Juarbe-Angueira v. Arias

• Decision Date: 29 September 1987
• Docket Number: No. 86-2012,JUARBE-ANGUEIR,P,86-2012
• Parties: Luis O.laintiff, Appellee, v. Luis Rafael ARIAS, Director of the Public Building Authority, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 11

831 F.2d 11

Luis O. JUARBE-ANGUEIRA, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. Luis Rafael ARIAS, Director of the Public Building

Authority, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 86-2012.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Argued May 5, 1987.

Decided Sept. 29, 1987.

Marcos A. Ramirez-Lavandero with whom Hector Rivera Cruz, Secretary of Justice, Marcos A. Ramirez Irrizarry and Ramirez & Ramirez, Hato Rey, P.R., were on brief, for defendant, appellant.

Israel Roldan Gonzalez, Aguadilla, P.R., for plaintiff, appellee.

Before BOWNES, BREYER and TORRUELLA, Circuit Judges.

BREYER, Circuit Judge.

In March 1985, the Director of the Public Building Authority of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (the "PBA Director") dismissed Luis Juarbe Angueira from his job as the PBA's Regional Director for the Aguadilla Region. Juarbe Angueira subsequently brought suit, claiming that his dismissal violated the United States Constitution. He said that the PBA Director dismissed him because he was a member of the New Progressive Party (the "NPP") and that the First Amendment protected him from such a "politically based" discharge. Branti v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507, 100 S.Ct. 1287, 63 L.Ed.2d 574 (1980); Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347, 96 S.Ct. 2673, 49 L.Ed.2d 547 (1976). He asked the court both to order his reinstatement and to require the PBA Director to pay him damages.

The PBA director moved to dismiss the damage claim. He said that the dismissal either was legal or its illegality in early 1985 was, at the least, unclear and that he therefore possessed a "qualified immunity" protecting him from having to pay damages. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 815-19, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2736-39, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982); Anderson v. Creighton, --- U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3037-40, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). The district court denied the PBA Director's motion to dismiss. The Director now appeals that interlocutory decision. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985) (denial of summary judgment on claim of qualified immunity appealable as a "final decision"); De Abadia v. Izquierdo Mora, 792 F.2d 1187, 1190 (1st Cir.1986) (same even though damage claim is joined with claim for injunctive relief).

After examining the record in this case, we have concluded that the defendant is correct; he is entitled to "qualified immunity" in respect to the damage claim. We rest our holding, however, on a narrow legal ground. If we assume purely for the sake of argument that Juarbe Angueira's dismissal was unlawful, even so, the law in respect to the dismissal, viewed as of March 1985, was unclear. That is, as of that time one could not say that the dismissal was clearly unlawful. And, only where the action in question is clearly unlawful does a defendant lose his qualified immunity. See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. at 2738. In deciding this appeal on this narrow ground, we express no view about whether the plaintiff is ultimately entitled to reinstatement.

I

This case raises no new, generally significant legal issues. We have previously considered the question of "qualified immunity" from damage liability in the context of a claim of "politically motivated discharge". See Roman Melendez v. Inclan, 826 F.2d 130 (1st Cir.1987); Roure v. Hernandez Colon, 824 F.2d 139 (1st Cir.1987); Quintana v. Anselmi, 817 F.2d 891 (1st Cir.1987); Raffucci Alvarado v. Sonia Zayas, 816 F.2d 818 (1st Cir.1987); Vazquez Rios v. Hernandez Colon, 819 F.2d 319 (1st Cir.1987); Rosado v. Zayas, 813 F.2d 1263 (1st Cir.1987); Mendez-Palou v. Rohena-Betancourt We have also pointed out that, for the most part, in early 1985, the law did not clearly forbid dismissals of those in "upper-level" managerial-type government positions. Rather, the Supreme Court had then set forth the law in highly general terms. It said that the Constitution provided protection from politically-based discharge to public employees other than those in jobs where "party affiliation is an appropriate requirement for the effective performance of the public office involved." Branti, 445 U.S. at 518, 100 S.Ct. at 1295. But, the Court did not specify just where "party affiliation" was, or was not, "appropriate." It was difficult to conclude with any certainty that "party affiliation" was not "an appropriate requirement for the effective performance" of most upper-level government jobs. It was difficult to predict (in respect to these upper-level jobs) just how the courts, in particular instances, would draw the line that the Supreme Court described in Branti --a line that seeks to separate instances where (1) a newly elected political party can legitimately replace those who hold important offices in order to carry out its electoral mandate and to provide voters with the confidence it is doing so (i.e., where a 'new broom' ought to 'sweep clean'), from (2) pure political patronage (i.e., 'jobs for the boys').

