O'Rourke v. Dominion Voting Systems

Opinion

Appellate Case: 21-1442 Document: 010110781446 Date Filed: 12/13/2022 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT December 13, 2022 _________________________________ Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court KEVIN O’ROURKE; NATHANIEL L. CARTER; LORI CUTUNILLI; LARRY D. COOK; ALVIN CRISWELL; KESHA CRENSHAW; NEIL YARBROUGH; AMIE TRAPP,

Plaintiffs,

v. No. 21-1442 (D.C. No. 1:20-CV-03747-NRN) DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS, INC., (D. Colo.) a Delaware corporation; FACEBOOK, INC., a Delaware corporation; CENTER FOR TECH AND CIVIC LIFE; GRETCHEN WHITMER, individually; JOCELYN BENSON, individually; TOM WOLF, individually; KATHY BOOCKVAR, individually,

Defendants - Appellees,

and

MARK E. ZUCKERBERG, individually; PRISCILLA CHAN, individually; BRIAN KEMP, individually; BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, individually; TONY EVERS, individually; ANN S. JACOBS; MARK L. THOMSEN, individually; MARGE BOSTELMAN, individually; JULIE M. GLANCEY, individually; DEAN KNUDSON, individually; ROBERT F. SPINDELL, JR., individually; DOES 1-10,000,

Defendants.

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GARY D. FIELDER; ERNEST J. WALKER,

Attorneys - Appellants. _________________________________

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* _________________________________

Before HOLMES, Chief Judge, TYMKOVICH and ROSSMAN, Circuit Judges. _________________________________

Gary D. Fielder and Ernest J. Walker, the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the

underlying action (“the Attorneys”), appeal from the district court’s order requiring

them to pay the defendants a total of $186,922.50 as sanctions under the court’s

inherent powers, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11, and 28 U.S.C. § 1927.

Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm the award of sanctions

under the court’s inherent powers and § 1927.

BACKGROUND

The plaintiffs sought to pursue a civil-rights class action alleging that the

defendants violated the constitutional rights of every person registered to vote in the

November 2020 election for President of the United States. See O’Rourke v.

Dominion Voting Sys., Inc. (“O’Rourke I”), No. 21-1161, 2022 WL 1699425, at *1

* After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist in the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. 2 Appellate Case: 21-1442 Document: 010110781446 Date Filed: 12/13/2022 Page: 3

(10th Cir. May 27, 2022), cert. denied, -- U.S.L.W. --, 2022 WL 17408191 (U.S.

Dec. 5, 2022) (No. 22-305). They based their standing on their status as registered

voters. See id. For relief, they sought “a declaratory judgment, a permanent

injunction enjoining Defendants from continuing to burden the rights of Plaintiffs

and all similarly situated registered voters, and ‘nominal’ damages of $1,000 per

registered voter, totaling approximately $160 billion.” Id. (citations and internal

quotation marks omitted).

Among the defendants were Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. (“Dominion”),

Facebook, Inc. (now known as Meta Platforms, Inc.) (“Facebook”), and the Center

for Tech and Civic Life (“CTCL”). These three defendants moved to dismiss on

various grounds, including that the plaintiffs lacked standing because they sought to

assert only non-justiciable, generalized grievances. The plaintiffs opposed the

motions to dismiss, but then moved for leave to file an amended complaint that

would add new plaintiffs and new claims, including claims under the Racketeer

Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”). Dominion, Facebook, and

CTCL opposed the motion to amend.

Other defendants included the governors and secretaries of state of Michigan

and Pennsylvania, named in their individual capacities. These four defendants

moved to dismiss, alleging not only that the plaintiffs lacked standing but that the

District of Colorado lacked personal jurisdiction over them. And they opposed the

plaintiffs’ motion to amend, as they were named as defendants in the proposed

amended complaint. Before the district court decided the defendants’ various

3 Appellate Case: 21-1442 Document: 010110781446 Date Filed: 12/13/2022 Page: 4

motions to dismiss, however, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claims against

the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants.

The district court, a magistrate judge presiding by consent of the parties,

entertained argument on the motions to dismiss and the motion to amend. After

hearing from Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL, the district court pressed the

Attorneys on the question of their clients’ standing, specifically whether they could

show any particularized injury.

