Amicus Curiae Brief — Gerald F. Lackey, in His Official Capacity as the Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, Petitioner v. Damian Stinnie, et al.

No. 23-621

In the

Supreme Court of the United States

GERALD F. LACKEY, IN HIS OFFICIAL

CAPACITY AS THE COMMISSIONER OF THE

VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLES,

Petitioner,

v.

DAMIAN STINNIE, et al.,

Respondents.

On Writ of Certiorari to the United States

Court of A ppeals for the Fourth Circuit

BRIEF OF THE STATES OF GEORGIA, ALABAMA,

ARKANSAS, FLORIDA, IDAHO, INDIANA, IOWA,

KANSAS, LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI, MISSOURI,

MONTANA, NEBRASKA, NORTH DAKOTA, OHIO,

OKLAHOMA, SOUTH CAROLINA, SOUTH DAKOTA,

TENNESSEE, TEXAS, UTAH, AND WEST VIRGINIA

AS AMICI CURIAE SUPPORTING PETITIONER

Christopher M. Carr

Attorney General

Stephen J. Petrany

Solicitor General

Counsel of Record

Ross W. Bergethon

Principal Deputy

Solicitor General

Paul R. Draper

Deputy Solicitor General

Office of the Georgia

Attorney General

40 Capitol Square, SW

Atlanta, Georgia 30334

(404) 458-3546

spetrany@law.ga.gov

Counsel for Amici

116734

i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

TABLE OF CITED AUTHORITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

INTERESTS OF THE AMICI CURIAE . . . . . . . . . . . 1

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

ARGUMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

I.

The Court should make clear that a party

is “prevailing” under § 1988(b) only if it has

won a final judgment on the merits . . . . . . . . . . . 3

II. Anything short of a clear-cut rule poses

a variety of negative consequences for

States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

A. The existing tests lead to uncertainty

and unpredictability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

B. States have had to pay millions in

attorney’s fees in cases where they

never actually lost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

C. Messy and unpredictable tests for

fee eligibility impose needless costs

on the States and their residents . . . . . . . . 20

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

ii

TABLE OF CITED AUTHORITIES

Page

CASES

Amawi v. Paxton,

48 F.4th 412 (5th Cir. 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Benson Hotel Corp. v. Woods,

168 F.2d 694 (8th Cir. 1948) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v.

W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Res.,

532 U.S. 598 (2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,

10, 13, 20, 22

Chrysafis v. Marks,

No. 21-cv-2516,

2023 WL 6158537 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 21, 2023) . . . 15, 16

Citigroup Glob. Mkts., Inc. v.

VCG Special Opportunities Master Fund Ltd.,

598 F.3d 30 (2d Cir. 2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 13

Common Cause Georgia v.

Secretary, State of Georgia,

17 F.4th 102 (11th Cir. 2021) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 23

Common Cause/Georgia v. Billups,

406 F. Supp. 2d 1326 (N.D. Ga. 2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Common Cause/Georgia v. Billups,

504 F. Supp. 2d 1333 (N.D. Ga. 2007) . . . . . . . . . 15, 23

iii

Cited Authorities

Page

Common Cause/Georgia v. Billups,

No. 4:05-cv-0201,

2007 WL 9723985 (N.D. Ga. Dec. 27, 2007) . . . . 15, 23

Davis v. Abbott,

781 F.3d 207 (5th Cir. 2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Davis v. Perry,

991 F. Supp. 2d 809 (W.D. Tex. 2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Dearmore v. City of Garland,

519 F.3d 517 (5th Cir. 2008) . . . . . . . . . 3, 10, 12, 13, 23

DiMartile v. Hochul,

80 F.4th 443 (2d Cir. 2023) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Douglas v. District of Columbia,

67 F. Supp. 3d 36 (D.D.C. 2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Evans v. Jeff D.,

475 U.S. 717 (1986) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21, 22

Green Haven Prison Preparative Meeting of

the Religious Soc’y of Friends v. N.Y. State

Dep’t of Corr. & Cmty. Supervision,

16 F.4th 67 (2d Cir. 2021) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Hanrahan v. Hampton,

446 U.S. 754 (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

iv

Cited Authorities

Page

Hewitt v. Helms,

482 U.S. 755 (1987) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Higher Taste, Inc. v. City of Tacoma,

717 F.3d 712 (9th Cir. 2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Hoosier Energy Rural Elec. Coop. v.

John Hancock Life Ins. Co.,

582 F.3d 721 (7th Cir. 2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

In re Witness Before Special Grand Jury 2000-2,

288 F.3d 289 (7th Cir. 2002) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Kansas Judicial Watch v. Stout,

653 F.3d 1230 (10th Cir. 2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 16, 17

Kansas Judicial Watch v. Stout,

No. 06-4056,

2012 WL 1033634 (D. Kan. Mar. 27, 2012) . . . . . . . . 17

Marek v. Chesny,

473 U.S. 1 (1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

McQueary v. Conway,

614 F.3d 591 (6th Cir. 2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Mock v. Garland,

75 F.4th 563 (5th Cir. 2023) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Niz-Chavez v. Garland,

593 U.S. 155 (2021) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

v

Cited Authorities

Page

Northern Cheyenne Tribe v. Jackson,

433 F.3d 1083 (8th Cir. 2006) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 11

People Against Police Violence v.

