Rodriguez v. Nazario, Civ. No. 85-0663(RLA).

• Decision Date: 31 July 1989
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 85-0663(RLA).
• Citation: 719 F. Supp. 52
• Parties: Ramonita Perez RODRIGUEZ, Plaintiff, v. Jose Ariel NAZARIO, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico

719 F. Supp. 52

Ramonita Perez RODRIGUEZ, Plaintiff, v. Jose Ariel NAZARIO, et al., Defendants.

Civ. No. 85-0663(RLA).

United States District Court, D. Puerto Rico.

July 31, 1989.

Stanley Feldstein, Feldstein Gelpi Hernandez & Gotay, Old San Juan, P.R., for plaintiff.

Marcos A. Ramirez Lavandero, Ramirez & Ramirez, Hato Rey, P.R., for defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER

ACOSTA, District Judge.

Plaintiff, Ramonita Pérez Rodríguez, the Manager of the Caguas Regional Office of the Automobile Accident Compensation Administration (ACAA), filed the present suit seeking equitable relief, damages, and attorneys fees for politically based violations of her civil rights. She alleges that the defendants, except for Rivera (the present Executive Director of ACAA), conspired and directed her demotion from Manager of the Caguas Office of ACAA to a supervisor position in the same unit (with an approximate $600.00 monthly cut in pay) solely because of their animosity against her political affiliation.¹See 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985(3). As for Rivera, plaintiff appears to allege a violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1986² insofar as she claims Rivera has refused to protect plaintiff's constitutional rights despite his power to make changes at the office and his knowledge of plaintiff's plight. The constitutional rights plaintiff alleges have been irreparably harmed are her first amendment right to freedom of association, which defendants have allegedly violated by demoting her for political reasons; and her fourteenth amendment right to equal protection of the law, which defendants have allegedly violated by treating her dissimilarly from other similarly situated individuals.

Although plaintiff was originally demoted in March 1985, she was reinstated to her former position and pay in January 1986 pursuant to a preliminary injunction order entered by this Court. See docket No. 30. In June 1986, plaintiff filed a second amended complaint whereby all the present defendants except for Nazario were added to the suit. The defendants now are: (1) José Nazario, the former executive of ACAA; (2) Carmen Rivera Vázquez, the present executive director of ACAA; (3) María S. Kortright Soler; (4) Concepción De Jesús; (5) David Castrodad; and (6) Ibrahim Burgos—the latter four are "officers or employees of ACAA." All of them are sued in their personal capacities and, except for Nazario, in their official capacities as well.

The complaint generally alleges that the defendants in one way or another have conspired or acted to violate plaintiff's civil rights as well as our preliminary injunction order by first demoting plaintiff and then not providing her with any meaningful duties or authority after she was reluctantly reinstated. In other words, plaintiff claims that though she has her job back, it exists only in form because the substance has been completely undermined by defendants' concerted actions or omissions (the omission is more for the case of Executive Director Rivera who has allegedly washed her hands of the unconstitutional events around her regarding plaintiff).

Before the Court are two dispositive motions filed by defendants:³ (1) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3) Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6); and (2) motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity pursuant to Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982) and its progeny—particularly the recent case of Bonilla v. Nazario, 843 F.2d 34 (1st Cir.1988), which appears factually indistinguishable from the present case. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56.

Succinctly, defendants argue that plaintiff's Section 1985(3) and their tag along Section 1986 claims must be dismissed because "wholly political conspiracies, untainted by racial animus or bias are outside the scope of 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3)." Defendants state that Section 1985(3) specifically addresses only racial or otherwise class-based "invidiously discriminatory animus behind the conspirator's action" and that there is no such protected class in the present case.

As to the qualified immunity issue, defendants argue that in 1984 it was not clearly unlawful to demote a person in plaintiff's position, with the inherent duties of that job, because of her political affiliation. Therefore, the defendants state that they should not be held liable for damages in this suit.

