what essentially are factual matters. It remains important, however, for the district court to provide a concise but clear explanation of its reasons for the fee award. "When an adjustment is requested on the basis of either the exceptional or limited nature of the relief obtained by the plaintiff, the district court should make clear that it has considered the relationship between the amount of the fee awarded and the results obtained.

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In this case the District Court began by finding that [t]he relief [respondents] obtained at trial was substantial and certainly entitles them to be considered prevailing . . . , without the need of examining those issues disposed of prior to trial in order to determine which went in [respondents’] favor.” Record 219. It then declined to divide the hours worked between winning and losing claims, stating that this fails to consider “the relative importance of various issues, the interrelation of the issues, the difficulty in identifying issues, or the extent to which a party may prevail on various issues.” Id., at 220. Finally, the court assessed the “amount involved/ results obtained” and declared: “Not only should [respondents] be considered prevailing parties, they are parties who have obtained relief of significant import. [Respondents’] relief affects not only them, but also numerous other institutionalized patients similarly situated. The extent of this relief clearly justifies the award of a reasonable attorney’s fee.” Id., at 231.

These findings represent a commendable effort to explain the fee award. Given the interrelated nature of the facts and legal theories in this case, the District Court did not err in refusing to apportion the fee award mechanically on the basis of respondents’ success or failure on particular issues.¹³ And given the findings with respect to the level of respondents’ success, the District Court’s award may be consistent with our holding today.

We are unable to affirm the decisions below, however, because the District Court’s opinion did not properly consider the relationship between the extent of success and the amount of the fee award.¹⁴ The court’s finding that “the [significant] extent of the relief clearly justifies the award of a reasonable attorney’s fee” does not answer the question of what is “reasonable” in light of that level of success.¹⁵ We emphasize that the inquiry does not end with a finding that the plaintiff obtained significant relief. A reduced fee award is appropriate if the relief, however significant, is limited in comparison to the scope of the litigation as a whole.

V

We hold that the extent of a plaintiff’s success is a crucial factor in determining the proper amount of an award of attorney’s fees under 42 U. S. C. § 1988. Where the plaintiff has failed to prevail on a claim that is distinct in all respects from his successful claims, the hours spent on the unsuccessful claim should be excluded in considering the amount of a reasonable fee. Where a lawsuit consists of related claims, a plaintiff who has won substantial relief should not have his attorney’s fee reduced simply because the district court did not adopt each contention raised. But where the plaintiff achieved only limited success, the district court should award only that amount of fees that is reasonable in relation to the results obtained. On remand the District Court should determine the proper amount of the attorney’s fee award in light of these standards.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

1 Under “physical environment” the court found that certain physical aspects of the Biggs Building were not minimally adequate. 475 F. Supp., at 916-919.

Under “individual treatment plans” the court found that the existing plans were adequate, but that the long delay in preparation of initial plans after patients were admitted and the lack of regular review of the plans operated to deny patients minimally adequate plans. Id,., at 921-922.

Under “least restrictive environment” the court found unconstitutional the delay in transfer of patients from the Biggs Building to the Rehabilitation Unit following a determination that they no longer needed maximum-security confinement. Id., at 922-923.

Under “visitation, telephone and mail” the court found that the visitation and telephone policies at the Biggs Building were so restrictive that they constituted punishment and therefore violated patients’ due process rights. Id., at 923-925.

Under “seclusion and restraint” the court rejected respondents’ claim that patients were given excessive medication as a form of behavior control. The court then found that petitioners’ practices regarding seclusion and physical restraint were not minimally adequate. Id., at 925-928.

2 A prevailing defendant may recover an attorney’s fee only where the suit was vexatious, frivolous, or brought to harass or embarrass the defendant. See H. R. Rep. No. 94-1558, p. 7 (1976); Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U. S. 412, 421 (1978) (“[A] district court may in its discretion award attorney’s fees to a prevailing defendant in a Title VII case upon a finding that the plaintiff’s action was frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation, even though not brought in subjective bad faith”).