City of Pittsburgh,

520 F.3d 226 (3d Cir. 2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17, 23

Reilly v. City of Harrisburg,

858 F.3d 173 (3d Cir. 2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Rogers Group, Inc. v. City of Fayetteville,

683 F.3d 903 (8th Cir. 2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 17

Select Milk Producers, Inc. v. Johanns,

400 F.3d 939 (D.C. Cir. 2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Serono Labs., Inc. v. Shalala,

158 F.3d 1313 (D.C. Cir. 1998) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Sinapi v. R.I. Bd. of Bar Exam’rs,

910 F.3d 544 (1st Cir. 2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Singer Mgmt. Consultants, Inc. v. Milgram,

650 F.3d 223 (3d Cir. 2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Smyth ex rel. Smyth v. Rivero,

282 F.3d 268 (4th Cir. 2002) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 6, 7, 10

Sole v. Wyner,

551 U.S. 74 (2007) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 5, 7, 8

vi

Cited Authorities

Page

Stinnie v. Holcomb,

77 F.4th 200 (4th Cir. 2023) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 5, 7

Stinnie v. Holcomb,

No. 3:16-cv-00044 (W.D. Va. Apr. 23, 2019) . . . . . . . . 7

Tennessee State Conference of NAACP v.

Hargett,

53 F.4th 406 (6th Cir. 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 16

Tennessee State Conference of NAACP v.

Hargett,

No. 3:19-cv-00365,

2021 WL 4441262 (M.D. Tenn. Sept. 28, 2021) . . . . 16

Tex. State Tchr. Ass’n v.

Garland Indep. Sch. Dist.,

489 U.S. 782 (1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 9, 12, 13, 20

Tri-City Community Action Program, Inc. v.

City of Malden,

680 F. Supp. 2d 306 (D. Mass. 2010) . . . . . . . . . . 18, 19

Univ. of Tex. v. Camenisch,

451 U.S. 390 (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Watson v. County of Riverside,

300 F.3d 1092 (9th Cir. 2002) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17, 18

vii

Cited Authorities

Page

STATUTES, RULES AND REGULATIONS

5 U.S.C. § 1221(g)(2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

5 U.S.C. § 1221(g)(3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

5 U.S.C. § 7701(b)(2)(A) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

8 U.S.C. § 1324b(h) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

15 U.S.C. § 1117(a) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

18 U.S.C. § 1864(e) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(3)(B)(i) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

42 U.S.C. § 1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

42 U.S.C. § 1988 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 2, 3, 8, 11, 14, 18, 19

42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 2, 3, 7, 9

42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

42 U.S.C. § 3613(c)(2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 19

42 U.S.C. § 12205 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

viii

Cited Authorities

Page

52 U.S.C. § 10310(e) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 19

OTHER AUTHORITIES

11 A Ch a rle s A l a n Wr i ght & A r t hu r R .

Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure

§ 2948.3 (3d ed. 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Prevailing Par ty, Black’s Law Dictionary

(rev. 4th ed. 1968) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Steven K. Berenson, Public Lawyers, Private

Values: Can, Should, and Will Government

L a w ye r s Se r v e t h e Pu b li c In t e r e s t?,

41 B.C. L. Rev. 789 (2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

1

INTERESTS OF THE AMICI CURIAE

This case is about how to interpret the term

“prevailing parties,” the statutory threshold for deciding

when parties in certain civil rights lawsuits are eligible

for attorney’s fees. 42 U.S.C. § 1988. The States have

obvious sovereign interests in the proper construction of

this threshold because state officials are often defendants

in these cases, and the States will inevitably pay any fee

awards against them. States have had to pay out millions

in attorney’s fees on the basis of nothing more than district

courts granting preliminary injunctions—even though a

preliminary injunction is just a litigation order designed

to maintain a court’s ability to ultimately decide the case.

This is atextual, costly, provides terrible incentives, and

the Court should reverse the Fourth Circuit’s erroneous

decision to the contrary.

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT

Section 1988 gives courts discretion to award attorney

fees to the “prevailing party” in certain civil rights

cases. 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). Although the statute does

not define “prevailing party,” this Court has made clear

that attorney fees are warranted “only when a party has

prevailed on the merits of at least some of his claims,”

and that a “defendant’s voluntary change in conduct . . .

lacks the necessary judicial imprimatur on the change”

to make that plaintiff a prevailing party, Buckhannon

Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Hum.

Res., 532 U.S. 598, 603, 605 (2001) (quoting Hanrahan v.

Hampton, 446 U.S. 754, 758 (1980)). Nonetheless, several

circuits award attorney fees when the plaintiffs obtain a

preliminary injunction but the case is mooted before a

2

final ruling. The Court should hold that such awards are

beyond the scope of § 1988 and adopt a bright-line rule

that a party prevails for purposes of § 1988(b) only upon

securing a final judgment on the merits.

That approach would be consistent with both the

statutory text and the Court’s own precedent on § 1988.

“Prevailing party” is a legal term of art, and at the time

of the fee-provision’s passage, it was widely understood

to mean the party who wins the lawsuit after a “judicial

finding of liability.” Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 614 (Scalia,

J., concurring). And this Court’s precedents make

clear that a party is not a “prevailing party” entitled

to attorney’s fees unless the party secures relief that is

both (1) court-ordered and (2) enduring. Id. at 604; Sole v.

Wyner, 551 U.S. 74, 86 (2007). Preliminary injunctions do

not satisfy these requirements. They are simply tools for

courts to preserve the status quo during the course of the

suit. While the preliminary-injunction analysis involves

some examination of the merits, that determination is

“necessarily abbreviated,” and is weighed along with other

factors including the likelihood of irreparable harm to the

plaintiff. Smyth ex rel. Smyth v. Rivero, 282 F.3d 268, 276

(4th Cir. 2002), overruled by Stinnie v. Holcomb, 77 F.4th

200 (4th Cir. 2023) (en banc). A preliminary injunction,

in other words, “does not definitively decide the merits

of anything,” Stinnie, 77 F.4th at 227 (Quattlebaum,

J., dissenting), so a plaintiff who obtains one is not a

“prevailing party” unless she also goes on to win a final

judgment on the merits.

