Carmona-Rivera v. Puerto Rico

• Decision Date: 12 September 2006
• Docket Number: No. 05-2500.,05-2500.
• Citation: 464 F.3d 14
• Parties: Ada I. CARMONA-RIVERA, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Commonwealth of PUERTO RICO; Dr. Cesar Rey-Hernandez; Department of Education; Dr. Elsie Trinidad; John Doe, 04CV1318; Doe-Trinidad Conjugal Partnership; Dr. Edna Rosa-Colon, Defendants, Appellees, Rafael Feliciano; Federación De Maestros De Puerto Rico, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 14

464 F.3d 14

Ada I. CARMONA-RIVERA, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Commonwealth of PUERTO RICO; Dr. Cesar Rey-Hernandez; Department of Education; Dr. Elsie Trinidad; John Doe, 04CV1318; Doe-Trinidad Conjugal Partnership; Dr. Edna Rosa-Colon, Defendants, Appellees Rafael Feliciano; Federación De Maestros De Puerto Rico, Defendants.

No. 05-2500.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard March 8, 2006.

Decided September 12, 2006.

Julie A. Soderlund, for appellant.

Julio Cesar Alejandro-Serrano, with whom Roberto Sanchez Ramos, Secretary of Justice, Salvador Antonetti Stutts, Solicitor General, Eduardo Vera Ramirez, Eileen Landrón Guardiola, and Landrón & Vera, LLP, were on brief for appellees.

Before SELYA, Circuit Judge, HANSEN, Senior Circuit Judge^* and LYNCH, Circuit Judge.

HANSEN, Senior Circuit Judge.

Ada I. Carmona-Rivera (Carmona) filed suit for disability discrimination and retaliation against the school that employs her, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, its Department of Education (DOE), her union and several individual defendants. The parties entered into a partial settlement agreement regarding Carmona's claims for injunctive relief. The district court ultimately dismissed the remaining claims and Carmona appeals. After careful review, we affirm.

I. FACTS

Carmona is a full-time, tenured visual arts teacher at the Maria Bas Vazquez School in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. She suffers from ulcerative colitis and chronic hemolytic anemia. Due to her medical condition and surgeries, Carmona is permanently incontinent, depends on prosthetic equipment for the disposal of bodily waste, and is permanently disabled.

In 2000, Carmona made a request through the DOE for accommodations for her disability at the Vazquez school. Throughout the 2000-01 school year the school was undergoing extensive construction activity, and the facilities and the teaching and learning conditions for everyone in the school were abnormal. Carmona's requests for accommodations included a first-floor classroom, private bathroom facilities in which she could maintain her prosthetic device, and an assigned parking space near the school's entrance. Carmona contends that the school's director, Dr. Elsie Trinidad, was aware of Carmona's disability but did nothing to assist her, and continued to treat her like everyone else. Carmona filed workplace complaints against the DOE and Dr. Trinidad for failure to accommodate, as she was required to do under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement between her union, Federación Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR), and the DOE. Several of her claims were resolved, but even after a resolution by the Puerto Rico Office of the Advocate for Persons with Disabilities (known by its Spanish acronym, OPPI) that was signed by all parties in May 2002, Carmona had yet to be assigned a bathroom facility that met her asserted medical needs when she filed this suit two years later. The OPPI resolution, which adopted a settlement agreement between the DOE and Carmona, required that Carmona be permanently provided a first-floor classroom, a nearby bathroom, and be assigned a predetermined class schedule. Carmona had been assigned a first-floor classroom in January 2002.

By the start of the 2003-2004 academic year, Carmona still lacked a private bathroom facility and an assigned parking space, and Carmona claimed that the school and Dr. Trinidad had never fully complied with the class scheduling requirements of the OPPI resolution. Carmona then made six demands of Dr. Trinidad: 1) that she be assigned an appropriate parking space, 2) that the bathroom Carmona was assigned to use be kept clean and sanitary in order for Carmona to be able to maintain her prosthesis, 3) that no deduction in salary be made for time Carmona spent on DOE activities, 4) that the class scheduling requirements set forth in the OPPI settlement be complied with, 5) that custodians be required to assist Carmona with the moving of classroom furniture and equipment, and 6) that Carmona be allowed to review her complete personnel file. Because neither Dr. Trinidad nor the DOE had allegedly fully complied with the mandates set forth in the OPPI resolution or addressed Carmona's other new demands, Carmona filed suit on April 14, 2004, against the DOE; the Secretary of the DOE, Dr. Cesar Rey-Hernandez; the DOE's regional director, Dr. Edna Rosa-Colon; Dr. Trinidad; the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; Rafael Feliciano; and the FMPR alleging violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131-12165; § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 701-796; Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-2000e-17; § 1983 of the Civil Rights Act; and Puerto Rico law.

