Geier v. Sundquist

• Citation: 372 F.3d 784
• Decision Date: 18 June 2004
• Docket Number: No. 02-6400.,02-6400.
• Parties: Rita Sanders GEIER; Patrick J. Gilpin; Ernest Terrell; Harold Sweatt; Phillip Sweatt, Individually and as Next Friend of Phillip Sweatt; Citizens and Residents of the State of Tennessee; Citizens of the United States, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Don SUNDQUIST, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)

Page 784

372 F.3d 784

Rita Sanders GEIER; Patrick J. Gilpin; Ernest Terrell; Harold Sweatt; Phillip Sweatt, Individually and as Next Friend of Phillip Sweatt; Citizens and Residents of the State of Tennessee; Citizens of the United States, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Don SUNDQUIST, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 02-6400.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: April 27, 2004.

Decided and Filed: June 18, 2004.

Lewis R. Donelson III (argued), Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell, Memphis, TN, George E. Barrett (briefed), Edmund L. Carey, Jr. (briefed) Barrett, Johnston & Parsley, Nashville, TN, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Kathleen A. Eyler (briefed), Asst. Atty. Gen., Office of the Attorney General, Nashville, TN, Richard F. Haglund III (argued), Asst. Atty. Gen., Office of the Attorney General, Nashville, TN, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before: COLE and COOK, Circuit Judges; SPIEGEL, District Judge.^*

COLE, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which SPIEGEL, D.J., joined. COOK, J. (pp. 796-98), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

COLE, Circuit Judge.

Appellants, the Geier Plaintiffs, appeal the district court's judgment awarding them $376,587.50 in attorneys' fees pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988 for legal services performed in connection with this civil rights action — ongoing for the past thirty-six years — which led to the desegregation of Tennessee's public higher education system. The Geier Plaintiffs contend that the district court abused its discretion in: (1) declining to award fees pursuant to the "common fund"/"common benefit" method; (2) setting a lodestar rate of $250 per hour where the Geier Plaintiffs had requested and submitted market data supporting an hourly rate of $400; and (3) considering the Johnson factors legally unavailable for establishing and enhancing the lodestar figure. We find no abuse of discretion in the district court's declining to use the "common fund"/"common benefit" method for calculating attorneys' fees. However, because of errors in the district court's analyses concerning the appropriate hourly rate and the Geier Plaintiffs' entitlement to an upward adjustment of the fee award, we vacate the fee award and remand this case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

This action, which was filed in 1968, concerns the desegregation of Tennessee's public universities. The facts and lengthy history of this litigation have been set forth in the prior opinions of this Court and the district court. See Geier v. Sundquist, 94 F.3d 644 (6th Cir.1996); Geier v. Richardson, 871 F.2d 1310 (6th Cir.1989); Geier v. Alexander, 801 F.2d 799 (6th Cir.1986); Geier v. Alexander, 593 F.Supp. 1263 (M.D.Tenn.1984); Geier v. University of Tennessee, 597 F.2d 1056 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 886, 100 S.Ct. 180, 62 L.Ed.2d 117 (1979); Geier v. Blanton, 427 F.Supp. 644 (M.D.Tenn.1977); Geier v. Dunn, 337 F.Supp. 573 (M.D.Tenn.1972); and Sanders v. Ellington, 288 F.Supp. 937 (M.D.Tenn.1968). Because, however, the matter before us benefits from an appreciation of the history and magnitude of this action, we set forth the case's background here.

In 1968, several African-Americans (the "Geier Plaintiffs") sued the Governor of Tennessee, the University of Tennessee ("UT"), Tennessee A & I State University, and various Tennessee educational agencies and officials to enjoin UT from expanding its program at a non-degree-granting educational institution in Nashville. The complaint alleged that any expansion of UT Nashville would affect the efforts of Tennessee State University ("TSU"), a predominantly African-American institution, to desegregate its student body and faculty. The United States intervened as a plaintiff in 1968, requesting more expansive relief sought by the original plaintiffs. The United States asked the court to "order the State defendants to present a plan calculated to produce meaningful desegregation of the public universities in Tennessee." Sanders, 288 F.Supp. at 939. The case soon became the vehicle for the desegregation of state-affiliated colleges and universities throughout Tennessee. In 1973, a group of parents, teachers, and faculty members were allowed to intervene ("Richardson Intervenors"). In 1983, the district court allowed another group of African-American and white TSU faculty members and students to intervene ("McGinnis Intervenors"). Also in 1983, the district court permitted the TSU Alumni Association to appear as amicus curiae.