The importance of adopting a clear definition

of “prevailing party” is underscored by the current

patchwork of tests that have developed among the

3

circuit courts. Those tests turn on a variety of subjective

inquiries, such as whether the preliminary-injunction

inquiry was sufficiently merits based, see, e.g., Northern

Cheyenne Tribe v. Jackson, 433 F.3d 1083, 1086 (8th Cir.

2006), or whether the injunction “cause[d] the defendant

to moot the action,” Dearmore v. City of Garland, 519

F.3d 517, 524 (5th Cir. 2008). A host of recent examples

show that these concerns are far from abstract. States

regularly face large fee awards based solely on the

issuance of a preliminary injunction early in the case.

The circuit courts’ unstable and often contradictory tests

impose needless costs on the States and their residents

in the form of protracted secondary litigation over fees.

This uncertainty then complicates the States’ litigation

and policy decisions, and it creates a perverse incentive

to continue litigating cases to final judgment to avoid

spending the public’s money on attorney’s fees.

The Court should hold that that the grant of a

preliminary injunction, standing alone, is not a basis for

awarding fees under § 1988, because only a final judgment

is sufficient.

ARGUMENT

I.

The Court should make clear that a party is

“prevailing” under § 1988(b) only if it has won a

final judgment on the merits.

Section 1988 is an exception to the “American Rule”

under which parties typically bear their own attorney

fees. Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 602. It authorizes courts to

award a reasonable attorney’s fee to a “prevailing party”

in civil rights actions. 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b).

4

“Prevailing party” is a legal “term of art [that]

has traditionally . . . meant the party that wins the

suit or obtains a finding (or an admission) of liability.”

Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 615 (Scalia, J., concurring); see

also id. at 610 (“‘Prevailing party’ is not some newfangled

legal term invented for use in late-20th-century feeshifting statutes.”). Statutory terms are defined according

to their meaning at the time of enactment, Niz-Chavez

v. Garland, 593 U.S. 155, 160 (2021), and when Congress

enacted the fee statute in 1976, Black’s Law Dictionary

defined the term as “one of the parties to a suit who

successfully prosecutes the action or successfully defends

against it, prevailing on the main issue, even though not

to the extent of his original contention,” Prevailing Party,

Black’s Law Dictionary (rev. 4th ed. 1968); see also id.

(further defining “prevailing party” as “[t]he one in whose

favor the decision or verdict is rendered and judgment

entered,” and “[t]he party ultimately prevailing when the

matter is ultimately set at rest”).

Congress has confirmed that reading through its

frequent usage of the phrase “in a context that presumes

the existing of a judicial ruling.” Buckhannon, 532 U.S.

at 614 (Scalia, J. concurring); see, e.g., 5 U.S.C. § 1221(g)

(2) (“[i]f an employee . . . is the prevailing party . . .

and the decision is based on a finding of a prohibited

personnel practice”); § 1221(g)(3) (providing for an award

of attorney’s fees to the “prevailing party,” “regardless

of the basis of the decision”); 5 U.S.C. § 7701(b)(2)(A)

(allowing the prevailing party to obtain an interlocutory

award of the “relief provided in the decision”); 8 U.S.C.

§ 1324b(h) (permitting the administrative law judge to

award an attorney’s fee to the prevailing party “if the

losing party’s argument is without reasonable foundation

5

in law and fact”); 18 U.S.C. § 1864(e) (allowing the district

court to award the prevailing party its attorney’s fee “in

addition to monetary damages”).

The Court’s “prevailing party” precedents reflect

that understanding. Read together, they impose two basic

requirements for fee eligibility. First, the party must have

won a “court-ordered ‘change in the legal relationship

between’” the parties. Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 604

(quoting Tex. State Tchr. Ass’n v. Garland Indep. Sch.

Dist. (Garland), 489 U.S. 782, 792 (1989)) (alterations

adopted). Thus, Buckhannon rejected the circuit courts’

“catalyst theory” of fee eligibility, under which they had

allowed a fee award “if it achieves the desired result

because the lawsuit brought about a voluntary change

in the defendant’s conduct.” Id. at 601. Second, the

requisite court-ordered change in legal relationship

must be “enduring,” in the sense that the ordered relief

lives on after the case is closed. Sole, 551 U.S. at 86.

In Sole, for example, winning a preliminary injunction

against enforcement of a state rule prohibiting nudity in

state parks did not make the plaintiff a prevailing party

because by the end of the case, she had lost on the merits

and the challenged rule remained in place. Id. In short,

a “prevailing party” is one who, at the end of the day,

wins the lawsuit; they get their desired court-ordered

and enduring change in the legal relationship between

the parties. The upshot, as the dissent below noted, is

“that to prevail, a party must achieve final, not temporary

success.” Stinnie, 77 F.4th at 221.

Preliminar y injunctions do not satisfy these

requirements. For one, they are by definition preliminary:

“The purpose of a preliminary injunction is merely to

6

preserve the relative positions of the parties until a trial

on the merits can be held.” Univ. of Tex. v. Camenisch, 451

U.S. 390, 395 (1981); see also Benson Hotel Corp. v. Woods,

168 F.2d 694, 696 (8th Cir. 1948) (“The application for such

an injunction does not involve a final determination on the

merits; in fact, the purpose of an injunction pendente lite

is not to determine any controverted right, but to prevent

. . . the doing of any act pending the final determination

of the action whereby rights may be threatened or

endangered. . . .”). And while the preliminary-injunction

analysis does involve some inquiry into the merits, that

inquiry “is necessarily abbreviated.” Smyth, 282 F.3d at

276. The plaintiff must typically demonstrate something

between “a ‘substantial question’” and a “substantial

likelihood of success.” Id.

But even this required showing is not fixed; it can

vary according to the strength of the other preliminaryinjunction factors. Id. at 277. See, e.g., Green Haven Prison

Preparative Meeting of the Religious Soc’y of Friends v.