Ultimately, in light of the voluntary dismissal, the district court denied the

Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants’ motions to dismiss as moot. As to

Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL, the district court held that the plaintiffs failed to

demonstrate standing to pursue their claims because they had not plausibly pleaded

particularized injury, but instead sought to pursue only generalized grievances. It

further held that granting leave to amend would be futile because the proposed

amended complaint also failed to plausibly plead sufficient particularized injury to

overcome the generalized grievance doctrine. The district court thus granted the

defendants’ motions to dismiss, denied the plaintiffs’ motion to amend, and

dismissed the action for lack of Article III jurisdiction.

Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL then moved for an award of their attorney’s

fees under Rule 11, § 1927, and the court’s inherent powers, and the Michigan and

Pennsylvania defendants moved for an award of their attorney’s fees under § 1927

and the court’s inherent powers. After briefing and oral argument before the district

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court, the Attorneys moved for an evidentiary hearing. Noting that the motions

already had been submitted, the district court denied the request as untimely.

The district court granted all the defendants’ motions for sanctions and ordered

the Attorneys to pay the defendants’ fees incurred for preparing and arguing their

motions to dismiss and their oppositions to the plaintiffs’ motion to amend. The

district court subsequently denied the Attorneys’ Federal Rule of Civil Procedure

59(e) motion (except to correct a prior statement that the Michigan defendants had

sought sanctions under Rule 11). The sanctions awards totaled $186,922.50:

$62,930 to Dominion, $50,000 to Facebook, $62,930 to CTCL, $4,900 to the

Michigan defendants, and $6,162.50 to the Pennsylvania defendants.

In the meantime, the plaintiffs appealed from the dismissal of their action.

We affirmed the dismissal for lack of standing, holding that the district court

correctly applied the generalized grievance doctrine. See O’Rourke I, 2022 WL

1699425, at *2. We further upheld the denial of the motion to amend on grounds of

futility. See id. at *3. The Supreme Court denied the plaintiffs’ petition for a writ of

certiorari.

The Attorneys now appeal from the sanctions order.

DISCUSSION

We review a sanction award, whether under Rule 11, § 1927, or the court’s

inherent powers, for abuse of discretion. See Farmer v. Banco Popular of N. Am.,

791 F.3d 1246, 1256 (10th Cir. 2015). “A district court would necessarily abuse its

discretion if it based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law or on a clearly

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erroneous assessment of the evidence.” Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S.

384, 405 (1990).

I. Propriety of Sanctions

A. Rule 11 Sanctions

The Attorneys note that the district court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims

before Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL filed their motions for sanctions. In Roth v.

Green, 466 F.3d 1179, 1193 (10th Cir. 2006), we agreed with an appellant’s

contention “that the motions for [Rule 11] sanctions should have been denied because

they were not filed until after the district court had dismissed the complaint.” The

defendants offer various reasons why it nonetheless was proper to impose sanctions

under Rule 11, but we need not consider these issues further because we affirm the

sanctions awards under the court’s inherent powers and § 1927. Cf. Farmer,

791 F.3d at 1257 (declining to consider sanctions under § 1927 and instead focusing

on sanctions under the court’s inherent powers).

B. Inherent Powers Sanctions

1. Legal Standards

“Federal courts possess certain inherent powers, not conferred by rule or

statute, to manage their own affairs so as to achieve the orderly and expeditious

disposition of cases. That authority includes the ability to fashion an appropriate

sanction for conduct which abuses the judicial process.” Goodyear Tire & Rubber

Co. v. Haeger, 581 U.S. 101, ___, 137 S. Ct. 1178, 1186 (2017) (citation and internal

quotation marks omitted). “[A] court may assess attorney’s fees when a party has 6 Appellate Case: 21-1442 Document: 010110781446 Date Filed: 12/13/2022 Page: 7

acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons.” Chambers v.

NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 45-46 (1991) (internal quotation marks omitted). But

“[b]ecause of their very potency, inherent powers must be exercised with restraint

and discretion.” Id. at 44.

2. Attorneys’ Challenges to Inherent-Powers Sanctions

The Attorneys make two arguments regarding sanctions under the court’s

inherent powers. First, they argue that the district court should not have imposed

inherent-powers sanctions because the defendants did not argue that their conduct fell

outside the scope of Rule 11 and § 1927. Second, they contend that the record does

not support the imposition of inherent-powers sanctions.

i. No Need to Rely on Rule 11 or § 1927

The Attorneys first argue that an inherent-powers sanction was inappropriate

because the defendants did not argue that the Attorneys committed wrongful conduct

that was outside the scope of Rule 11 or § 1927. We have observed, however, that

“Chambers does not require consideration of sanctions under the federal rules before

a court invokes its inherent powers.” Auto-Owners Ins. Co. v. Summit Park

Townhome Ass’n (“Auto-Owners I”), 886 F.3d 852, 858 (10th Cir. 2018).

