Defendant Nicholas Vertullo, a former trustee of the Village of Airmont, New York (“Airmont” or the “Village”), whom a jury found not liable in connection with the Village’s violations of plaintiffs’ civil rights, appeals from so much of an order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Gerard L. Goettel, Judge, as denied his motion under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) for an award of attorneys’ fees against plaintiffs. The district court, although stating its view that the action against Vertullo was unreasonable and
I. BACKGROUND
This matter, an action by plaintiffs Yitzchok LeBlanc-Sternberg, the rabbi of plaintiff Park Avenue Synagogue, Inc., et al, returns to us following appeals in which we, inter alia, reinstated a jury verdict in favor of plaintiffs against the Village for discrimination, and conspiracy to discriminate, against plaintiffs on the basis of their Orthodox Jewish religion, see LeBlanc-Sternberg I,
A. The Events Leading to the Present Action
The evidence at trial included the following. In the mid-1980s, some residents of. Airmont, then an unincorporated area within the Town of Ramapo, New York (the “Town”), objected to Town zoning provisions accommodating the Town’s then-increasing population of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. The Town’s zoning code, inter alia, allowed rabbis, with some restrictions, to use their homes as congregational places of worship (“home synagogues”) in order to permit Orthodox and Hasidic Jews to adhere to certain requirements of their religion. Some of the objecting- Airmont residents formed defendant Airmont Civic Association, Inc. (“ACA”), which pushed for Airmont’s incorporation as a village in order to permit Air-mont to adopt its own zoning code designed to exclude Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. See, e.g., LeBlanc-Sternberg I,
Defendant Robert Fletcher was ACA’s president. Vertullo was a member of ACA and was a close friend and “political ally” of Fletcher. Id. at 419. Vertullo became a member of the ACA board following the resignations of several board members who opposed ACA’s discriminatory agenda. He was appointed to the board principally because of his view, in “general agreement” with the remaining board members (Trial Transcript at 3534), that home synagogues should be prohibited (see id. at 3528-30). While Ver-tullo was an ACA board member, ACA financed proceedings in state court to,block LeBlanc-Sternberg’s application to the Town, for permission to maintain a home synagogue. At a public hearing before the Town’s planning board on another Orthodox Jewish rabbi’s application for a zoning variance, Vertullo read a statement, written by Fletcher and concurred in by Vertullo, in opposition to the variance.
After Airmont residents had voted to incorporate the Village, Fletcher stated at an ACA meeting that “ ‘the only reason we formed this village is to keep those Jews ... out of here.’ ” LeBlanc-Sternberg I,
B. The Adjudication of Plaintiffs ’ Claims ■
Plaintiffs brought the present action against the Village, ACA, and a number of individual defendants, including Fletcher and Vertullo. The complaint alleged, inter alia, that Vertullo and the other defendants had conspired, in violation of 42 U.S.C. §. 1985(3), to violate plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendment and the Fair Housing Act, 42-U.S.C. § 3601 et seq. (“FHA”), by restricting plaintiffs’ freedom to worship and excluding them from Airmont.
Vertullo made several attempts, all of them unsuccessful, to have the claims against him summarily dismissed rather than tried^ First, he moved to dismiss on the ground that the complaint failed to state a claim against him. The district court denied the’ motion. The court noted that “[t]he com-' plaint suggests that ACA was originally formed to achieve the individual defendants’ discriminatory goals and essentially became an instrument of the conspiracy.” LeBlanc-Sternberg v. Fletcher,
Vertullo prevailed, however, before the jury. While finding that plaintiffs’ rights had been infringed by the Village, which had violated the FHA and had conspired to deny them their rights under the First Amendment, the jury concluded that plaintiffs had not proven their claims against the individual defendants. The district' court thus entered judgment in favor of the individual defendants. In addition, the district judge subsequently entered judgment as a matter of law in favor of the Village, based on his perception that the jury’s verdicts were inconsistent and on his own view that the evidence provided no possible basis for the jury’s verdict against the Village. See LeBlanc-Sternberg I, .
Insofar as is pertinent to this appeal, this Court in LeBlanc-Sternberg I reversed the judgment entered in favor of the Village, finding that the district judge was not entitled to substitute his own view of the evidence for that of the jury and that the evidence amply supported the jury’s verdict against the Village; but we affirmed the judgment in favor of the individual defendants, finding no reversible error in the district court’s instructions. Having rejected plaintiffs’ request for a new trial of their claims against Vertullo, we dismissed Vertul-lo’s cross-appeal for judgment as a matter of law as moot.
Following the entry of judgment in his favor, Vertullo had moved for an award of attorneys’ fees pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). He argued that “there was no evidence offered at trial with respect to any action by VERTULLO other than the fact that VERTULLO read a letter of FLETCHER’S at the Planning Board meeting.” (Affirmation of Edmund C. Grainger, III dated April 7, 1994, ¶ 13.) He further contended that
[p]laintiffs and their attorneys certainly knew prior to trial that they did not intent [sic ] to offer any evidence with respect to VERTULLO. Thus, the continuation of the action against VERTULLO, when Plaintiffs and their counsel knew there was no evidence concerning VERTULLO, was not only harassment, but was clearly frivolous.