                13 F.2d 1255 (1st Cir.1987);  Monge-Vazquez v. Rohena-Betancourt, 813 F.2d 22 (1st Cir.1987);  Cheveras Pacheco v. Rivera Gonzalez, 809 F.2d 125 (1st Cir.1987);  Rodriguez Rodriguez v. Munoz Munoz, 808 F.2d 138 (1st Cir.1986);  De Abadia v. Izquierdo Mora, 792 F.2d 1187 (1st Cir.1986).    See also Jimenez Fuentes v. Torres Gaztambide, 807 F.2d 236 (1st Cir.1986) (preliminary injunction claim), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 1888, 95 L.Ed.2d 496 (1987);  and De Choudens v. Government Development Bank, 801 F.2d 5 (1st Cir.1986) (same), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 1886, 95 L.Ed.2d 494 (1987).  We have explained that public officials generally are entitled to "qualified immunity" from personal liability for those acts, taken in the course of their duties, that may have violated a party's constitutional rights unless the law defining those rights was "clearly established in plaintiff's favor."    De Abadia, 792 F.2d at 1193 (emphasis added);  see also Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 1096, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986) (qualified immunity protects "all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law");  Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. at 2738 (officials are immune "insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known";  the reasonableness "measured by reference to clearly established law ... at the time an action occurred") (footnote omitted).  And, we have said more specifically that a defendant faced with a political discharge claim enjoys qualified immunity unless, at the time of dismissal, "it was clearly established that employees in the particular positions at issue, in light of the responsibilities inherent in those positions, were [constitutionally] protected from patronage dismissal."    Mendez-Palou, 813 F.2d at 1259 (emphasis in original).    See Anderson v. Creighton, --- U.S. at ----, 107 S.Ct. at 3039 ("in the light of preexisting law the unlawfulness [of the particular act] must be apparent")
                

In fact, courts have been reluctant to define Branti 's "political exception" too narrowly lest they prohibit newly elected officials from implementing new policies in areas that sound technical (antitrust, development banks, park services) but which, depending on time and circumstances, may become politically charged. See Tomczak v. City of Chicago, 765 F.2d 633, 641 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 946, 106 S.Ct. 313, 88 L.Ed.2d 289 (1985). Lower courts (through 1985) applied Branti's exception broadly, finding First Amendment protection against politically based dismissals only for highly technical or very low level jobs, such as a road grader, a city court bailiff, a bookkeeper, a deputy court clerk, a deputy sheriff, or a supervisor of a branch of an auditor's office. They explicitly denied protection to an assistant director of public information for a county, the first deputy commissioner of a department Of course, as we have recognized, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico held, in 1982, 1983 and 1984, that many upper level government jobs fall outside Branti 's "political exception." But, as we have also said, those cases based on Puerto Rican law and "go[ing] further than" most other court interpretations of Elrod/Branti, "are not conclusive as to the state of the law." Rodriguez Rodriguez, 808 F.2d at 142.

of water, the superintendent of employment for a Chicago park district, an assistant district attorney, a fee agent, a city solicitor and assistant solicitor, the state director of the Farmers Home Administration, and a deputy parks commissioner. See Appendix. There is nothing in these decisions, for example, that would suggest Elrod or Branti radically changed existing federal practice, a practice that permits Presidents to replace at will United States Attorneys, regional heads of the General Services Administration, up to 10 percent of the top agency Senior Executive Services positions, and many other holders of significant offices. Senate Comm. on Govt. Affairs, 98th Cong., 2d Sess., Policy and Supporting Positions 122, 201, 255 (Comm. Print 1984); 5 U.S.C. Sec. 3134(b) (1982).

Indeed, Puerto Rico's officials might have found upper-level job protection from political discharge particularly difficult to predict in light of Puerto Rico's own civil service system which classifies upper-level jobs such as those in question here as "confidential" or "trust" positions, positions outside the career civil service. Commonwealth law permits the Central Office of Personnel Administration to exempt no more than 25 positions per agency from the career system, using as criteria whether the job involves "formulation of public policy," P.R.Laws Ann. tit. 3, Secs. 1350, 1351(3) (1980 & Supp.1986), or "[d]irect services to the head or subhead of the agency which require a high degree of personal trust." P.R. Personnel Bylaws: Areas Essential to the Merit Principle, Sec. 5.2 (1976). Appellants have told...