Chambers states that when there is bad-faith conduct in the course of litigation that could be adequately sanctioned under the Rules, the court ordinarily should rely on the Rules rather than the inherent power. But Chambers adds that a court may impose sanctions by means of the inherent power even if the conduct could also be sanctioned under the Rules.

Id. at 857-58 (ellipses, citation, and internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly,

we reject this argument.

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ii. The Evidence Satisfies the Chambers Standard

The Attorneys further argue that “no evidence exists in the record that

objectively demonstrates that [they] acted improperly, or unprofessional[ly]. In fact,

to the contrary, [they] have filed well-researched and thoroughly documented

complaints and other pleadings.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 47. Regardless of any other

issues involved in this case, however, we need not look beyond the issues of standing

and personal jurisdiction to conclude the district court did not abuse its discretion in

finding that the Attorneys acted “in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for

oppressive reasons,” as required by Chambers.

First, the district court found that “there was no good faith basis for believing

or asserting that Plaintiffs had standing to bring the claims that they did” because

“[t]here was no individual particularized harm alleged,” Aplt. App. Vol. 11 at 2616,

and “[n]o reasonable attorney would have believed Plaintiffs, as registered voters and

nothing more, had standing to bring this suit,” id. at 2617. This finding is amply

supported in the record.

As discussed in O’Rourke I, the plaintiffs did not articulate any cognizable

particularized injury that would establish standing. 2022 WL 1699425, at *2. And it

was evident from the beginning that the plaintiffs faced an uphill battle. As the

district court stated in its merits decision, there was “a veritable tsunami of decisions

finding no Article III standing in near identical cases to the instant suit.” Aplt. App.

Vol. 7 at 1552. Yet the Attorneys’ “efforts to distinguish between this case and the

other dismissed lawsuits were either self-contradictory (claiming that this suit is

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brought against private entities and not government entities) or nonsensical and

precluded by Supreme Court caselaw (suggestion that seeking money damages rather

than an injunction as a remedy makes Plaintiffs’ claimed injury sufficiently

particularized to form a basis for standing).” Id. Vol. 11 at 2616.

At the hearing on the motions to dismiss and the motions to amend, the district

court explicitly gave Mr. Fielder the opportunity to distinguish the many adverse

cases cited by the defendants, but he was not able to meaningfully do so. He also

was not able to meaningfully explain how the proposed amended complaint

established the plaintiffs’ standing. And when the district court asked him to identify

the plaintiffs’ “most supportive” case to establish standing, Aplt. App. Vol. 7

at 1701, he cited Terry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461 (1953), which involved whether a

private entity was engaged in state action, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,

347 U.S. 483 (1954), which held that school segregation was unconstitutional, and

Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780 (1983), which held that a state could not

impose an earlier filing deadline for independent candidates. But those cases neither

address the requirements for standing nor establish that the plaintiffs in this case had

a particularized injury to support standing. He also relied on Uzuegbunam v.

Preczewski, 141 S. Ct. 792 (2021), which held that nominal damages satisfies the

redressability element of standing. Directly contradicting any assertion that

Uzuegbunam addressed injury, however, the Court stated, “[o]ur holding concerns

only redressability. It remains for the plaintiff to establish the other elements of

standing (such as a particularized injury) . . . .” Id. at 802 (emphasis added).

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In short, Plaintiffs’ arguments regarding standing were so inadequate that it

was not an abuse of discretion for the district court to conclude that the claims were

made in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons, such as to

support inherent-powers sanctions. Cf. Collins v. Daniels, 916 F.3d 1302, 1321

(10th Cir. 2019) (upholding Rule 11 sanctions where “Plaintiffs’ standing arguments

ignored controlling precedent” and “Plaintiffs unreasonably attempted to distinguish”

binding authorities regarding standing).

Second, the district court found that there was no good-faith basis for asserting

personal jurisdiction over the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants in the District

of Colorado. This finding too is more than amply supported. The Attorneys concede

that they dismissed their claims against these defendants because “there was,

admittedly, an issue over the Plaintiffs’ ability to establish personal jurisdiction.”

