Parker v. Conway

• Decision Date: 17 September 2009
• Docket Number: No. 08-2764.,No. 08-2900.,08-2764.,08-2900.
• Citation: 581 F.3d 198
• Parties: Glenndol Frank PARKER, Appellant v. Co CONWAY Glenndol Frank Parker v. Co Conway Joseph Conway, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

581 F.3d 198

Glenndol Frank PARKER, Appellant v. Co CONWAY

Glenndol Frank Parker v. Co Conway

Joseph Conway, Appellant.

No. 08-2764.

No. 08-2900.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Submitted Under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) May 28, 2009.

Filed September 17, 2009.

Alexander Bilus, Stephen D. Brown, Joshua G. Schiller, Kenneth L. Topping, Dechert, Philadelphia, PA, for Appellant/Cross-Appellee.

Kevin R. Bradford, Claudia M. Tesoro, Office of Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, John G. Knorr III, Office of Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA, for Appellee/Cross-Appellant.

Before: FISHER, CHAGARES, and COWEN, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

CHAGARES, Circuit Judge.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act ("PLRA"), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, imposes quantitative limits on the amount of attorney's fees a court may award a plaintiff who prevails in a civil rights action that he filed while incarcerated. See § 1997e(d)(2)-(3) ("PLRA fee caps" or "fee caps"). The PLRA does not, however, impose similar limits on the amount of attorney's fees a court may award such a plaintiff who filed suit while not incarcerated. This case requires us to determine whether the PLRA fee caps unconstitutionally deny prisoners equal protection of the law, and, if they do not, to review the District Court's application of the fee caps.

The District Court held that the PLRA fee caps are constitutional. We will affirm the District Court's judgment, including its application of the fee caps.

I.

While Glenndol Parker was a prisoner in the Pennsylvania correctional facility at which Joseph Conway was a guard, Parker filed a lawsuit against Conway, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Conway assaulted him in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The District Court appointed counsel to represent Parker. The case proceeded to trial,¹ and a jury found for Parker, awarding him $17,500 in total damages. Parker then filed a motion for attorney's fees, seeking a total of $64,089.

Parker recognized that his motion implicated the PLRA, which provides, in relevant part:

(d) Attorney's fees

(1) In any action brought by a prisoner who is confined to any jail, prison, or other correctional facility, in which attorney's fees are authorized [by virtue of the plaintiff's having prevailed in a § 1983 action], such fees shall not be awarded, except to the extent that—

(A) the fee was directly and reasonably incurred in proving an actual violation of the plaintiff's rights protected by a statute pursuant to which a fee may be awarded . . .; and

(B)(i) the amount of the fee is proportionately related to the court ordered relief for the violation. . . .

(2) Whenever a monetary judgment is awarded in an action described in paragraph (1), a portion of the judgment (not to exceed 25 percent) shall be applied to satisfy the amount of attorney's fees awarded against the defendant. If the award of attorney's fees is not greater than 150 percent of the judgment, the excess shall be paid by the defendant.

(3) No award of attorney's fees in an action described in paragraph (1) shall be based on an hourly rate greater than 150 percent of the hourly rate established under section 3006A of Title 18 for payment of court-appointed counsel.

§ 1997e(d).

Parker argued to the District Court that the PLRA fee caps unconstitutionally discriminate against successful prisoner litigants because 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b), which governs an attorney's fee award made to a prevailing civil rights plaintiff who was not incarcerated at the time he filed suit, requires only that the award be "reasonable." Therefore, Parker contended, the court should not use the fee caps to compute his attorney's fee award. Conway disagreed. Conway also argued that the provision requiring a court to apply "a portion of the judgment (not to exceed 25 percent)" to satisfy the attorney's fee award compels the court to apply the full 25 percent whenever the attorney's fee award is greater than 25 percent of the judgment, as it is in this case.

The District Court rejected Parker's constitutional argument, applied the fee caps, and awarded him $26,250, an amount equal to § 1997e(d)(2)'s limit of 150 percent of the total judgment (rather than the $64,089 he requested). Appendix ("App.") 1 & n.1. The District Court also rejected Conway's construction of the statute and applied approximately 18 percent of Parker's total judgment to satisfy the attorney's fee award (rather than the 25 percent Conway requested). App. 2. Parker appealed, and Conway cross-appealed.

II.

The District Court had jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331. We have jurisdiction over both Parker's appeal and Conway's cross-appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 636(c)(3), 1291.

We engage in plenary review of the District Court's ruling on the constitutionality of a federal statute. Abdul-Akbar v. McKelvie, 239 F.3d 307, 311 (3d Cir.2001) (en banc) (citing DeSousa v. Reno, 190 F.3d 175, 180 (3d Cir.1999)). We also engage in plenary review of the District Court's legal interpretation of such a statute. Id. (citing Pa. Mines Corp. v. Holland, 197 F.3d 114, 119 n. 2 (3d Cir.1999)).

