Bennett

In Buckhannon Board and Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, 531 U.S. 1004 , 121 S.Ct. 1835 , 149 L.Ed.2d 855 (May 29, 2001), the Supreme Court announced that a party is not entitled to attorney’s fees intended by statute for a “prevailing party” if it obtained the relief it sought only as a catalyst, in other words if it “aehieve[d] the desired result because the lawsuit brought about a voluntary change in the defendant’s conduct.” Id. at 1838 . In this case, plaintiffs claim that they are prevailing parties because the Hawai’i legislature passed a law that did what plaintiffs sought to have done in litigation. Because plaintiffs advance only a catalyst theory, we affirm the district court’s decision to deny attorney’s fees.

I.

This appeal is the denouement of a complex election saga that involved challenges in state and federal courts and a state legislature. This election ended, as all good elections should, not in the courts but with the political branches and the voters.

In Hawai’i’s November 1996 election, the electorate was asked to decide whether to hold a state constitutional convention. 163,869 votes were cast in favor of a…