Aplt. Opening Br. at 43. They admitted before the district court that they researched

personal jurisdiction only after receiving the motions to dismiss, at which point they

determined they “could not feel with certainty that [they] could establish personal

jurisdiction.” Aplt. App. Vol. 11 at 2500. And when questioned by the district court,

they could not identify a single case supporting the proposition that a federal court

sitting in State A has personal jurisdiction over an official of State B regarding

actions taken by that official with regard to elections within State B.

The Attorneys contended that the defendants could have consented to personal

jurisdiction in the Colorado district court. But as the district court stated, “[I]t is

inconceivable to have ever thought that state officials of Pennsylvania or Michigan

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would voluntarily waive personal jurisdiction and come to a Colorado federal court

to answer charges about acts taken during the administration of Pennsylvania or

Michigan elections.” Id. at 2588.1 Moreover, if the plaintiffs’ sole hope was that the

defendants would waive personal jurisdiction, the Attorneys could have inquired of

the defendants—before filing this lawsuit—whether there was any possibility of such

a waiver. The answer “no” would have saved both the parties and the district court

the time and expense devoted to the plaintiffs’ claims against the Michigan and

Pennsylvania defendants.

For these reasons, we affirm the imposition of sanctions under the court’s

inherent powers.

C. Section 1927 Sanctions

Under § 1927, “[a]ny attorney . . . who so multiplies the proceedings in any

case unreasonably and vexatiously may be required by the court to satisfy personally

the excess costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees reasonably incurred because of such

conduct.” 28 U.S.C. § 1927. Section 1927 focuses on whether an attorney’s conduct

“imposes unreasonable and unwarranted burdens on the court and opposing parties.”

Braley v. Campbell, 832 F.2d 1504, 1510 (10th Cir. 1987) (en banc). “An attorney

1 The Attorneys object to the district court’s use of the term “state officials” because the plaintiffs sued the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants in their individual capacities rather than their official capacities. This objection is meritless. Given that the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants were state officials, the term is accurate, no matter in what capacity the plaintiffs sued them. 11 Appellate Case: 21-1442 Document: 010110781446 Date Filed: 12/13/2022 Page: 12

becomes subject to § 1927 sanctions by acting recklessly or with indifference to the

law, as well as by acting in the teeth of what he knows to be the law.” Id. at 1511

(internal quotation marks omitted). Because § 1927 applies only to the multiplication

of proceedings, however, it does not extend to the initiation of proceedings (i.e.,

filing a complaint). See Steinert v. Winn Grp., Inc., 440 F.3d 1214, 1224-25

(10th Cir. 2006).

An attorney’s subjective motivations are irrelevant; “any conduct that, viewed

objectively, manifests either intentional or reckless disregard of the attorney’s duties

to the court is sanctionable.” Baca v. Berry, 806 F.3d 1262, 1268 (10th Cir. 2015)

(brackets and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Hamilton v. Boise Cascade

Exp., 519 F.3d 1197, 1203 (10th Cir. 2008) (“Where, ‘pure heart’ notwithstanding, an

attorney’s momentarily ‘empty head’ results in an objectively vexatious and

unreasonable multiplication of proceedings at expense to his opponent, the court may

hold the attorney personally responsible.”). An attorney is expected to exercise

judgment, see Hamilton, 519 F.3d at 1202; Braley, 832 F.2d at 1512, and must

“regularly re-evaluate the merits” of claims and “avoid prolonging meritless claims,”

Steinert, 440 F.3d at 1224. Accordingly, “[c]ontinuing to pursue claims after a

reasonable attorney would realize they lacked merit can warrant sanctions under

§ 1927.” Frey v. Town of Jackson, 41 F.4th 1223, 1245 (10th Cir. 2022); see also

Baca, 806 F.3d at 1278 (“[I]n a meritless case, protracted failure to do anything but

dismiss the case . . . might be sanctionable.”).

