Rodriguez-Pinto v. Tirado-Delgado
| Decision Date | 05 November 1992 |
| Docket Number | RODRIGUEZ-PINT,No. 92-1648,TIRADO-DELGADO,P,92-1648 |
| Citation | 982 F.2d 34 |
| Parties | Pedro L.laintiff, Appellant, v. Cirilo, et al., Defendants, Appellees. . Heard |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Hector Urgell Cuebas, for plaintiff, appellant.
Vannessa Ramirez, Asst. Sol. Gen., with whom Reina Colon De Rodriguez, Deputy Sol. Gen., Dept. of Justice, was on brief, for defendants, appellees.
Before TORRUELLA and STAHL, Circuit Judges, and SKINNER, * District Judge.
In this appeal, plaintiff-appellant Pedro Rodriguez-Pinto challenges the district court's entry of summary judgment in favor of defendants-appellees Cirilo Tirado Delgado and Rafael Rivera Gonzalez on his claim of political affiliation-based discrimination. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the district court's entry of summary judgment on all of plaintiff's claims except his First Amendment claim for equitable relief. We remand that claim for further proceedings.
As always, we review the district court's summary judgment ruling de novo, reading the record in a light most amiable to the nonmoving party. See Federal Deposit Ins. Corp. v. World Univ., Inc., 978 F.2d 10, 13 (1st Cir.1992). Plaintiff is a career employee of the State Insurance Fund of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ("the Fund") who, at the time he filed his complaint, had accrued more than twenty-three years of public service. He also is a member of the New Progressive Party ("NPP"), whose gubernatorial candidate lost the general election of November 6, 1984.
At the time the complaint was filed, defendant Cirilo Tirado Delgado was the Fund's Administrator and defendant Rafael Rivera Gonzalez was the Fund's Director of Personnel. Both defendants are members of the Popular Democratic Party ("PDP"), whose gubernatorial candidate won the 1984 election. Defendants were appointed to their positions subsequent to January 2, 1985, the day the PDP candidate assumed the governorship of the Commonwealth.
Prior to the 1984 election, plaintiff was Chief of the Fund's Finance Division. Plaintiff contends that as Chief, he directed, supervised, and coordinated all Sections of the Finance Division, including the Pay Vouchers Section, the Collections Section, and the Claims and Attachments Section. He further asserts that he coordinated "all the deposits of funds pertaining to the State Insurance Fund in the Government Bank and other commercial banks."
The complaint alleges that from July 1985 through November 1985, defendants did not permit plaintiff to carry out the duties of his position. It further states that, since November 1985, plaintiff has been assigned "a small amount of functions belonging to lesser positions in the [Fund]...." Plaintiff's sworn declaration, submitted in opposition to defendants' summary judgment motion, clarifies that, subsequent to the election, plaintiff was reassigned to the position of Assistant to the Chief of the Fund's Collection Division. 1
Plaintiff claims that, since his reassignment, the functions and duties of the Assistant to the Chief of Collections have not been delegated to him, and that he has been allotted only nominal tasks which take no more than ten minutes a day to perform. Plaintiff further claims that the Chief of the Fund's Collection Division, whom plaintiff now is assisting, previously was under his supervision. He also alleges that defendants have deprived him of the following previously-obtained rights and benefits: (1) personal secretary, (2) parking space, (3) office, (4) telephone, (5) supervision of other employees, and (6) access to office records and documents. Finally, plaintiff contends that he was placed in a lower salary scale which has adversely affected his ability to obtain certain pay raises, and that he is subject to daily ridicule and harassment which, in conjunction with the other circumstances of his job change, cause him to feel as if he actually has been discharged from his employment. 2 It is plaintiff's position that defendants' actions were precipitated by his affiliation with the NPP.