(Id. ¶ 14.) The district court reserved decision on Vertullo’s motion pending resolution of the appeals.
After our decision in LeBlanc-Sternberg I, the court denied Vertullo’s motion for fees. The court noted that although Vertullo and the other individual defendants had prevailed at trial, a prevailing defendant, unlike a prevailing plaintiff,
may receive fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 only when the Court finds that the action “was frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless, or that the plaintiff continued to litigate it [sic] after it clearly became so.” Christiansburg Garment Co. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Comm’n[],434 U.S. 412 , 422,98 S.Ct. 694 , 700-01,54 L.Ed.2d 648 (1978). .
Memorandum Decision dated October 15, 1996, at 11. The court stated its view that “[a]bout the only evidence offered with respect to Vertullo was that he read .a letter from Fletcher ... at a Planning Board meeting,” id. at 5 n. 4, and that the action against Vertullo
was unreasonable and groundless. However, the plaintiffs’ success on appeal diminishes the lustre of these defendants’ success. Moreover, it clearly suggests that the appellate court (or at least the panel which remanded the case) would not approve fees for the prevailing defendants in any event,
id. at 11.
This appeal followed.
II; DISCUSSION
On appeal, Vertullo contends principally that plaintiffs should be ordered to pay his attorneys’ fees because the district court stated that the claims against him were “unreasonable and groundless.” He argues that that statement constitutes a factual finding that may not be overturned because it is not clearly erroneous, and that the district court was not permitted to deny his request for an award of fees solely on the basis that this Court was likely to reverse such an award. We conclude that Vertullo’s characterization of the court’s statement as a finding of fact is erroneous; that the district court’s characterization of plaintiffs’ claims as “unreasonable and groundless” is contradicted by the record; and that Vertullo was not entitled to an award of fees.
In a civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3), the court has discretion to award reasonable attorneys’ fees to “the prevailing party.” 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). Under this provision, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, fees are routinely awarded to a prevailing plaintiff who obtains some significant measure of relief, but are not so readily available to a prevailing defendant. See, e.g., Hughes v. Rowe,
[t]he [Christiansburg ] Court articulated “two strong equitable considerations” for permitting routinely an award of fees to prevailing plaintiffs that “are wholly absent” when a defendant prevails. [434 U.S. at 418 ,98 S.Ct. at 698 .] First, “the*770 plaintiff is the chosen instrument of Congress to vindicate ‘a policy that Congress considered of the highest priority.’” Id. (quoting Newman v. Piggie Park Enters.,390 U.S. 400 , 402,88 S.Ct. 964 , 966,19 L.Ed.2d 1263 (1968)). “Second, when a district court awards counsel fees to a prevailing plaintiff, it is awarding them against a violator of federal law.” Id.
Further, the Court has cautioned that, in applying this standard, courts must take care not to “engage in post hoc reasoning by concluding that, because a plaintiff did not ultimately prevail, his action ipust have been unreasonable or without foundation.” Christiansburg,
The determination as to whether a claim was frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless is not a purely factual inquiry. Questions as to what allegations were made and what evidence was presented are questions of fact; but the determination as to whether the claims were frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless requires an evaluation of the allegations and the proof in light of the controlling principles of substantive law. Thus, such a determination is ordinarily reviewed not for clear error but rather for abuse of discretion. See, e.g., id. at 653; see also Denton v. Hernandez,
Certain types of judicial rulings strongly indicate that a plaintiffs claim should not be deemed frivolous, groundless, or unreasonable. For example, a court cannot properly consider a claim to be frivolous on its face if it finds that the plaintiff must be allowed to litigate the claim. See, e.g., Sussman v. Bank of Israel,
In the present case, the pertinent prejudgment rulings made by the district court were inconsistent with its eventual conclusion that plaintiffs’ claims against Vertullo were groundless and unreasonable. The court had refused to grant Vertullo’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted, his pretrial motion for summary judgment, and his motion at trial for judgment as a matter of law. All of those refusals to dismiss were correct. For example, as the district court itself indicated, it could not properly dismiss the complaint against Vertullo for failure to state a claim because the complaint asserted “[a] sufficient connection ... between the actions of the individual defendants and the instrument of the conspiracy [ACA]” by alleging, inter alia, that the individual defendants actively participated in ACA, that ACA supported their candidacy for Village office, and “that ACA was originally formed to achieve the individual defendants’ discriminatory goals.” LeBlanc-Sternberg v. Fletcher,
It was, of course, within the province of the jury ultimately to weigh the evidence and to determine what inferences to draw from it. The fact that the jury concluded that plaintiffs had not carried their burden of proof against Vertullo did not, however, in light of the evidence presented, permit the post hoc
CONCLUSION
We have considered all of Vertullo’s contentions on this appeal and have found them to be without merit. So much of the district court’s order as is challenged on this appeal, denying Vertullo’s motion for attorneys’ fees, is affirmed.