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2. Attorneys’ Challenges to § 1927 Sanctions

The Attorneys make two arguments regarding the § 1927 sanctions. First, they

assert that Michigan and Pennsylvania lack standing to seek sanctions because they

sued the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants in their individual capacities, not in

their official capacities. Second, they deny that they unreasonably and vexatiously

multiplied the proceedings.

i. There is No Lack of Standing

The Attorneys assert that the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants

improperly appeared in their official capacities, rather than in the individual

capacities in which they were named in the suit. As best we can tell, they thus

contend that Michigan and Pennsylvania lacked standing to seek sanctions under

§ 1927 because their officials were not named in their official capacities, and

therefore the states themselves were not parties to the suit.

We see no merit to this argument. The Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants

were the ones who sought and obtained sanctions. Although the awards were payable

due to the work of the respective states’ offices of the attorneys general, the

Attorneys have failed to demonstrate any lack of standing by the defendants to seek

sanctions. Notably, the principal ground for awarding § 1927 sanctions to these

defendants—the continued failure to acknowledge lack of personal jurisdiction—

applied whether the defendants were sued in their official capacities or their

individual capacities.

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ii. The Attorneys Multiplied the Proceedings

The Attorneys next argue that they did not “unreasonably and vexatiously”

multiply the proceedings. The district court based its award of § 1927 sanctions on

the “filing of a motion for leave to amend, without addressing the obvious fatal

problems with standing and lack of personal jurisdiction, while attempting to add

RICO claims based on a TIME magazine article that provided no support for such

claims.” Aplt. App. Vol. 11 at 2631-32.

Regarding the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants, personal jurisdiction

was an obvious issue. These defendants’ motions to dismiss highlighted the problem.

And by the time the Attorneys filed the motion to amend, they were aware that these

defendants were not going to consent to personal jurisdiction. Nevertheless, without

addressing personal jurisdiction, the Attorneys moved to file a proposed amended

complaint that continued to name these defendants.2 Given the plaintiffs’ inability to

establish personal jurisdiction over the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants, it was

not an abuse of discretion for the district court to conclude that the Attorneys

unreasonably and vexatiously multiplied the proceedings by failing to dismiss the

claims against them before filing the motion to amend and by naming them in the

proposed amended complaint. See Frey, 41 F.4th at 1245 (“Continuing to pursue

claims after a reasonable attorney would realize they lacked merit can warrant

sanctions under § 1927.”); Steinert, 440 F.3d at 1224 (recognizing an attorney must

2 The proposed amended complaint also named as additional defendants the attorneys general of Michigan and Pennsylvania, in their official capacities. 14 Appellate Case: 21-1442 Document: 010110781446 Date Filed: 12/13/2022 Page: 15

“regularly re-evaluate the merits of their claims and . . . avoid prolonging meritless

claims”).

As for Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL, they all raised the issue of plaintiffs’

standing at an early juncture. For substantially the same reasons discussed above in

connection with the inherent-powers sanctions, it was not an abuse of discretion for

the district court to conclude that the Attorneys unreasonably and vexatiously

multiplied the proceedings by moving to amend their complaint, including adding

RICO claims, without showing that the plaintiffs had standing to bring their claims.

See Frey, 41 F.4th at 1245; Steinert, 440 F.3d at 1224.

For these reasons, we affirm the imposition of sanctions under § 1927.

II. Constitutional Challenges

The Attorneys further argue that the sanctions violate their First Amendment

rights to speak and petition the government for redress of grievances and their Fifth

Amendment right to due process.

A. The Sanctions Did Not Violate the First Amendment

Although “[t]he right of access to the courts is an aspect of the First

Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances,” “the First

Amendment interests involved in private litigation are not advanced when the

litigation is based on knowingly frivolous claims.” Collins, 916 F.3d at 1323

(alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). We have recognized that “the

right to petition is not an absolute protection from liability,” United States v. Ambort,

405 F.3d 1109, 1117 (10th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted), and “the 15 Appellate Case: 21-1442 Document: 010110781446 Date Filed: 12/13/2022 Page: 16

First Amendment is in no way a defense to Rule 11 violations,” King v. Fleming,

899 F.3d 1140, 1151 n.17 (10th Cir. 2018). In the circumstances of this case, where

the plaintiffs’ arguments regarding standing and personal jurisdiction were utterly

baseless, the Attorneys have failed to establish that the district court’s sanctions

violated their First Amendment rights.