N.Y. State Dep’t of Corr. & Cmty. Supervision, 16 F.4th

67, 78 (2d Cir. 2021) (explaining that a comparatively

weak likelihood of success on the merits will suffice if

the equitable factors “tip[ ] decidedly in favor of the

moving party”); Mock v. Garland, 75 F.4th 563, 587 (5th

Cir. 2023) (noting that courts use a “sliding scale” rather

than assigning a “fixed quantitative value” to each of

the factors). “The interplay of these equitable and legal

considerations and the less stringent assessment of the

merits of claims that are part of the preliminary injunction

context belie the assertion that [a grant of a preliminary

injunction is] an ‘enforceable judgment on the merits’ or

something akin to one for prevailing party purposes.”

Smyth, 282 F.3d at 277 (quoting Buckhannon, 532 U.S.

at 604).

7

The preliminary-injunction merits analysis is thus

more like a “prediction of a probable, but necessarily

uncertain, outcome.” Id. at 276. Things can and do change

as lawsuits progress—new facts come to light, defenses

are developed, etc. That means a preliminary injunction

“does not definitively decide the merits of anything.”

Stinnie, 77 F.4th at 227. It is instead an “ephemeral”

victory, Sole, 551 U.S. at 86, and does not render a plaintiff

a prevailing party for purposes of § 1988(b).

The ruling below upends these principles. The district

court’s preliminary injunction was not an enduring victory

for the plaintiffs because it provided only temporary

relief pending the district court’s resolution of their

request for a permanent injunction. Stinnie, 77 F.4th at

203–04. Indeed, the preliminary injunction was in effect

for less than four months before the Virginia General

Assembly, on its own initiative, paused enforcement of

the State’s license suspension scheme. Id. at 204; Doc.

143 at 9, Stinnie v. Holcomb, No. 3:16-cv-00044 (W.D.

Va. Apr. 23, 2019). In other words, the plaintiffs may

have “got[ten] what they wanted” eventually, but “they

did not get what they wanted because a federal court

decided the merits of their challenge.” Stinnie, 77 F.4th

at 227 (Quattlebaum, J., dissenting); see also id. at 228

(noting that the district court’s preliminary injunction

was necessarily “ephemeral” (quoting Sole, 551 U.S. at

86)). And the real-world outcome that actually did end the

lawsuit was not court-ordered; it resulted instead from

Virginia’s independent and voluntary decision to amend

its laws. Id. at 228.

Sole and Buckhannon respectively held that neither

of these circumstances is enough to make someone a

8

“prevailing party.” See Sole, 551 U.S. at 84, 86 (precluding

fee awards where the plaintiff ’s initial victory is

“ephemeral” and has “no preclusive effect in the continuing

litigation”); Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 606 (“Never have

we awarded attorney’s fees for a nonjudicial ‘alteration

of actual circumstances.’” (citation omitted)). Cobbling

together the combination—a preliminary injunction that

does not provide enduring relief, and a desired outcome

that did not come from a court order—as a recipe for

attorney’s fees conflicts with those clear holdings.

At bottom, preliminary injunctions are no different

from any of the various other rulings that occur throughout

a typical lawsuit. Discovery orders can so significantly

alter the evidentiary landscape, and with it one side’s

likelihood of success on the merits, as to induce settlement

or a voluntary change in the challenged behavior. (For

that matter, they can also result in an award of monetary

sanctions.) The same holds true for motions in limine at

trial. The inclusion or exclusion of key testimony can be

devastating to the losing party’s case. But no matter these

rulings’ impact on one side’s chances to win, they are not

final in the sense of bringing about an “enduring change

in the legal relationship” between the parties. See Sole,

551 U.S. at 86 (quotation omitted) (noting that plaintiff who

secured initial preliminary injunction had “won a battle

but lost the war”). So too with preliminary injunctions.

Consistent with the plain language of § 1988, the

Court’s precedents always require a plaintiff to win

(1) court-ordered (2) enduring relief before they are a

“prevailing party.” Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 605–06

9

(explaining that the “plain language of the statutes”

forbids awarding “attorney’s fees for a nonjudicial

‘alteration of actual circumstances’” (citation omitted));

Garland, 489 U.S. at 792 (holding that the “ordinary”

meaning of § 1988 means that the plaintiff prevails only if

he can “point to a resolution of the dispute which changes

the legal relationship between itself and the defendant”);

Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U.S. 755, 760 (1987) (“Respect for

ordinary language requires that a plaintiff receive at least

some relief on the merits of his claim before he can be said

to prevail.”). Under these principles, § 1988(b) permits

awards of attorney fees only for final judgments on the

merits, not for preliminary injunctions.1

II. Anything short of a clear-cut rule poses a variety

of negative consequences for States.

It is important for the Court to provide a clear answer

to this question because the circuit courts have not: their

tests for determining fee eligibility are subjective and

unpredictable. Courts applying these tests frequently

saddle States with large attorney fee awards in cases, like

this one, where the plaintiff was granted a preliminary

injunction. Apart from these fees themselves, the lack of

a clear test also imposes a variety of other burdens and

misincentives on the States and their residents.

1. The Court has held that consent decrees are a species

of final, enforceable judgments for purposes of § 1988(b).

Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 604. Private settlements, by contrast,

are not. Id. at 604 n.7. In any event, the Court need not address

those devices to rule that preliminary injunctions are not any

kind of final judgment.

10

A.

The existing tests lead to uncertainty and

unpredictability.

The explosion of civil-rights litigation over recent

decades means that federal courts must frequently

consider the question of fee eligibility for preliminary

injunction winners. It stands to reason that the rule for

deciding it, like standards for fee eligibility in general,

should be clear and easy to administer. See Buckhannon,

532 U.S. at 610. But most circuit courts have not provided

such a rule. In addition to coming up with a number of

different and often conflicting formulations of a rule

to govern fee eligibility, circuit courts have mostly

chosen amorphous, fact-specific rules over bright lines.