3 The 12 factors are: (1) the time and labor required; (2) the novelty and difficulty of the questions; (3) the skill requisite to perform the legal service properly; (4) the preclusion of employment by the attorney due to acceptance of the case; (5) the customary fee; (6) whether the fee is fixed or contingent; (7) time limitations imposed by the client or the circumstances; (8) the amount involved and the results obtained; (9) the experience, reputation, and ability of the attorneys; (10) the “undesirability” of the case; (11) the nature and length of the professional relationship with the client; and (12) awards in similar cases. 488 F. 2d, at 717-719. These factors derive directly from the American Bar Association Code of Professional Responsibility, Disciplinary Rule 2-106 (1980).

4 “It is intended that the amount of fees awarded ... be governed by the same standards which prevail in other types of equally complex Federal litigation, such as antitrust cases[,] and not be reduced because the rights involved may be nonpecuniary in nature. The appropriate standards, see Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, 488 F. 2d 714 (5th Cir.1974), are correctly applied in such cases as Stanford Daily v. Zurcher, 64 F. R. D. 680 (ND Cal. 1974); Davis v. County of Los Angeles, 8 E. P. D. ¶ 9444 (CD Cal. 1974); and Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 66 F. R. D. 483 (WDNC 1975). These cases have resulted in fees which are adequate to attract competent counsel, but which do not produce windfalls to attorneys. In computing the fee, counsel for prevailing parties should be paid, as is traditional with attorneys compensated by a fee-paying client, ‘for all time reasonably expended on a matter.’ Davis, supra; Stanford Daily, supra at 684.” S. Rep. No. 94-1011, p. 6 (1976).

5 Some Courts of Appeals have stated flatly that plaintiffs should not recover fees for any work on unsuccessful claims. See, e. g., Bartholomew v. Watson, 665 F. 2d 910, 914 (CA9 1982); Muscare v. Quinn, 614 F. 2d 577, 579-581 (CA7 1980); Hughes v. Repko, 578 F. 2d 483, 486-487 (CA3 1978). Others have suggested that prevailing plaintiffs generally should receive a fee based on hours spent on all nonfrivolous claims. See, e. g., Sherkow v. Wisconsin, 630 F. 2d 498, 504-505 (CA7 1980); Northcross v. Board of Educ. of Memphis City Schools, 611 F. 2d 624, 636 (CA6 1979), cert. denied, 447 U. S. 911 (1980); Brown v. Bathke, 588 F. 2d 634, 636-637 (CA8 1978). Still other Courts of Appeals have held that recovery of a fee for hours spent on unsuccessful claims depends upon the relationship of those hours expended to the success achieved. See, e. g., Copeland v. Marshall, 205 U. S. App. D. C. 390, 401-402, n. 18, 641 F. 2d 880, 891-892, n. 18 (1980) (en banc); Jones v. Diamond, 636 F. 2d 1364, 1382 (CA5) (en banc), cert. dism’d, 453 U. S. 950 (1981); Gurule v. Wilson, 635 F. 2d 782, 794 (CA10 1980) (opinion on rehearing); Lamphere v. Brown Univ., 610 F. 2d 46, 47 (CA1 1979).

6 The parties disagree as to the results obtained in this ease. Petitioners believe that respondents “prevailed only to an extremely limited degree.” Brief for Petitioners 22. Respondents contend that they “prevailed on practically every claim advanced.” Brief for Respondents 23. As discussed in Part IV, infra, we leave this dispute for the District Court on remand.

7 As we noted in Hanrahan v. Hampton, 446 U. S. 754, 758, n. 4 (1980) (per curiam), “[t]he provision for counsel fees in § 1988 was patterned upon the attorney’s fees provisions contained in Titles II and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. §§ 2000a-3(b) and 2000e-5(k), and § 402 of the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1975, 42 U. S. C. § 1973i(e).” The legislative history of §1988 indicates that Congress intended that “the standards for awarding fees be generally the same as under the fee provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.” S. Rep. No. 94-1011, p. 4 (1976). The standards set forth in this opinion are generally applicable in all cases in which Congress has authorized an award of fees to a “prevailing party.” 8

8 See also Busche v. Burkee, 649 F. 2d 509, 521 (CA7 1981), cert. denied, 454 U. S. 897 (1981); Sethy v. Alameda County Water Dist., 602 F. 2d 894, 897-898 (CA9 1979) (per curiam). Cf. Taylor v. Sterrett, 640 F. 2d 663, 669 (CA5 1981) (“[T]he proper focus is whether the plaintiff has been successful on the central issue as exhibited by the fact that he has acquired the primary relief sought”).

