Opinion of the Court ries, the District Court ordered that "Plaintiffs take nothing, that the action be dismissed on the merits, and that the parties bear their own costs." Id., at A-6. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. Farrar v. Cain, 756 F. 2d 1148 (1985). The court affirmed the failure to award compensatory or nominal damages against the conspirators because the plaintiffs had not proved an actual deprivation of a constitutional right. Id., at 1151-1152. Because the jury found that Hobby had deprived Joseph Farrar of a civil right, however, the Fifth Circuit remanded for entry of judgment against Hobby for nominal damages. Id., at 1152. The plaintiffs then sought attorney's fees under 42 U. S. C. § 1988. On January 30, 1987, the District Court entered an order awarding the plaintiffs $280,000 in fees, $27,932 in expenses, and $9,730 in prejudgment interest against Hobby. The court denied Hobby's motion to reconsider the fee award on August 31, 1990. A divided Fifth Circuit panel reversed the fee award. Estate of Farrar v. Cain, 941 F. 2d 1311 (1991). After reviewing our decisions in Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U. S. 755 (1987), Rhodes v. Stewart, 488 U. S. 1 (1988) (per curiam), and Texas State Teachers Assn. v. Garland Independent School Dist., 489 U. S. 782 (1989), the majority held that the plaintiffs were not prevailing parties and were therefore ineligible for fees under § 1988: "The Farrars sued for $17 million in money damages; Opinion of the Court When the sole relief sought is money damages, we fail to see how a party 'prevails' by winning one dollar out of the $17 million requested." 941 F. 2d, at 1315 (citations omitted) (quoting Garland, supra, at 791-792).1 The majority reasoned that even if an award of nominal damages represented some sort of victory, "surely [the Farrars'] was 'a technical victory . . . so insignificant and . . . so near the situations addressed in Hewitt and Rhodes, as to be insufficient to support prevailing party status."" 941 F.2d, at 1315 (quoting Garland, supra, at 792).2 The dissent argued that "Hewitt, Rhodes and Garland [do not] go so far" as to hold that "where plaintiff obtains only 1Although the Fifth Circuit's original opinion on liability made clear that Joseph Farrar alone was to receive nominal damages for violation of his due process rights, Farrar v. Cain, 756 F. 2d 1148, 1152 (1985), the District Court on remand awarded attorney's fees not only to petitioners as coadministrators of Joseph Farrar's estate but also to Dale Farrar in his personal capacity, see App. to Pet. for Cert. A-12. The Fifth Circuit reversed Dale Farrar's fee award on the apparent assumption that he too had received nominal damages. Dale Farrar has not petitioned from the Fifth Circuit's judgment in his personal capacity, and the only issue before us is the award of attorney's fees to Dale Farrar and Pat Smith as coadministrators of Joseph Farrar's estate. 2 The majority acknowledged its conflict with the Courts of Appeals for the Second, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits. 941 F. 2d, at 1316-1317, and nn. 22 and 26. See Ruggiero v. Krzeminski, 928 F. 2d 558, 564 (CA2 1991); Coleman v. Turner, 838 F. 2d 1004, 1005 (CA8 1988); Scofield v. Hillsborough, 862 F. 2d 759, 766 (CA9 1988); Nephew v. Aurora, 830 F. 2d 1547, 1553, n. 2 (CA10 1987) (en banc) (Barrett, J., dissenting), cert. denied, 485 U. S. 976 (1988); Garner v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 807 F.2d 1536, 1539 (CA11 1987). After the Fifth Circuit decided this case, the First and Ninth Circuits rejected the Fifth Circuit's position and held that a nominal damages award does confer prevailing party status on a civil rights plaintiff. Domegan v. Ponte, 972 F. 2d 401, 410 (CA1 1992); Romberg v. Nichols, 970 F. 2d 512, 519-520 (CA9 1992), cert. pending, No. 92-402; 970 F. 2d, at 525-526 (Wallace, C. J., concurring). The Fourth Circuit has adopted a position consistent with the Fifth Circuit's. Lawrence v. Hinton, 20 Fed. Rules Serv. 3d 934, 936-937 (1991); Spencer v. General Elec. Co., 894 F. 2d 651, 662 (1990) (dicta). Opinion of the Court nominal damages for his constitutional deprivation, he cannot be considered the prevailing party." 941 F. 2d, at 1317 (Reavley, J., dissenting). We granted certiorari. 502 U. S. 1090 (1992). II The Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976, 90 Stat. 2641, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1988, provides in relevant part: "In any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of sections 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, and 1986 of this title, title IX of Public Law 92-318 . . ., or title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. . ., the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs." "Congress intended to permit the . . . award of counsel fees only when a party has prevailed on the merits." Hanrahan v. Hampton, 446 U. S. 754, 758 (1980) (per curiam). Therefore, in order to qualify for attorney's fees under § 1988, a plaintiff must be a "prevailing party." Under our "generous formulation" of the term, "plaintiffs may be considered "prevailing parties" for attorney's fees purposes if they succeed on any significant issue in litigation which achieves some of the benefit the parties sought in bringing suit."" Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U. S. 424, 433 (1983) (quoting Nadeau v. Helgemoe, 581 F. 2d 275, 278–279 (CA1 1978)). "[L]iability on the merits and responsibility for fees go hand in hand; where a defendant has not been prevailed against, either because of legal immunity or on the merits, § 1988 does not authorize a fee award against that defendant." Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U. S. 159, 165 (1985). We have elaborated on the definition of prevailing party in three recent cases. In Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U. S. 755 (1987), we addressed "the peculiar-sounding question whether a party who litigates to judgment and loses on all of his claims Opinion of the Court can nonetheless be a 'prevailing party."" Id., at 757. In his § 1983 action against state prison officials for alleged due process violations, respondent Helms obtained no relief. "The most that he obtained was an interlocutory ruling that his complaint should not have been dismissed for failure to state a constitutional claim." Id., at 760. Observing that "[r]espect 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," we held that Helms was not a prevailing party. Ibid. We required the plaintiff to prove "the settling of some dispute which affects the behavior of the defendant towards the plaintiff." Id., at 761 (emphasis omitted). In Rhodes v. Stewart, 488 U. S. 1 (1988) (per curiam), we reversed an award of attorney's fees premised solely on a declaratory judgment that prison officials had violated the plaintiffs' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. By the time the District Court entered judgment, "one of the plaintiffs had died and the other was no longer in custody." Id., at 2. Under these circumstances, we held, neither plaintiff was a prevailing party. We explained that "nothing in [Hewitt] suggested that the entry of [a declaratory] judgment in a party's favor automatically renders that party prevailing under § 1988." Id., at 3. We reaffirmed that a judgment-declaratory or otherwise-"will constitute relief, for purposes of § 1988, if, and only if, it affects the behavior of the defendant toward the plaintiff." Id., at 4. Whatever "modification of prison policies" the declaratory judgment might have effected "could not in any way have benefited either plaintiff, one of whom was dead and the other released." Ibid.3 Similarly, the plaintiff in Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U. S. 755, 763 (1987), "had long since been released from prison" by the time his failed lawsuit putatively prompted beneficial changes in prison policy. We held that the "fortuity" of a subsequent return to prison, which presumably allowed the plaintiff to benefit from the new procedures, could "hardly render him, Opinion of the Court Finally, in Texas State Teachers Assn. v. Garland Independent School Dist., 489 U. S. 782 (1989), we synthesized the teachings of Hewitt and Rhodes. "[T]o be considered a prevailing party within the meaning of § 1988," we held, "the plaintiff must be able to point to a resolution of the dispute which changes the legal relationship between itself and the defendant." 489 U. S., at 792. We reemphasized that "[t]he touchstone of the prevailing party inquiry must be the material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties." Id., at 792-793. Under this test, the plaintiffs in Garland were prevailing parties because they "obtained a judgment vindicating [their] First Amendment rights [as] public employees" and "materially altered the [defendant] school district's policy limiting the rights of teachers to communicate with each other concerning employee organizations and union activities." Id., at 793. Therefore, to qualify as a prevailing party, a civil rights plaintiff must obtain at least some relief on the merits of his claim. The plaintiff must obtain an enforceable judgment against the defendant from whom fees are sought, Hewitt, supra, at 760, or comparable relief through a consent decree or settlement, Maher v. Gagne, 448 U. S. 122, 129 (1980). Whatever relief the plaintiff secures must directly benefit him at the time of the judgment or settlement. See Hewitt, supra, at 764. Otherwise the judgment or settlement cannot be said to "affec[t] the behavior of the defendant toward the plaintiff." Rhodes, supra, at 4. Only under these circumstances can civil rights litigation effect "the material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties" and thereby transform the plaintiff into a prevailing party. Garland, supra, at 792-793. In short, a plaintiff "prevails" when actual relief on the merits of his claim materially alters the legal relationship between the parties by modifying the retroactively, a 'prevailing party'. . ., even though he was not such when the final judgment was entered." Id., at 764. |