Dearmore, 519 F.3d at 521 (“[C]ircuit courts considering

this issue have announced fact-specific standards that are

anything but uniform.”).

Only a few circuit courts have established a bright-line

rule to govern the fee eligibility question presented here.

In the Third Circuit—and, until this case, the Fourth

Circuit—a plaintiff who wins a preliminary injunction

is not a “prevailing party” on that basis alone because

the plaintiff has not won anything on the merits. See

Singer Mgmt. Consultants, Inc. v. Milgram, 650 F.3d

223, 229 (3d Cir. 2011) (en banc); Smyth, 282 F.3d at 277. 2

The First Circuit has a less certain rule, holding that

preliminary relief does not confer prevailing party status,

at least where the opposing party “never receive[s] a fair

2. Even the Third Circuit left room for uncertainty, however.

In Singer, that court described a different case as “that rare

situation where a merits-based determination is made at the

injunction stage” and this did support a fee award. 650 F.3d at 229.

11

opportunity to contest” the merits on a fully developed

record. Sinapi v. R.I. Bd. of Bar Exam’rs, 910 F.3d 544,

551–52 (1st Cir. 2018).

Other circuits’ rules are messier. Under one approach,

while winning a preliminary injunction “usually will

not suffice to obtain fees under § 1988,” “contextual and

case-specific inquiry” may reveal “occasional exceptions.”

McQueary v. Conway, 614 F.3d 591, 604 (6th Cir. 2010); see

also Tennessee State Conference of NAACP v. Hargett, 53

F.4th 406, 410–11 (6th Cir. 2022) (describing “a spectrum

of cases” along which the relief granted ranges from

“fleeting” to “enduring,” the difference being only “one

of degree”). Other tests focus on how “thorough[ly]” the

district court considered the merits of the claim at issue

in granting the injunction. See Northern Cheyenne Tribe,

433 F.3d at 1086; DiMartile v. Hochul, 80 F.4th 443,

451–54 (2d Cir. 2023) (denying prevailing party status

where a preliminary injunction, although supposedly

merits-based, was premised on a “hasty and abbreviated”

analysis). But this approach is inherently subjective—

what, after all, is the line between “abbreviated” and

“reasoned”?—and leads to inconsistent applications.

For instance, the Northern Cheyenne court denied a fee

award after the defendants’ voluntary action mooted the

case because, although the preliminary injunction order

addressed the likelihood of success on the merits, it “did

not discuss whether those claims would entitle the Tribes

to final relief on the merits against the Secretary.” 433

F.3d at 1086. But the same court later upheld a fee award

based on a preliminary injunction that prevented new

quarry regulations from going into effect because the

order “engaged in a thorough analysis of the probability

that [the plaintiff ] would succeed on the merits of its

12

claim,” even though the injunction just maintained the

real-world status quo). Rogers Group, Inc. v. City of

Fayetteville, 683 F.3d 903, 911 (8th Cir. 2012).

Other approaches introduce uncertainty by asking

whether the preliminary injunction was based on an

“unambiguous indication of probable success on the merits”

as opposed to a mere balancing of the equities in favor of

the plaintiff. Dearmore, 519 F.3d at 524; Kansas Judicial

Watch v. Stout, 653 F.3d 1230, 1239 (10th Cir. 2011) (same);

see also, e.g., Select Milk Producers, Inc. v. Johanns, 400

F.3d 939, 948 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (affirming fee award to a

preliminary injunction winner and emphasizing that the

“Milk Producers secured a preliminary injunction in this

case largely because their likelihood of success on the

merits was never seriously in doubt”). But a preliminary

injunction, by its “very nature,” is a “flexible” remedy that

precludes “wooden application of the probability test.”

Citigroup Glob. Mkts., Inc. v. VCG Special Opportunities

Master Fund Ltd., 598 F.3d 30, 35–36 (2d Cir. 2010)

(quotation omitted). Deciding whether the district court

examined the merits “serious[ly]” enough in that context

is a fraught endeavor, id., and a particularly “unstable

threshold to fee eligibility,” Garland, 489 U.S. at 791. 3

3. This difficulty is compounded by the “bewildering variety

of formulations” courts use to decide whether the likelihood of

success on the merits is high enough to secure a preliminary

injunction. 11A Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal

Practice and Procedure § 2948.3 (3d ed. 2022) (listing fourteen

different articulations). Many courts allow the requisite likelihood

of success to increase or decrease on a sliding scale depending

on the strength of the other preliminary-injunction factors. See,

e.g., Hoosier Energy Rural Elec. Coop. v. John Hancock Life Ins.

Co., 582 F.3d 721, 725 (7th Cir. 2009) (“[T]he more net harm an

13

In addition to the fuzzy “is it sufficiently meritsbased?” inquiry, at least one circuit has added into

its test the knotty question whether the preliminary

injunction also “cause[d] the defendant to moot the action.”

Dearmore, 519 F.3d at 524; see also Amawi v. Paxton,

48 F.4th 412, 417–18 (5th Cir. 2022) (doubling down on

Dearmore’s causation element). That question pushes

courts not only to assess motives and mental states

of government officials, but also to make a subjective

judgment about just how strong the causative link between

the injunction and the mooting action has to be. Did the

defendants moot the action because they were enjoined,

for some other reason, or for a combination of reasons? If

the latter, which reason did they care about most? This is

hardly the stuff of “ready administrability.” Buckhannon,

532 U.S. at 609–10 (quotation omitted); see also Garland,

489 U.S. at 791 (rejecting the “central issue” test for the

“prevailing party” question because, “[b]y focusing on the

subjective importance of an issue to the litigants, it asks

a question which is almost impossible to answer,” since

it “appears to depend largely on the mental state of the

parties”).

