WISCONSIN: Legal Team That Won Marriage Asks For $1.2M In Attorney Fees

Via the Pioneer Press:

The legal team that successfully fought to overturn Wisconsin's ban on same-sex marriage is asking a federal court to award it nearly $1.25 million to cover attorney fees and costs associated with the case. The legal team, headed by the ACLU, sued in February to overturn a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on behalf of eight couples. In a filing late Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Madison, the team wrote that in part, the hours they put into the case were driven by an aggressive defense of the amendment by lawyers for the state. "Defendants' decisions to file multiple motions, conduct discovery, assert novel arguments, and frantically try to stop marriages from occurring increased the substantive and procedural complexity of plaintiffs' counsels' work in the trial court and the Court of Appeals, and thus the time required to competently prosecute the action," wrote lawyers for the plaintiffs. Under federal law, as prevailing parties in a civil rights action, the plaintiffs can seek an award of costs and expenses, including reasonable attorney fees, they wrote.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Wisconsin in October after the Supreme Court declined to review the ruling of the Seventh Circuit Court.