An additional argument raised by defendant Carmen Rivera in her motion to dismiss is based on the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution which provides sovereign immunity in favor of public officials sued in federal court. (The argument concerns only defendant Carmen M. Rivera in her official capacity as Executive Director of ACAA.) She argues that ACAA is a public corporation and an arm of the state. Therefore she feels ACAA is entitled to sovereign immunity since any judgment in this case would have to come from state coffers which is barred by Supreme Court jurisprudence beginning with Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974), and continuing recently with the case of Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 105 S.Ct. 3142, 87 L.Ed.2d 171 (1985). Rivera focuses her arguments solely on plaintiff's claims for damages against her in her official capacity and she does not dispute plaintiff's right to sue her for injunctive relief in federal courts. Rather, her main contention is simply that neither states nor their legitimate dependent agencies can be sued for damages in federal court absent an expressed waiver of their eleventh amendment immunity. And that such waiver was never expressly made by ACAA in the present litigation.

Plaintiff filed opposing arguments to each one of the attacks made by defendants in their two motions. Regarding the issue of the failure to state a claim for relief under Section 1985(3), plaintiff points to series of paragraphs in her second amended complaint which allege that a conspiracy to invidiously or maliciously discriminate against her was carried out by defendants because of their animus against plaintiff's political affiliation and that her political party, the New Progressive Party, constitutes a protected class under Section 1985(3). Regarding the eleventh amendment issue, plaintiff states that it does not apply because ACAA is a separate public corporation from the state with a capacity to sue and be sued and that any judgment in this case would not be paid by the state itself. Finally, regarding defendants' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, plaintiff raises a series of opposing arguments which in essence reflect her position that qualified immunity is not a defense to equitable relief;⁴ that defendants have failed to establish that they perform discretionary functions which is a requisite for qualified immunity; and that defendants' actions were violative of clearly established law and therefore qualified immunity is not warranted.

We will discuss each of these three arguments in the order they were presented. Our conclusion is that defendants are entitled to qualified immunity relief and therefore their motion for summary judgment will be granted. The motion to dismiss will be granted insofar as it concerns the 1985(3) action given our finding that a political party such as the NPP does not constitute a protected class under Section 1985(3). Finally, we hold in abeyance the issue of eleventh amendment immunity pending further documentary support by defendants for the contention that any judgments that may issue in this case would not be paid from state coffers, and thus that the protections of Edelman v. Jordan and its progeny would apply to this case.

DISCUSSION

A. Motion to Dismiss-Sections 1985(3) and 1986

The symbiotic relationship between Section 1985(3) and Section 1986⁵ is not disputed in this case. Consequently, our discussion will focus solely on Section 1985(3).

Title 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3) reads in relevant part

If two or more persons in any state or territory conspire ... for the purpose of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws; ... and in any case of conspiracy set forth in this section, if one or more persons engaged therein do, or cause to be done, any act in furtherance of the object of such conspiracy, whereby another is injured in his personal property, or deprived of having and exercising any right or privileges of a citizen of the United States, the party so injured or deprived may have an action for the recovery of damages, occasioned by such injury or deprivation, against any one or more of the conspirators.

The seminal case in this area of civil rights conspiracies is Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d 338 (1971). There are four basic or traditional elements necessary to state a cause of action under Section 1985(3) according to Griffin. These are: (1) the defendants must conspire or there must be a conspiracy by defendants; (2) for the purpose of depriving either directly or indirectly any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws; (3) the defendants must act in furtherance of the object of the conspiracy, whereby (4) one was injured in his personal property or deprived of having and exercising any right or privileges of a citizen of the United States. The Griffin court, however, added one more element to this list. In order to avoid having Section 1985(3) transformed into run-of-the-mill federal tort law, the majority in Griffin espoused a fifth element which requires that (5) there must be some racial or perhaps otherwise class-based invidiously discriminatory animus behind the conspirators' actions. The Court's concerns went to the roots of the 1985(3) statute which was an offshoot of the 1871 Civil Rights Act...