Montfort-Rodríguez v. Rey-Hernández

• Decision Date: 18 October 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-1624.,06-1624.
• Citation: 504 F.3d 221
• Parties: Dr. Ivonne MONTFORT-RODRÍGUEZ, Juanita Flores-De-Siaca, Carmen Rivera-Rivera, María Coss-Martínez, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Cesar A. REY-HERNÁNDEZ, in his individual capacity; Dr. Rafael Aragunde, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Department of Education of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; Department of Education of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

504 F.3d 221

Dr. Ivonne MONTFORT-RODRÍGUEZ, Juanita Flores-De-Siaca, Carmen Rivera-Rivera, María Coss-Martínez, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Cesar A. REY-HERNÁNDEZ, in his individual capacity; Dr. Rafael Aragunde, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Department of Education of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; Department of Education of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 06-1624.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard March 6, 2007.

Decided October 18, 2007.

Raúl Barrera-Morales, with whom Hernandez Sanchez Law Firm was on brief, for appellants.

Courtney R. Carroll, with whom Roberto Sanchez Ramos, Secretary of Justice, Salvador Antonetti Stutts, Solicitor General, Eduadro A. Vera Ramirez, Eileen Landrón Guardiola and Landrón Vera, LLP were on brief, for appellees.

Before LYNCH, Circuit Judge, SELYA, Senior Circuit Judge, and LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

Appellants are four employees of the Puerto Rico Department of Education who claim that they were unconstitutionally demoted in 2001 based on their political affiliation. They brought this suit against the Department of Education and its Secretary, César Rey Hernandez ("Rey"), a member of the Popular Democratic Party ("PDP").¹ Appellants, all members of the New Progressive Party ("NPP"), were removed from trust positions and reassigned to their preexisting career employee status within days after Rey assumed his position following the PDP's 2000 electoral victory.² The district court granted summary judgment for defendants, concluding that appellants failed to offer sufficient admissible evidence to establish a prima facie case of political discrimination. Although the record is meager and the case is therefore close, we conclude that appellants met their burden to generate a genuine issue of material fact on the elements of their claim. Accordingly, we vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings.

I.

Defendant Rey took over as Secretary of Education at the beginning of January 2001.³ Shortly thereafter, he sent letters notifying the plaintiffs that, effective January 15, their current trust appointments would cease and they would be reinstated to their previous career positions;⁴ the letters gave no reason for the changes. Before the transfers, plaintiff Ivonne Montfort-Rodríguez ("Montfort") was Director of the Center of Investigations and Ethnographic Innovations, plaintiff Juanita Flores-de-Siaca ("Flores") was Facilitator of the Education Reform Institute for the San Juan region, plaintiff Carmen Rivera-Rivera ("Rivera") was Director of the Puerto Rico Statewide Systemic Initiative for Science and Mathematics, and plaintiff Maria Coss-Martinez ("Coss") was Director of the Physical Education Program. The reassignments resulted in lower salaries for all four plaintiffs.

Rey testified in his deposition that when he took over as Secretary he asked Lizzette Pillich Otero, the newly appointed Assistant Secretary for Human Resources, to prepare a list of the Department's trust employees so that he would "have an idea of how many trust positions there were." Neither Rey nor Pillich examined personnel files in compiling the list,⁵ and Rey testified that he had no knowledge of the particular job responsibilities for any plaintiff. In his deposition, Rey gave the following explanation for generating the list and eliminating positions:

Positions in the organigram [sic] were evaluated based on the need and based in the necessity. In fact, we evaluated all the organigram of the whole organization, not just the trust positions, we re-arranged the whole administration.⁶

Rey also stated in his deposition that he was unaware of plaintiffs' political affiliations. Plaintiffs maintain that he must have known their NPP status because their involvement in the party was common knowledge throughout the Department and their trust positions during the prior NPP administration circumstantially revealed their affiliation with that party. Plaintiffs further assert that they were replaced by members of the PDP, although that allegation is based partially on hearsay.⁷

The defendants' motion for summary judgment was referred to a magistrate judge, whose Report and Recommendation concluded that the plaintiffs' evidence was inadequate to survive defendants' motion for summary judgment because some of the facts essential to a finding of political discrimination — that Rey knew plaintiffs' political affiliations and replaced them with members of his own party — were supported only by speculation or hearsay. The district court agreed that plaintiffs had not met their burden to establish a prima facie case of political discrimination, having failed to provide "admissible evidence, either direct or circumstantial, of political discrimination on the part of defendants." Accordingly, the court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment and dismissed the case with prejudice.⁸ The court subsequently denied plaintiffs' motion to alter or amend judgment.⁹

II.

