Soto–Padró v. Pub. Buildings Auth.

• Decision Date: 12 March 2012
• Docket Number: No. 10–2413.,10–2413.
• Citation: 675 F.3d 1
• Parties: Neftalí SOTO–PADRÓ, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. PUBLIC BUILDINGS AUTHORITY; Javier Soto–Cardona, in his official and personal capacities; Leila Hernández–Umpierre, in her official and personal capacities; Adrián Acevedo–Rivera, in his official and personal capacities; Rudy Martínez–Calderón, in his official and personal capacities; Fabio Barreto–Martínez, in his official and personal capacities; José Girona–Marquez, in his official and personal capacities; Miguel Dávila–Sánchez, in his official and personal capacities, Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

675 F.3d 1

Neftalí SOTO–PADRÓ, Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
PUBLIC BUILDINGS AUTHORITY; Javier Soto–Cardona, in his official and personal capacities; Leila Hernández–Umpierre, in her official and personal capacities; Adrián Acevedo–Rivera, in his official and personal capacities; Rudy Martínez–Calderón, in his official and personal capacities; Fabio Barreto–Martínez, in his official and personal capacities; José Girona–Marquez, in his official and personal capacities; Miguel Dávila–Sánchez, in his official and personal capacities, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 10–2413.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Submitted Nov. 9, 2011.Decided March 12, 2012.

[675 F.3d 2]

Raúl Barrera Morales, for the appellant.

Edgardo Colón–Arrarás and Goldman Antonetti & Córdova, for the appellee Puerto Rico Public Buildings Authority and for the individual appellees in their official capacities.

Irene S. Soroeta–Kodesh, Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Leticia Casalduc–Rabell, Acting Deputy Solicitor General, Zaira Z. Girón–Anadón, Acting Deputy Solicitor General, and Susana I. Peñagarícano–Brown, Assistant Solicitor General, for the individual appellees in their personal capacities.

Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, STAHL and THOMPSON, Circuit Judges.

THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.

FOREWORD

Our story concerns a dispute that arose after Puerto Rico's Public Buildings Authority (PBA) restructured its organization in the late 2000s. ¹ We start, naturally, with the facts. And because the case is here on summary judgment, we present them in the light most flattering to Neftalí Soto–Padró, the summary-judgment loser, consistent with record support. See, e.g., Rodríguez v. Municipality of San Juan, 659 F.3d 168, 175 (1st Cir.2011). Spoiler alert: when all is said and done, we affirm the district judge's rulings across the board.

THE REORGANIZATION

For the uninitiated, the PBA is a commonwealth-created public corporation whose central mission is preparing plans for and meeting the maintenance needs of “physical facilities related to government services,” and whose seven-member governing board includes four persons appointed by Puerto Rico's Governor. See P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 22, §§ 902–04, 906. The board approved the reorganization that has caused this dust-up—a reorganization that eliminated some PBA positions and created new ones too. Out went Field–Operations–Supervisor positions, for example, and in came Field–Operations–Manager and Technical–Services–Supervisor posts.

Soto–Padró is a member of the New Progressive Party (NPP), one of Puerto Rico's two main political parties. The other is the Popular Democratic Party (PDP). At some point in the restructuring process, he went from being a Field Operations Supervisor to a Technical Services Supervisor. According to the summary-judgment evidence, here is how that happened.

After the PBA cut the Field Operations Supervisor positions as part of the reorganization, Soto–Padró applied for three PBA jobs: Auxiliary Regional Director, Field Operations Manager, and Technical Services Supervisor. A trio of PBA officials—Conservation Area Director Fabio

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Barreto Martínez, Special Assistant to the Executive Director Miguel Dávila–Sánchez, and Executive Sub–Director José Girona–Márquez—interviewed him for the latter two positions. Human Resources and Labor Relations Manager Rudy Martínez–Calderón also sat in on the interviews. Everyone except Soto–Padró was a PDP sympathizer.

The Field–Operations–Manager job went to Adrián Acevedo–Rivera, a PDP sympathizer and former Field Operations Supervisor. Another PDP sympathizer, PBA Executive Director Leila Hernández–Umpierre, wrote Soto–Padró that he had landed the Technical–Services–Supervisor position instead. But despite being offered a job that he had applied for, Soto–Padró soon had a change of heart. He realized that the switch from Field Operations Supervisor to Technical Services Supervisor would lower the range of possible pay-raise options, though it would not affect his immediate salary. And he learned from talking with PBA Regional Director Javier Soto–Cardona, a PDP activist, that he would have new duties: supervising lower-ranked personnel than he had before and handling plumbing and refrigeration issues, not electrical matters like he was used to (Soto–Padró has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering), though he concedes that plumbing and refrigeration are critical aspects of PBA operations. So Soto–Padró balked at the switch, writing Hernández–Umpierre that he considered it a “demotion” since it would lower his “pay scale” and lessen his “functions.” Martínez–Calderón responded, telling Soto–Padró that he would “continue” as Field Operations Supervisor. But eight months later, Hernández–Umpierre fired off another letter to Soto–Padró, this time saying that he had been doing the duties of a Technical Services Supervisor for the past “few months” or so anyway and that the PBA was reclassifying his position to Technical Services Supervisor.