In June of 1986, plaintiff filed this action pursuant to, inter alia, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that defendants had violated rights secured him under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Plaintiff's complaint sought both damages and equitable relief in the form of temporary and permanent injunctions directing defendants to reinstate plaintiff to his former employment and to refrain from acting toward him in an unconstitutional manner. Subsequently, defendants filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that plaintiff's claims under § 1983 were insufficiently supported to forestall the entry of judgment in their favor. The district court granted defendants' motion, ruling (1) that plaintiff had not been constructively discharged, (2) that plaintiff had not offered sufficient proof on his claim that, since his transfer, his work situation was so "unreasonably inferior to the norm," see Agosto-de-Feliciano v. Aponte-Rogue, 889 F.2d 1209, 1218 (1st Cir.1989) (en banc) () (hereinafter "the Agosto-de-Feliciano claim"), that it violated the First Amendment, 3 and (3) that plaintiff had not been deprived of any property right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. 4 On appeal, plaintiff challenges all of the district court's rulings. We discuss each in turn.
Plaintiff argues that the district court erred in ruling that he was not constructively discharged. However, we recently made clear that a First Amendment "claim of constructive discharge due to a demotion or transfer cannot succeed when a claimant, in fact, has not left employment." Pedro-Cos v. Contreras, 976 F.2d 83, 85 (1st Cir.1992) (per curiam) (surveying pertinent First Circuit authority). Here, the record reflects that plaintiff has not left his employment with the Fund. Thus, his constructive discharge claim fails as a matter of law.
Plaintiff also takes issue with the district court's alternative ruling, see supra note 3, that defendants are entitled to qualified immunity from his claim for civil damages under Agosto-de-Feliciano. 6 However, we repeatedly have stated that, prior to our decision in Agosto-de-Feliciano and the Supreme Court's decision in Rutan, it was not clearly established that the constitutional prohibition against politically motivated firings applied to other personnel actions, such as promotions, transfers, demotions, and hirings. See, e.g., Pedro-Cos, 976 F.2d at 85; Valiente v. Rivera, 966 F.2d 21, 23 (1st Cir.1992); Castro-Aponte v. Ligia-Rubero, 953 F.2d 1429, 1430 (1st Cir.1992). Here, all the complained of adverse personnel actions took place prior to our decision in Agosto-de-Feliciano and the Supreme Court's decision in Rutan. As a result, the district court's ruling that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity from plaintiff's claim for civil damages was plainly correct.
Plaintiff's claim for equitable relief under Agosto-de-Feliciano to redress perceived ongoing constitutional violations by defendants presents us with a considerably more difficult issue. As noted above, the district court held that plaintiff did not introduce sufficient proof on this claim to warrant a trial. More specifically, the court ruled that plaintiff had not "produced enough evidence" of a sufficiently severe decline in his work conditions for a factfinder to conclude, under a "clear and convincing evidence" standard, that plaintiff's work situation is "unreasonably inferior to the norm for the position." See generally Agosto-de-Feliciano, 889 F.2d at 1218-20. The court also ruled that plaintiff had failed to adduce evidence sufficient for a factfinder to determine, under a "preponderance of the evidence" standard, that defendants' true motivation in taking their actions was political affiliation-based discrimination. See id. at 1220. In so doing, the court found that the allegations set forth in plaintiff's sworn complaint and elaborated upon in plaintiff's sworn declaration were "conclusory" and, without more, were insufficient to defeat defendants' motion for summary judgment. We do not share the district court's view of plaintiff's evidence.
Summary judgment acts "to pierce the boilerplate of the pleadings and assay the parties' proof in order to determine whether trial is actually required." Wynne v. Tufts Univ. Sch. of Medicine, 976 F.2d 791, 794 (1st Cir.1992). It is appropriate where "the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c); see also Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 2553, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). "In this context, 'genuine' means that the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could resolve the point in favor of the nonmoving party." United States v. One Parcel of Real Property, 960 F.2d 200, 204 (1st Cir.1992) (citing Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2510, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986)). A "material" fact is one "that might affect the outcome of the suit under The moving party bears the initial burden of averring that the evidence is insufficient to support the nonmoving party's case. See, e.g., Lawrence v. Northrop, 980 F.2d 66, 68 (1st Cir.1992) (citations omitted). Once that burden is met, the opposing party must "limn a genuine disagreement as to some material fact." One Parcel of Real Property, 960 F.2d at 204. In so doing, the...
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