The district court found that six years elapsed after Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), before racial requirements for admission to Tennessee's public universities and colleges were abolished. Although all of the state's public higher education institutions had non-discriminatory open door admissions by 1968, the district court found that "the dual system of education created originally by law has not been effectively dismantled." Sanders, 288 F.Supp. at 940. Relying on Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968), the district court stated that it was "convinced that there is an affirmative duty imposed upon the State by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to dismantle the dual system of higher education which presently exists in Tennessee." Id. at 942. The court then ordered Defendants to submit a plan "designed to effect such desegregation of the higher educational institutions in Tennessee, with particular attention to Tennessee A & I State University, as to indicate the dismantling of the dual system now existing." Id. Defendants did not appeal.

Defendants submitted a plan to the court that relied primarily on the efforts of predominantly white institutions to expand efforts to recruit black students and faculty. The plan called for TSU to recruit white students and faculty and to develop and publicize academic programs that would attract white as well as black students from the Nashville area. The Geier Plaintiffs and the United States filed objections to the plan, and, after a hearing, the district court found that the plan lacked specificity. Instead of disapproving the plan, however, the district court directed Defendants to file a report showing what had been done to implement each component of the plan.

Defendants' report showed some progress in attracting African-American students to the formerly all-white institutions, but little improvement in the number of black faculty at those schools, and virtually no progress in desegregating TSU. The Geier Plaintiffs filed a motion for further relief, contending that the plan and report failed to offer a scheme for dismantling the dual system of public higher education, as ordered by the court. While that motion was being considered by the district court, a new report showed that TSU remained 99.7% African-American and that its entering class in the fall of 1970 was 99.9% African-American. The district court found that so long as TSU remained overwhelmingly black, it could not be said that Defendants had dismantled the dual system or that they were "in any realistic sense, on their way toward doing so." Geier v. Dunn, 337 F.Supp. 573 (M.D.Tenn.1972).

The district court found that an "open door policy, coupled with good faith recruiting efforts ... is sufficient as a basic requirement" for desegregating institutions of public higher education. Id. at 580 (emphasis in original). However, the court held, where this basic requirement fails to eliminate identifiably "white" and "black" institutions, something more is required. Defendants were ordered to present another plan to the court by March 15, 1972, that would provide for substantial desegregation of the TSU faculty and ensure a substantial white presence on the TSU campus. Id. at 581.

In the subsequent years, Defendants submitted several plans, and the district court ordered that some courses and fields of study be offered exclusively at UT Nashville. Eventually, all of the plaintiffs, including the United States, proposed a merger of TSU and UT Nashville, with TSU as the surviving institution. The district court held a month-long evidentiary hearing on this proposal in 1976. After considering voluminous records and testimony, the district court found steady, but slow progress in attracting black students and faculty to the formerly-white institutions, but, as before, little or no progress in converting TSU from a one-race university. The court concluded that the plans applied in the course of the eight years that the litigation had been active had not worked and showed no prospect of working. The court therefore ordered the merger of TSU and UT Nashville into a single institution under the state's Board of Regents. The district court chose this "drastic remedy" because "the State's actions have been egregious examples of constitutional violations." Geier v. Blanton, 427 F.Supp. 644, 660 (M.D.Tenn.1977).

In affirming the district court, Geier v. University of Tennessee, 597 F.2d 1056 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 886, 100 S.Ct. 180, 62 L.Ed.2d 117 (1979), we held that the pronouncement in Green v. County School Board of an affirmative duty to remove all vestiges of state-imposed segregation applies to public higher education as well as to education at lower levels. Geier, 597 F.2d at 1065 ("[T]he state's duty is as exacting to eliminate the vestiges of state-imposed segregation in higher education as in elementary and secondary school systems; it is only the means of eliminating segregation which differ.") (quotation and citation omitted). We also held that the district court's factual findings were not clearly erroneous, id. at 1067, and that the remedy ordered was within the traditional bounds of equitable relief. Id. at 1068.

A. The 1984 Settlement

The history of the litigation to this point illustrates the arduous path...