There is no reason to analyze whether a particular

preliminary injunction is the kind of order that should be

subject to attorney’s fees. None of them makes a party

“prevailing.” The Court should put this confusion to rest

by clarifying that a “prevailing party” has won a final

judgment on the merits. Adopting any of the alternatives

discussed above would perpetuate needless uncertainty.

injunction can prevent, the weaker the plaintiff ’s claim on the

merits can be while still supporting some preliminary relief.”);

Serono Labs., Inc. v. Shalala, 158 F.3d 1313, 1317–18 (D.C. Cir.

1998); Reilly v. City of Harrisburg, 858 F.3d 173, 179 (3d Cir. 2017);

Citigroup Glob. Mkts., Inc., 598 F.3d at 36–38 & n.5 (all similar).

14

B. States have had to pay millions in attorney’s

fees in cases where they never actually lost.

States are often ordered to pay large attorney fee

awards in cases in which plaintiffs accomplished no

more than obtaining a preliminary injunction. Here, for

instance, plaintiffs in this case failed to win a merits ruling

on any of their claims against the Commissioner before

Virginia’s independent and voluntary actions mooted their

case. Yet, because the district court had earlier issued

a preliminary injunction, the Fourth Circuit deemed

them “prevailing parties” under § 1988 and put Virginia

on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees

and expenses. See J.A. 458 (requesting $768,491.70 in

appellate fees and expenses alone). The plaintiffs did not

win their lawsuit, but now that it faces the possibility of

a seven-figure fee award, Virginia can hardly be faulted

for thinking it lost.

Unfortunately for the States, Virginia is not an

outlier. Plaintiffs regularly seek, and courts have been

willing to impose, substantial fee awards against state

officials under § 1988 based on this same combination: a

preliminary injunction, and a case that ends without the

plaintiffs having won a judgment.

Take Georgia, for example. In Common Cause/

Georgia v. Billups, the district court issued a preliminary

injunction against enforcement of a voter ID law. 406

F. Supp. 2d 1326, 1377 (N.D. Ga. 2005). But after Georgia

enacted a new law that modified the ID requirement,

the court ultimately denied permanent injunctive relief

because Georgia’s “compelling interest in preventing

fraud in voting” outweighed any burden that the updated

15

ID requirement might have on the right to vote. 504

F. Supp. 2d 1333, 1382–83 (N.D. Ga. 2007), aff ’d in

relevant part, 554 F.3d 1340, 1355 (11th Cir. 2009). So the

plaintiffs didn’t just fail to win a merits judgment; they

lost the case. Yet the State was forced to pay $112,235.03

in fees because the plaintiffs had obtained a preliminary

injunction with respect to the old law. 554 F.3d at 1356;

No. 4:05-cv-0201, 2007 WL 9723985, at *22 (N.D. Ga. Dec.

27, 2007).

More recently, in Common Cause Georgia v. Secretary,

State of Georgia, the plaintiffs argued that security issues

in Georgia’s voter registration system could result in the

erroneous rejection of some provisional ballots. 17 F.4th

102, 105 (11th Cir. 2021). The district court granted a

temporary restraining order—the most preliminary

form of preliminary relief—directing Georgia’s Secretary

of State to take steps to ensure the accuracy of the

November 2018 election results. Id. at 106. Before the

district court could consider the plaintiffs’ request for

permanent relief, however, the State enacted two new

voting laws that resolved the plaintiffs’ concerns, and the

parties agreed to dismiss the action with prejudice. Id.

Based solely on the temporary restraining order, which

the plaintiffs themselves acknowledged was “a very, very

narrow order,” the district court awarded $166,210.09 in

fees and expenses. Id. at 105–06.

Other States, and their political subdivisions too, have

been made to pay large fee awards under the same basic

set of circumstances:

• In Chrysafis v. Marks, the district court actually

denied the plaintiffs’ request to preliminarily

16

enjoin a New York law limiting evictions during the

COVID pandemic and dismissed their case. No.

21-cv-2516, 2023 WL 6158537, at *1 (E.D.N.Y. Sept.

21, 2023). The plaintiffs then secured a temporary

injunction against the law pending appeal, but the

law automatically expired by its own terms before

the plaintiffs’ appeal was resolved. Id. at *2. The

Second Circuit dismissed the appeal as moot, but

New York was subsequently ordered to pay almost

$350,000 in fees and costs—based on nothing more

than an injunction pending appeal. Id. at *3, 12.

• In Tennessee State Conference of NAACP v.

Hargett, the plaintiffs challenged a suite of

Tennessee laws regulating voter registration

drives. 53 F.4th 406, 408–09 (6th Cir. 2022).

The plaintiffs secured a preliminary injunction

halting enforcement of the laws while their

legality was under review, but Tennessee repealed

the challenged laws less than seven months

later—before the plaintiffs won any permanent

relief on the merits—and the parties agreed

to dismiss the case. Id. at 409. Tennessee was

nevertheless ordered to pay roughly $800,000 in

fees and expenses. See No. 3:19-cv-00365, 2021

WL 4441262, at *11 (M.D. Tenn. Sept. 28, 2021).

• In Kansas Judicial Watch v. Stout, candidates

for judicial off ice obtained a preliminar y

injunction preventing the Kansas Commission

on Judicial Qualifications from disciplining them

for responding to a candidate questionnaire. 653

F.3d 1230, 1233–34 (10th Cir. 2011). The Kansas

Supreme Court revised the challenged canons

17

before the district court decided the merits of the

challenge. Id. at 1234. Still, Kansas had to pay

$151,470.08 in fees. See No. 06-4056, 2012 WL

1033634, at *14 (D. Kan. Mar. 27, 2012).

• In People Against Police Violence v. City of

Pittsburgh, the plaintiffs challenged Pittsburgh’s

ordinance regulating parades and crowds in public

forums. 520 F.3d 226, 229–30 (3d Cir. 2008). The

court preliminarily enjoined the ordinance, and

then the city passed a revised ordinance that

satisfied the plaintiffs’ concerns. Id. The city was

still on the hook for $103,718.89 in attorney’s fees.