The district court approved a partial settlement agreement between the parties on July 22, 2004, in which the school agreed to build Carmona a private bathroom to be ready near the start of the 2004-2005 school year and agreed to reserve Carmona a parking space near the school entrance. The court-approved settlement agreement specifically stated that it resolved all of Carmona's claims for injunctive relief. The school year began August 2, 2004, but because of delays in the delivery of required fixtures and materials, and complications with obtaining approval of the bathroom design, Carmona's bathroom was not ready for use until August 17, 2004.

On March 31, 2005, the district court dismissed the claim against FMPR for lack of jurisdiction, a ruling which Carmona does not appeal. The district court also dismissed the Title VII and ADA claims against Secretary Rey, Dr. Trinidad, and Dr. Rosa in their personal capacities, and the § 1983 and Commonwealth law claims against the DOE, the Commonwealth, and Secretary Rey, Dr. Trinidad, and Dr. Rosa in their official capacities. On August 12, 2005, the district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment on the remaining claims, finding that Carmona's Title I ADA claims for monetary damages against the Commonwealth were barred by the Eleventh Amendment, that the settlement agreement had fully satisfied Carmona's claims for injunctive relief, that Carmona had failed to establish a prima facie case of retaliation, and that she had failed to provide specific evidence to support her hostile work environment claim. Carmona appeals from only the district court's August 12 order.

II. Analysis

A. Title II

Carmona argues that she is entitled to monetary damages for employment discrimination under Title II of the ADA because Eleventh Amendment immunity has been abrogated for such claims.¹ The law in this circuit remains unclear as to whether Title II of the ADA even applies to claims of employment discrimination. See Currie v. Group Ins. Comm'n, 290 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.2002) (recognizing divergent rulings among the circuits and district courts on this issue).

We need not resolve that issue in this appeal because even if an employment discrimination claim is cognizable under Title II and even if the Commonwealth's Eleventh Amendment immunity has been effectively abrogated as to such a claim, the type of damages Carmona seeks would not be available. We have previously held that under Title II, non-economic damages are only available when there is evidence "of economic harm or animus toward the disabled." Nieves-Marquez v. Puerto Rico, 353 F.3d 108, 126-27 (1st Cir.2003). At oral argument, Carmona conceded that she is not claiming any economic damages, and thus she would need to demonstrate intentional discriminatory animus to prevail. A review of the record before us reveals no such evidence.

Carmona points to the length of the delay in meeting her requests, even after they were approved and agreed upon, and the school's failure explicitly to follow her doctor's recommended accommodations as evidence of intentional discrimination, but these actions in and of themselves do not show any intent to discriminate. Merely labeling the delay as intentional discrimination, without some modicum of evidence demonstrating an actual discriminatory animus, is itself not enough. Schultz v. Young Men's Christian Ass'n of the U.S., 139 F.3d 286, 291 (1st Cir.1998). The record is devoid of evidence or reasonable inferences that these delays and failures to provide accommodations that were acceptable to her were anything more than the result of a slow-moving bureaucracy or that they were intentionally undertaken by the defendants to purposefully discriminate against Carmona because of her disability. See id. (holding that plaintiff was not entitled to damages for emotional distress when there was no allegation of economic loss and "not the slightest hint that [the defendant] was prompted by malice or hostility toward [the plaintiff] or toward the disabled"). Without some evidence of intentional discrimination, Carmona cannot recover under Title II for non-economic damages even if we were to determine that Title II encompassed claims of employment discrimination and that Eleventh Amendment immunity was effectively abrogated. While monetary damages are not available to Carmona, injunctive relief would be; however, she conceded at oral argument that her injunctive relief claims had been satisfied. Accordingly we affirm the judgment of the district court granting summary judgment as to Carmona's ADA claims.

B. Partial Settlement Agreement

Carmona conceded that she had been granted the injunctive relief she requested under Title I of the ADA by the settlement agreement. However, she argues that she is entitled to damages for an alleged breach of the settlement agreement due to an asserted delay in the completion of her bathroom facility from August 2 to August 17. Carmona contends that the settlement agreement called for the bathroom to be ready for her use by August 2, 2004, the start of the school year, yet construction was not complete until August 17, 2004. The language used in the court-approved settlement...