In October, dozens of lawyers flocked to the federal appellate court in Lower Manhattan where a former Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, spent a day of her retirement hearing cases. Many city lawyers don’t have fond memories of the day.

An assortment of civil rights groups and nonprofit organizations is asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear one of the cases Justice O’Connor was involved in. The group says the decision sets a precedent for judges to award lower legal fees to civil rights attorneys on the grounds that civil rights cases can help lawyers advance their reputations.

The decision rendered by Justice O’Connor’s panel “has the potential to inflict enormous collateral damage on the civil rights bar, and consequently on the enforcement of civil rights laws,” according to a friend of the court brief filed by 29 organizations. The groups include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the National Resources Defense Council.

The question at the center of the case was how much in legal fees a Manhattan law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, should receive for a voting rights case it handled in Albany. The court was asked to decide whether New York City or Albany rates for legal work prevail.

In a decision released last month, the panel of judges advised the district judge in Albany to consider whether the lawyer was getting “other returns (such as reputation, etc.)” by taking the case.

One lawyer who worked on the brief, Laura Abel of the Brennan Center, said this was “a completely novel type of analysis” for judges to use in awarding legal fees.

The decision, written by Judge John Walker, was signed by the chief judge of the 2nd Circuit, Dennis Jacobs, and Justice O’Connor.