Id.

• In Rogers Group, Inc. v. City of Fayetteville, the

plaintiff challenged a city ordinance limiting its

ability to operate a limestone quarry just outside

the city limits. 683 F.3d 903, 904 (8th Cir. 2012).

The plaintiff obtained a preliminary injunction,

but the city independently and voluntarily

repealed the ordinance before the court could rule

on the plaintiff ’s request for permanent relief. Id.

Despite the absence of any decision on the merits

of the plaintiff ’s claims, the city was forced to pay

$110,419.71 in fees and costs. Id. at 907.

• In Watson v. County of Riverside, the plaintiff

sought and obtained a preliminary injunction

preventing the county from introducing a

police report in his administrative termination

proceedings. 300 F.3d 1092, 1094 (9th Cir.

2002). The court later granted judgment for the

defendants on all claims except one—on which

18

the court merely denied summary judgment—but

because the administrative hearing was over,

that claim was moot. Id. The county nevertheless

paid $153,988.41 in fees, including fees for postpreliminary injunction work, even though the

plaintiff did not prevail on the legal merits of any

claim. Id. at 1095, 1097.

And those are just § 1988 cases. The same “prevailing

party” language appears in many other federal statutes.

See 15 U.S.C. § 1117(a) (Lanham Act); 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)

(3)(B)(i) (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act);

28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A) (Equal Access to Justice Act);

42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k) (Civil Rights Act of 1964); 42

U.S.C. § 3613(c)(2) (Fair Housing Act); 42 U.S.C. § 12205

(Americans with Disabilities Act); 52 U.S.C. § 10310(e)

(Voting Rights Act).

• In Douglas v. District of Columbia, a plaintiff

sued under the Individuals with Disabilities

Education Act and obtained a preliminary

injunction directing the public school to permit

him to return to and complete a program for atrisk students. 67 F. Supp. 3d 36, 39 (D.D.C. 2014).

Because the plaintiff was allowed to return to

school, the case was mooted before any merits

decision. Id. at 40. But the district court ordered

the school system to pay $17,009.62 in attorney’s

fees and costs under 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(3)(B)(i).

Id. at 39, 44.

• In Tri-City Community Action Program, Inc. v.

City of Malden, the plaintiffs wished to retrofit a

house to bring it into compliance with the ADA.

19

680 F. Supp. 2d 306, 308 (D. Mass. 2010). They

sought and obtained a preliminary injunction

preventing the city from interfering. Id. at 310.

The construction ended, mooting the suit, before

any further litigation occurred. Id. at 310–11. The

City paid $49,999 in fees and costs under 42 U.S.C.

§ 3613(c)(2). Id. at 317.

• And in Davis v. Perry, the plaintiffs challenged a

redistricting plan adopted by the Texas legislature.

991 F. Supp. 2d 809, 815 (W.D. Tex. 2014). The

court enjoined the plan because it had not been

precleared under the Voting Rights Act, and the

court issued its own interim plan for the 2012

election. Id. at 816. After preclearance was denied

by a different district court, the Texas Legislature

passed a new plan, which mirrored the court’s

interim plan, mooting the case. Id. at 818. The

district court ordered Texas to pay $363,378.43 in

fees and costs under § 1988 and § 10310(e) because

the plaintiffs obtained “judicially sanctioned

relief.” Davis v. Abbott, 781 F.3d 207, 213–14 (5th

Cir. 2015). This time, however, the court of appeals

reversed the fee award. Id. at 215–18 (holding

that the plaintiffs were not prevailing parties

because the preliminary relief did not arise from

a prediction of future success on the merits).

In short: this is not an abstract concern for the States.

What happened to Virginia here happens all the time.

20

C.

Messy and unpredictable tests for fee eligibility

impose needless costs on the States and their

residents.

Amorphous, fact-specific tests are not just trouble for

district and circuit courts trying to apply them. Apart

from the actual fee awards discussed above, they are costly

in other ways for States and their officials.

First, these tests impose the same obvious cost as any

“unstable threshold[s] to fee eligibility”: a second major

litigation when the case was supposed to be all but over.

Garland, 489 U.S. at 791. Time and again this Court

has rejected complicated rules for fee eligibility to avoid

subjecting parties to the needless costs—both time and

resources—of litigating over fees. The Court rejected the

“central issue” test for just this reason. Id. (“Creating such

an unstable threshold to fee eligibility is sure to provoke

prolonged litigation, thus deterring settlement of fee

disputes and ensuring that the fee application will spawn

a second litigation of significant dimension.”). Same with

the “catalyst theory” tossed away in Buckhannon, 532

U.S. at 609–10 (rejecting the theory because it required a

“highly factbound” and “nuanced ‘three thresholds’ test”).

Second, these tests frustrate the States’ ability to

make informed litigation and policy decisions. When

deciding whether and how to defend against a lawsuit,

a State must balance a number of competing interests,

including defending duly enacted laws, implementing

effective policies, safeguarding citizens’ rights, and

protecting the public fisc. See, e.g., In re Witness Before

Special Grand Jury 2000-2, 288 F.3d 289, 293 (7th Cir.

2002) (explaining that government lawyers have ethical

21

duties to protect the public interest and the public fisc);

Steven K. Berenson, Public Lawyers, Private Values:

Can, Should, and Will Government Lawyers Serve the

Public Interest?, 41 B.C. L. Rev. 789, 789 (2000). The

State’s exposure to attorney’s fees is an important variable

in that calculus, and it ought to be a controllable one; the

State should remain exposed to a costly fee award only

so long as it continues the litigation, since fees are usually

allowed only if the plaintiff actually wins the case. But

an amorphous test replaces this modicum of control with

uncertainty because it would allow fee awards even when

a State decides to stop litigating—for instance, because

changing a law would better serve the public interest—

after a preliminary injunction is entered. And worse,

unlike before the preliminary injunction, the State can

no longer assess its exposure to a fee award simply by

evaluating the merits of the claims against it. Instead, it

must try to predict the outcome of a subjective, “contextspecific,” and inconsistently applied legal test to figure

out whether amending a law or changing a policy will

also subject the State to a six- or seven-figure fee award.

