Bruce

MEMORANDUM **

Folsom State prison officials appeal the district court’s award of attorney’s fees and witness costs following Appellee Kevin Bruce’s successful First Amendment challenge to a prison ban on possession of Dungeons & Dragons materials, claiming that because the three actions taken by prison officials-returning Bruce’s materials, expunging his disciplinary conviction, and revising “Attachment J,” which prohibited possession of the materials-were not explicitly “court-ordered,” they may not be the basis for an award of attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d).

While the court’s order granting summary judgment to Bruce on his First Amendment claim did not explicitly order these actions, it is clear that Bruce effectively achieved the relief in question when he proved that a First Amendment violation had occurred. The return of his materials and the clearing of his record was not a “voluntary change in conduct,” Buckhannon Bd. and Care Home, Inc. v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health and Human Res., 532 U.S. 598, 605 , 121 S.Ct. 1835 , 149 L.Ed.2d 855 (2001), but was ultimately required by the district court’s finding, even if the ac *723 tions were not specifically ordered. The…