III.

Subsection (d)(2) of the PLRA limits a prevailing prisoner-plaintiff's attorney's fee award to 150 percent of the judgment, and subsection (d)(3) independently limits the attorney's fee award to 150 percent of the lodestar amount (hours worked multiplied by hourly rate) with an hourly rate equal to the hourly rate the Criminal Justice Act ("CJA") authorizes for court-appointed criminal defense attorneys. Further, subsection (d)(2) also requires the court to apply some portion of the judgment "not to exceed 25 percent" to satisfy the attorney's fee award.

Parker's appeal is an equal protection challenge to the PLRA fee caps. He asserts that Congress's decision to impose these numerical caps on the attorney's fees that a court may award a successful civil rights plaintiff who filed suit while incarcerated— but not on the attorney's fees that a court may award such a plaintiff who filed suit while not incarcerated—denies prisoners equal protection of the law.²

A.

Parker concedes that his equal protection challenge to the PLRA fee caps implicates rational basis review. See, e.g., Parker Br. 13. "[R]ational basis review requires merely that the [statute] be rationally related to a legitimate government objective." Tenafly Eruv Ass'n v. Borough of Tenafly, 309 F.3d 144, 165 n. 24 (3d Cir.2002). The Supreme Court has explained just how much freedom a legislature has in enacting a statute to which rational basis review applies:

The distinctions drawn by a challenged statute must bear some rational relationship to a legitimate state end and will be set aside as violative of the Equal Protection Clause only if based on reasons totally unrelated to the pursuit of that goal. Legislatures are presumed to have acted constitutionally even if source materials normally resorted to for ascertaining their grounds for action are otherwise silent, and their statutory classifications will be set aside only if no grounds can be conceived to justify them. With this much discretion, a legislature traditionally has been allowed to take reform "one step at a time, addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind," and a legislature need not run the risk of losing an entire remedial scheme simply because it failed, through inadvertence or otherwise, to cover every evil that might conceivably have been attacked.

McDonald v. Bd. of Election Comm'rs, 394 U.S. 802, 809, 89 S.Ct. 1404, 22 L.Ed.2d 739 (1969) (quoting Williamson v. Lee Optical of Okla., Inc., 348 U.S. 483, 489, 75 S.Ct. 461, 99 L.Ed. 563 (1955)) (internal citations omitted). Under rational basis review, Congress's judgment "is not subject to courtroom factfinding and may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data." FCC v. Beach Commc'ns, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 315, 113 S.Ct. 2096, 124 L.Ed.2d 211 (1993). Further, rational basis review "is not a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices." Id. at 313 S.Ct. 2096.

Parker argues that Congress's prisoner versus non-prisoner classification does not rationally relate to any legitimate government objective.

B.

Parker's is not the first equal protection challenge to the PLRA fee caps to come before us. In Collins v. Montgomery County Board of Prison Inspectors, 176 F.3d 679 (3d Cir.1999) (en banc), this Court, sitting en banc, divided equally over whether the fee cap limiting an attorney's fee award to 150 percent of the judgment irrationally discriminates against prisoners, and we did not reach the merits of the equal protection challenge to the other limiting provisions. Id. at 686.³

Every other court of appeals to address challenges to any or all of the PLRA fee caps in a precedential opinion, however, has rejected the challenges. See, e.g., Royal v. Kautzky, 375 F.3d 720, 725-26 (8th Cir.2004); Riley v. Kurtz, 361 F.3d 906, 917 (6th Cir.2004); Johnson v. Daley, 339 F.3d 582, 598 (7th Cir.2003) (en banc); Jackson v. State Bd. of Pardons and Paroles, 331 F.3d 790, 797-98 (11th Cir.2003); Robinson v. Hager, 292 F.3d 560, 563 n. 2 (8th Cir.2002); Foulk v. Charrier, 262 F.3d 687, 704 (8th Cir.2001); Walker v. Bain, 257 F.3d 660, 669-70 (6th Cir.2001); Hadix v. Johnson, 230 F.3d 840, 846 (6th Cir.2000); Boivin v. Black, 225 F.3d 36, 46 (1st Cir.2000); Madrid v. Gomez, 190 F.3d 990, 996 (9th Cir.1999). We join them. This litany of court of appeals precedent offers multiple legitimate government objectives on which we could focus. One such government objective will suffice, however. See McDonald, 394 U.S. at 809, 89 S.Ct. 1404.

Congress could have legitimately intended to reduce the variability in attorney's fee awards. Johnson, 339 F.3d at 593-94. Congress could have rationally believed that reasonableness, § 1997e(d)(1)(A), and...