Finally, in addition to needlessly complicating the

States’ litigation and policy decisions, an amorphous

test allowing for attorney’s fees before final judgment

would distort the States’ incentives in making those

decisions. See Evans v. Jeff D., 475 U.S. 717, 734–35 (1986)

(explaining that uncertainty regarding fee exposure often

prevents settlement, especially in § 1983 litigation where

fee awards often represent “the most significant liability

in the case” (quotation omitted)). The specter of high fee

awards is usually a disincentive to litigate: All else equal,

rational parties will try to avoid paying attorney’s fees of

six or seven figures, and the surest way to avoid that is

22

to resolve the dispute before either party wins the case

(and thus can be called a “prevailing party”). See id. at 733

(explaining that settlement is often in the best interests

of both plaintiffs and defendants because it offers cost

certainty and ensures relief “at an earlier date without

the burdens, stress, and time of litigation” (quoting Marek

v. Chesny, 473 U.S. 1, 10 (1985))). And States should be

especially averse to spending the public’s money on such

fees instead of for the public good.

But that incentive is reversed by unpredictable rules

that can result in fee awards to a preliminary injunction

winner. See id. at 736–37 (predicting that “parties to

a significant number of civil rights cases will refuse to

settle if liability for attorney’s fees remains open, thereby

. . . unnecessaril[y] burdening the judicial system, and

disserving civil rights litigants”). Under the shadow

of such rules, the logical move for States that wish to

avoid spending the public’s money on large fee awards

is to litigate cases to the hilt rather than explore other

options that might better serve the public interest. See

Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 608 (explaining that a defendant

may be deterred from “altering its conduct,” especially

if the conduct “may not be illegal,” if doing so will result

in a fee award). After all, under these rules, the States’

alternatives to continuing litigation—for example,

amending a challenged law or regulation, reversing a

challenged action, or declining to enforce a challenged

policy—could actually lock in a substantial fee award

against them. See, e.g., Higher Taste, Inc. v. City of

Tacoma, 717 F.3d 712, 717–18 (9th Cir. 2013) (affirming a

fee award because the city’s compromise solution with the

plaintiffs “transformed what had been temporary relief

capable of being undone . . . into a lasting alteration of the

23

parties’ legal relationship”); Dearmore, 519 F.3d at 526

(holding that the plaintiff was a prevailing party, despite

not obtaining a final judgment, because the city amended

the ordinance rather than litigating to finality); People

Against Police Violence, 520 F.3d at 234 (same).

Consider, for example, how Common Cause/Georgia

v. Billups and Common Cause Georgia v. Secretary, State

of Georgia have the potential to shape Georgia’s response

to future § 1983 suits. In the former, the court issued a

preliminary injunction against enforcement of Georgia’s

voter ID law. Billups, 554 F.3d at 1346. Georgia then

enacted a new voter ID law, and it ultimately defended

the law successfully. Id. at 1348. Given the district court’s

holding, Georgia might well have prevailed on the merits

had it defended the original law, too. But because Georgia

chose a legislative solution instead, it was rewarded with

a $112,235.03 bill for attorney’s fees. Billups, 2007 WL

9723985, at *22. And in the latter case, although there was

no court order requiring it to do so, Georgia took legislative

steps to remedy the plaintiffs’ concerns about the potential

for error in the State’s procedures for handling provisional

ballots. Sec’y, State of Georgia, 17 F.4th at 106. That left

the State on the hook for $166,210.09 in fees and expenses.

Id. at 105–06. The lesson from these cases is doubly clear:

Even if the public interest might otherwise be best served

by a legislative fix, States should litigate to the bitter end

if they want to protect the public fisc.

Limiting fee awards to true prevailing parties—i.e.,

those who have won a final judgment on the merits—would

eliminate these skewed incentives.

24

CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated above, the Court should reverse

the decision below.

Respectfully submitted,

Christopher M. Carr

Attorney General

Stephen J. Petrany

Solicitor General

Counsel of Record

Ross W. Bergethon

Principal Deputy

Solicitor General

Paul R. Draper

Deputy Solicitor General

Office of the Georgia

Attorney General

40 Capitol Square, SW

Atlanta, Georgia 30334

(404) 458-3546

spetrany@law.ga.gov

Counsel for Amici

June 2024

25

ADDITIONAL COUNSEL

Steve Marshall

Attorney General of

Alabama

Tim Griffin

Attorney General of

Arkansas

A shley Moody

Attorney General of

Florida

Raúl R. Labrador

Attorney General of

Idaho

Theodore E. Rokita

Attorney General of

Indiana

Brenna Bird

Attorney General of

Iowa

Kris Kobach

Attorney General of

Kansas

Elizabeth Murrill

Attorney General of

Louisiana

Lynn Fitch

Attorney General of

Mississippi

A ndrew Bailey

Attorney General of

Missouri

Austin Knudsen

Attorney General of

Montana

Michael T. Hilgers

Attorney General of

Nebraska

Drew Wrigley

Attorney General of

North Dakota

Dave Yost

Attorney General of

Ohio

Gentner Drummond

Attorney General of

Oklahoma

A lan Wilson

Attorney General of

South Carolina

Marty J. Jackley

Attorney General of

South Dakota

Jonathan Skrmetti

Attorney General and

Reporter of Tennessee

Ken Paxton

Attorney General of Texas

Sean Reyes

Attorney General of Utah