B. The Sanctions Did Not Violate Due Process

The Attorneys complain that both the district court’s merits and sanctions

orders were “peppered with disdainful comments toward [the Attorneys] and the

Plaintiffs.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 50. But “judicial remarks during the course of a

trial that are critical or disapproving of, or even hostile to, counsel, the parties, or

their cases, ordinarily do not support a bias or partiality challenge,” Liteky v. United

States, 510 U.S. 540, 555 (1994), and to the extent the Attorneys intended to assert a

due-process violation from impermissible bias or prejudice, they have not shown that

the district court’s remarks went beyond the ordinary case.

The Attorneys further complain that the district court denied their

post-argument request for an evidentiary hearing. While acknowledging that notice

and an opportunity to respond generally satisfies due process in the sanctions context,

see, e.g., Braley, 832 F.2d at 1514, they assert that in this case, due process also

required an evidentiary hearing. We disagree.

“The precise procedural protections of due process vary, depending upon the

circumstances, because due process is a flexible concept unrestricted by any

bright-line rules.” Steinert, 440 F.3d at 1222. It has long been accepted, however,

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that “the sanction inquiry may properly be limited to the record in most instances.”

Braley, 832 F.2d at 1515; see also Collins, 916 F.3d at 1320 n.15 (rejecting argument

“that the Rule 11 hearing was deficient because Plaintiffs should have been allowed

to produce evidence”); White v. Gen. Motors Corp., 908 F.2d 675, 686 (10th Cir.

1990) (“[A]n opportunity to be heard does not require an oral or evidentiary hearing

on the issue. The opportunity to fully brief the issue is sufficient to satisfy due

process requirements.”). Relatively recently, we upheld a sanctions award exceeding

$100,000 that was imposed without any type of hearing. See Auto-Owners Ins. Co. v.

Summit Park Townhome Ass’n (“Auto-Owners II”), 886 F.3d 863, 873 (10th Cir.

2018) (stating that attorneys’ receipt of application for fees and opportunity to

respond satisfied due process). The Attorneys have not shown that this case falls

outside the general rule, particularly when their request for an evidentiary hearing

was untimely.

III. Amount of Sanctions

Finally, the Attorneys attack the amounts of the sanctions awards. They

concede that the awards in favor of the Michigan and Pennsylvania defendants were

reasonable, but they contend that those in favor of Dominion, Facebook, and CTCL

were not. The Attorneys recognize that the district court properly employed the

lodestar method. Further, they accept the defendants’ representations as to the hours

expended and the reasonableness of the hourly rates. They simply believe that

“requiring [them] to pay over $180,000 in attorney fees is excessive and

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unreasonable.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 48. Citing critical remarks by the district court,

they also indicate that the awards amounted to an impermissible punitive sanction.

When a court orders an award of the other side’s attorneys’ fees under its

inherent powers, “such an order is limited to the fees the innocent party incurred

solely because of the misconduct.” Goodyear, 137 S. Ct. at 1184. And we keep in

mind that § 1927’s purpose is “to compensate victims of abusive litigation practices,

not to deter and punish offenders.” Hamilton, 519 F.3d at 1205. The Attorneys,

however, fail to convince us that the district court awarded punitive sanctions, rather

than compensatory sanctions. Although the district court made statements that could

be interpreted as an intent to deter this kind of lawsuit, there is no dispute that the

amounts it ultimately awarded were calculated according to the attorneys’ fees

actually incurred (and, indeed, discounted from there—the district court did not

award the full amounts some of the defendants claimed).

Moreover, the Attorneys fail to convince us that the award was excessive and

unreasonable. “In applying the abuse-of-discretion standard, we consider whether

the district court’s determination appears reasonable in light of the complexity of the

case, the number of strategies pursued, and the responses necessitated by the other

party’s maneuvering.” Auto-Owners II, 886 F.3d at 873. The case was complex,

with the plaintiffs initially pursuing a number of constitutional claims and then

moving to add additional claims, including RICO allegations. They also sought to

represent a nationwide class of registered voters. And although the disposition

ultimately turned on the plaintiffs’ standing and whether they could overcome the

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generalized grievance doctrine, the defendants also had to address other issues—for

example, whether they, as non-governmental entities, could be sued under § 1983,

and in Facebook’s case, the potential effect of Section 230 of the Communications

Decency Act. Moreover, the plaintiffs set extraordinarily high monetary stakes,

requesting “nominal” damages amounting to $160 billion.

For these reasons, the sanctions awards were not an abuse of discretion.

CONCLUSION

We affirm the district court’s sanctions order.

Entered for the Court Per Curiam