9 The district court also may consider other factors identified in Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F. 2d 714, 717-719 (CA5 1974), though it should note that many of these factors usually are subsumed within the initial calculation of hours reasonably expended at a reasonable hourly rate. See Copeland v. Marshall, 205 U. S. App. D. C. 390, 400, 641 F. 2d 880, 890 (1980) (en banc).

10 If the unsuccessful claim is frivolous, the defendant may recover attorney’s fees incurred in responding to it. See n. 2, supra.

11 We agree with the District Court’s rejection of “a mathematical approach comparing the total number of issues in the case with those actually prevailed upon.” Record 220. Such a ratio provides little aid in determining what is a reasonable fee in light of all the relevant factors. Nor is it necessarily significant that a prevailing plaintiff did not receive all the relief requested. For example, a plaintiff who failed to recover damages but obtained injunctive relief, or vice versa, may recover a fee award based on all hours reasonably expended if the relief obtained justified that expenditure of attorney time.

12 We recognize that there is no certain method of determining when claims are “related” or “unrelated.” Plaintiff’s counsel, of course, is not required to record in great detail how each minute of his time was expended. But at least counsel should identify the general subject matter of his time expenditures. See Nadeau v. Helgemoe, 581 F. 2d 275, 279 (CA1 1978) (“As for the future, we would not view with sympathy any claim that a district court abused its discretion in awarding unreasonably low attorney’s fees in a suit in which plaintiffs were only partially successful if counsel’s records do not provide a proper basis for determining how much time was spent on particular claims”).

13 In addition, the District Court properly considered the reasonableness of the hours expended, and reduced the hours of one attorney by 30 percent to account for his inexperience and failure to keep contemporaneous time records.

14 The District Court expressly relied on Brown v. Bathke, 588 F. 2d 634 (CA8 1978), a ease we believe understates the significance of the results obtained. In that case a fired schoolteacher had sought reinstatement, lost wages, $25,000 in damages, and expungement of derogatory material from her employment record. She obtained lost wages and the requested expungement, but not reinstatement or damages. The District Court awarded attorney’s fees for the hours that it estimated the plaintiff’s attorney had spent on the particular legal issue on which relief had been granted. The Eighth Circuit reversed. It stated that the results obtained may be considered, but that this factor should not “be given such weight that it reduces the fee awarded to a prevailing party below the ‘reasonable attorney’s fee’ authorized by the Act.” Id., at 637. The court determined that the unsuccessful issues that had been raised by the plaintiff were not frivolous, and then remanded the case to the District Court. Id., at 638.

Our holding today differs at least in emphasis from that of the Eighth Circuit in Brown. We hold that the extent of a plaintiff’s success is a crucial factor that the district courts should consider carefully in determining the amount of fees to be awarded. In Brown the plaintiff had lost on the major issue of reinstatement. The District Court found that she had “ ‘obtained only a minor part of the relief she sought.’” Id., at 636. In remanding the Eighth Circuit implied that the District Court should not withhold fees for work on unsuccessful claims unless those claims were frivolous. Today we hold otherwise. It certainly was well within the Brown District Court’s discretion to make a limited fee award in light of the “minor” relief obtained.

15 The dissent errs in suggesting that the District Court’s opinion would have been acceptable if merely a single word had been changed. See post, at 451. We note, for example, that the District Court did not determine whether petitioners’ unilateral increase in staff levels was a result of the litigation. Petitioners asserted that 70%-80% of the attorney time in the case was spent on the question of staffing levels at the Forensic Unit. Memorandum in Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Request for an Award of Attorneys’ Fees, Expenses and Costs 30. If this is true, and if respondents’ lawsuit was not a catalyst for the staffing increases, then respondents’ failure to prevail on their challenge to the staffing levels would be material in determining whether an award based on over 2,500 hours expended was justifiable in light of respondents’ actual success. The District Court’s failure to consider this issue would not have been obviated by a mere conclusory statement that this fee was reasonable in light of the success obtained.