Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Saint Paul, City of, The
- Wilhelmina Wright
- 0:19-cv-00358
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 16
In Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Saint Paul, Judge Wright granted in part and denied in part a fee motion, awarding $144,029.33 plus costs and interest.
The plaintiffs received reduced attorneys’ fees, costs, and post-judgment interest from the defendants, the City of Saint Paul and the City of Minneapolis.
What happened
Minnesota Voters Alliance et al. v. The City of Saint Paul et al. involved landlords and the Minnesota Voters Alliance challenging Minneapolis and Saint Paul ordinances that required landlords to provide new tenants with voter-registration information. The court had previously ruled that the ordinances violated the landlords’ First Amendment free-speech rights and barred their enforcement.
The plaintiffs asked for $214,054.96 in attorneys’ fees and costs. The defendants agreed that the plaintiffs were entitled to seek reasonable fees but argued that the requested hourly rates and hours were excessive and that some billing entries were too vague. The court accepted the hourly rates and did not reduce fees for vague entries, but reduced fees for preparing the complaint, summary-judgment filings, and oral argument.
Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright granted in part and denied in part the fee motion. She awarded $144,029.33 in attorneys’ fees, $832.46 in costs, and post-judgment interest on the $144,861.79 total judgment amount under the applicable federal formula.
The detailed version
- Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Saint Paul, City of, The · No. 0:19-cv-00358
- Wilhelmina Wright
- Mar. 23, 2021
Background
The plaintiffs were several landlords in Minneapolis and Saint Paul and the Minnesota Voters Alliance, a Minnesota nonprofit organization whose members included other landlords in those cities. Minneapolis enacted an ordinance in 2016 requiring landlords to provide new tenants with voter-registration information. Saint Paul enacted a similar ordinance in 2018.
The plaintiffs sued in February 2019, alleging in two counts that the ordinances compelled landlords to speak in violation of the First Amendment. In a March 2020 order, the court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, denied the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, declared both ordinances facially unconstitutional, and permanently barred the defendants from enforcing them.
Fee request and legal standard
The plaintiffs sought $214,054.96 in attorneys’ fees and costs, including fees and costs for the underlying litigation and for preparing the fee motion and reply. The defendants did not dispute that the plaintiffs were prevailing parties entitled to seek reasonable fees and costs under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b), but challenged the hourly rates, the number of hours, and the specificity of the billing records.
The court applied the lodestar method, which calculates a presumptively reasonable fee by multiplying the reasonable hours worked by a reasonable hourly rate. The plaintiffs sought $213,222.50 in attorneys’ fees based on 473.4 chargeable hours by two attorneys and one paralegal. The claimed hourly rates were $600 for William F. Mohrman, $550 for Erick G. Kaardal, and $230 for John E. Grzybek.
Hourly rates
The court found the claimed hourly rates reasonable. The plaintiffs supported the rates with prior fee awards, other decisions from the District of Minnesota, a legal-market publication, and a declaration from Daniel J. Biersdorf, a civil litigator familiar with the relevant legal work and market. The defendants did not provide specific counter-evidence or explain their proposed blanket reductions. The court therefore made no reduction based on the hourly rates.
Hours and billing records
The court reduced fees for three categories of work:
- Complaint preparation: The plaintiffs sought $71,142 for approximately 159 hours. The court found that nearly 160 hours was excessive given the complaint’s relative length and simplicity and applied a 50 percent reduction, reducing this amount to $35,571. - Summary-judgment filings: The plaintiffs sought $105,664 for approximately 240 hours. Although the case involved significant issues of first impression, the court found that some research and drafting were excessive or unnecessary and applied a 20 percent reduction, reducing this amount to $84,531.20. - Oral-argument preparation: The plaintiffs sought $16,652.50 for approximately 30 hours. The court found that amount excessive for the narrow factual and legal issues and applied a 75 percent reduction, reducing this amount to $4,163.13.
The court rejected the defendants’ request for a separate reduction based on vague billing entries. It concluded that the records, considered in the context of the straightforward litigation history, allowed the court to determine the nature and purpose of the work and evaluate whether it was reasonably necessary.
The court deducted $69,193.17 from the $213,222.50 in requested attorneys’ fees, resulting in $144,029.33 in reasonable attorneys’ fees.
Costs and post-judgment interest
The court awarded $832.46 in costs under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b), an amount the defendants did not dispute. The court also granted the plaintiffs’ request for post-judgment interest. It ordered interest on the total judgment amount of $144,861.79, calculated under 28 U.S.C. § 1961.
Disposition
The court ordered that the plaintiffs’ motion for attorneys’ fees be granted in part and denied in part. It awarded $144,029.33 in attorneys’ fees, $832.46 in costs, and post-judgment interest on the total judgment amount of $144,861.79. This order addressed the ancillary fee request rather than the merits of the constitutional claims.
Read the full 16-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.