Soto–Padró was hardly the only PBA staffer affected by the reshuffling. And though executed by PBA personnel affiliated with the PDP, the reorganization impacted workers in both political camps, as we shall see shortly.

THE LAWSUIT

Invoking federal civil-rights statutes, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985, and 1988, as well as the federal declaratory-judgment act, 28 U.S.C. § 2201, Soto–Padró sued everyone in sight: the PBA, Soto–Cardona, Hernández–Umpierre, Acevedo–Rivera, Martínez–Calderón, Barreto–Martínez, Girona–Márquez, and Dávila–Sánchez. According to Soto–Padró, the defendants had demoted him because he was affiliated with the wrong political party (the NPP rather than the PDP), violating his First–Amendment and due-process rights. His complaint included supplemental local-law claims too. He sued the individual defendants in both their official and personal capacities. And he asked for an amalgam of relief. For openers, he requested a mix of injunctive and declaratory relief. Paraphrasing his complaint, he writes in his brief that he asked the court to declare his reclassification to Technical Services Supervisor “null and void” and to order the PBA to place him in the Field–Operations–Manager position.² He also asked the court for damages

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and attorney fees, among other things.³

We step back for a moment to gain some perspective. A claim for relief under section 1983 requires a showing of two elements—first, that the plaintiff was deprived of either a federal constitutional or statutory right, and, second, that the deprivation was carried out by a defendant acting under color of state law.⁴ See, e.g., Barrios–Velázquez v. Asociación de Empleados del Estado Libre Asociado de P.R., 84 F.3d 487, 491 (1st Cir.1996). And section 1988 allows a “prevailing party” in a section 1983 action “reasonable” attorney fees. 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). Section 1985 permits suits against those who conspire to deprive others “of the equal protection of the laws, or of the equal privileges and immunities under the law....” 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3). The elements of a section 1985 claim are straightforward: (1) “a conspiracy,” (2) “a conspiratorial purpose to deprive the plaintiff of the equal protection of the laws,” (3) “an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy,” and, lastly, (4) either (a) an “injury to person or property” or (b) “a deprivation of a constitutionally protected right.” Pérez–Sánchez v. Pub. Bldg. Auth., 531 F.3d 104, 107 (1st Cir.2008). A section 1985 claim “requires ‘some racial, or perhaps otherwise class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus behind the conspirators' action,’ ” id. (quoting Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 102, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d 338 (1971)), though we have held, in the not-too-distant past, that this statute offers “no remedy” for discrimination based on political affiliation, id. at 109. Soto–Padró makes no effort to explain how his case comes within section 1985's sweep, so the claim is waived. See, e.g., Rodríguez, 659 F.3d at 175–76.

THE RULINGS

About a year after he filed suit, Soto–Padró became a PBA Regional Director—a position he still holds, the parties tell us, and likes very much, not only because he got a nice salary bump but also because none of the individual defendants have any supervisory authority over him. In any event, the district judge later granted the defendants summary judgment. Stripped to essentials, his reasoning ran this way: The PBA's enabling legislation describes the PBA's mission as fulfilling an “essential” government function, see P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 22, § 902, but the judge concluded that the PBA is not an “arm of the state,” so it is not protected by the Eleventh Amendment. ⁵ Moving on, the judge held that the summary-judgment record compels the conclusion that the defendants would have taken the same employment action against Soto–Padró even if he were a PDPer, which defeated his political-discrimination claim. Also, the only differences between Field Operations Supervisor and Technical Services Supervisor, the judge stressed after surveying the summary-judgment material, were, first, the duties performed, and, second, the salary

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scale. And neither change, he quickly added, worked a loss of a constitutional property interest. Consequently, Soto–Padró's due-process theories failed too. The judge also jettisoned all prayers for declaratory and injunctive relief as moot or unripe (why he did that does not really matter in this appeal, for reasons that we get to later), and he dismissed the local-law claims without prejudice. Soto–Padró later filed a motion under Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e), asking the judge to reconsider, but the judge denied the motion.

THE APPEAL

Needless to say, Soto–Padró disagrees with parts of the judge's rulings. He appeals. But his arguments do not persuade.

(A) Summary Judgment

We give de novo review to the judge's summary-judgment decision, drawing all reasonable factual inferences in favor...