A New York federal judge refused to award over $1 million in attorney fees and costs to organizations that challenged "public charge" immigration policies the first Trump administration enacted, ruling that preliminary injunctions did not give them prevailing party status.

U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels said a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 2025 that barred attorney fee awards for temporary wins applied to the litigation, noting that the organizations' cases did not end in final judgments since the Biden administration withdrew the challenged policies.

"Like the plaintiff in Lackey, plaintiffs received preliminary injunctions that temporarily enjoined the implementation of the challenged rules pending a final adjudication on the merits," Judge Daniels said in an order issued Tuesday, referring to the justices' 2025 decision for Lackey v. Stinnie .

The federal government's subsequent decision to reverse the challenged rules did not transform the preliminary injunctions into final orders adjudicating the parties' rights, Judge Daniels said.

"Accordingly, plaintiffs are not 'prevailing parties' under the [Equal Access to Justice Act] by virtue of obtaining preliminary relief to maintain the status quo during litigation," he added.

Make the Road New York and other organizations challenged expanded "public charge" definitions the Trump administration enacted in 2018 and 2019 to deny green cards to people who may require public benefits. They moved for fees and costs after the Biden administration withdrew the challenged rules and their cases were dismissed.

Judge Daniels disagreed with a federal magistrate judge's conclusion that the Lackey decision was narrower in reach and that fees and costs should be awarded for the litigation.

According to Judge Daniels, the magistrate judge read too much into an eminent domain-related section of the Equal Access to Justice Act with a specific final judgment requirement for prevailing party status to conclude that the Lackey decision did not apply since Congress had not attached such requirements to other parts of the statute.

"Contrary to the magistrate judge's reading, Congress's decision to require this specific type of final judgment in eminent domain proceedings does not necessarily exclude all final judgment requirements in other proceedings," Judge Daniels said.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which opposed the fee and cost requests, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which helped represent the plaintiffs in the litigation, said they are disappointed with the court's rejection of the magistrate judge's reasoning.

"The teams worked furiously to obtain effectively full relief against a poisonous Trump administration program and we believe Congress intended for such successful cases to be remunerated so that organizations can sustainably bring such cases in the future," Azmy said in a statement to Law360 on Thursday.

The plaintiffs are represented by Samuel Miller and Baher Azmy of Center for Constitutional Rights, Susan E. Welber, Judith Goldiner and Deborah Lee of The Legal Aid Society and Daniel S. Sinnreich and Leah J. Park of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP.

The government is represented by Brett A. Shumate, Alexander K. Haas and Olivia Hussey Scott of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division.

The case is Make the Road New York et al. v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services et al., case number 1:19-cv-07993, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

--Editing by Patrick Reagan.