A. Standard of Review and Burden of Proof

We review the district court's summary judgment ruling de novo, taking the record facts and all inferences to be drawn from them in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Aguiar-Carrasquillo v. Agosto-Alicea, 445 F.3d 19, 25 (1st Cir. 2006). Summary judgment is appropriate when the record reveals no genuine issue as to any material fact, and the undisputed facts establish the moving party's entitlement to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). A genuine issue is one that "`may reasonably be resolved in favor of either party' at trial," Cordi-Allen v. Conlon, 494 F.3d 245, 249 (1st Cir.2007) (quoting Garside v. Osco Drug, Inc., 895 F.2d 46, 48 (1st Cir.1990)), and "[s]ummary judgment `should be granted only where . . . [further] inquiry into the facts is not desirable to clarify the application of the law,'" Mandel v. Boston Phoenix, Inc., 456 F.3d 198, 205 (1st Cir.2006) (quoting Stevens v. Howard D. Johnson Co., 181 F.2d 390, 394 (4th Cir.1950)).

It is well established that "[g]overnmental employees who are not in policy-making positions of confidence are shielded from adverse employment decisions based on their political affiliations." Borges Colón v. Román-Abreu, 438 F.3d 1, 14 (1st Cir.2006); see also Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill., 497 U.S. 62, 64-65, 110 S.Ct. 2729, 111 L.Ed.2d 52 (1990). Given that defendants do not argue on appeal that plaintiffs were policymakers whose job responsibilities require political compatibility with the PDP administration, we focus on whether a jury could infer from the evidence that Rey knew of the plaintiffs' political affiliation and replaced them because of it.¹⁰ See Marrero-Gutierrez v. Molina, 491 F.3d 1, 9 (1st Cir.2007) ("To establish a prima facie case, a plaintiff must show that party affiliation was a substantial or motivating factor behind a challenged employment action."); Vazquez-Valentín v. Santiago-Díaz, 385 F.3d 23, 30 (1st Cir.2004) (noting requirement of "`sufficient direct or circumstantial evidence from which a jury reasonably may infer that plaintiff['s] constitutionally protected conduct — in this case, political affiliation with the NPP — was a "substantial" or "motivating" factor behind [her] dismissal'" (quoting Acevedo-Diaz v. Aponte, 1 F.3d 62, 66 (1st Cir.1993))), vacated and remanded on other grounds, 546 U.S. 1163, 126 S.Ct. 1329, 164 L.Ed.2d 43 (2006); González-de-Blasini v. Family Dep't, 377 F.3d 81, 85 (1st Cir.2004). Plaintiffs have the burden of proving the link between their adverse treatment and their politics. Peguero-Moronta v. Santiago, 464 F.3d 29, 45 (1st Cir.2006).

With these parameters in mind, we consider the evidence thus far developed by the parties.

B. Assessing the Prima Facie Showing of Political Discrimination

Defendants urge us to accept the magistrate judge's conclusion that the evidence presented by plaintiffs is inadequate to show either Rey's knowledge of their politics or a deliberate decision to remove them based on their NPP status. Defendants further assert that even the plaintiffs' evidence reveals that the jobs they previously held were modified after their departures — demonstrating that the motivation behind the transfers was not impermissible political discrimination, but a permissible streamlining of the department's operations. They specifically invoke the "changeover defense," which relies on the prerogative of newly elected officials to make politically neutral changes to improve departmental operations after a careful study of existing personnel and business practices. Members of the outgoing administration's political party inevitably will be affected by such changes. See, e.g., Borges Colón, 438 F.3d at 6 (noting that the effect of a new administration's policy choices may fall most heavily on the party that has lost power); Agosto-de-Feliciano v. Aponte-Roque, 889 F.2d 1209, 1220-21 (1st Cir.1989) (en banc).

Although the changeover defense ultimately may prevail, our close review of the record reveals an adequate circumstantial basis for concluding both that Rey was aware of plaintiffs' political allegiance to the NPP and that plaintiffs were replaced with PDP loyalists. Most significantly, the record lacks evidence of a considered appraisal of jobs and responsibilities that could substantiate a changeover defense. On this record — given both its contents and its gaps — we believe a jury reasonably could find political discrimination.

1. The Evidence of Political Affiliation

Although plaintiffs have produced no direct evidence that Rey was aware of their affiliation with the NPP, the record contains circumstantial evidence that could support such a finding. Pillich testified that she believed all of the trust positions on the list that she compiled for Rey including those held by plaintiffs, were occupied by individuals appointed by the prior administration "because the...