Rodriguez–sanchez v. Municipality of Santa Isabel

• Decision Date: 29 September 2011
• Docket Number: No. 09–2635.,09–2635.
• Citation: 658 F.3d 125,32 IER Cases 1561
• Parties: Elsie RODRIGUEZ–SANCHEZ, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants,v.MUNICIPALITY OF SANTA ISABEL, et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

658 F.3d 125

32 IER Cases 1561

Elsie RODRIGUEZ–SANCHEZ, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants,

v.MUNICIPALITY OF SANTA ISABEL, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 09–2635.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard March 9, 2011.Decided Sept. 29, 2011.

Frank D. Inserni Milam, with whom Carlos J. Morales Bauza was on brief, for appellants.Jorge Martínez–Luciano, with whom Johanna M. Emmanuelli–Huertas was on brief, for Municipality of Santa Isabel.Susana I. Peñagarícano–Brown, Assistant Solicitor General, with whom Irene S. Soreta–Kodesh, Solicitor General, Leticia Casalduc–Rabell, Deputy Solicitor General, and Zaira Z. Girón–Anadón, Deputy Solicitor General, were on brief, for Enrique H. Questell–Alvarado and Natalie Rodríguez–Cardona.Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, LIPEZ and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

Sixty-one terminated employees of the Municipality of Santa Isabel challenge the district court's entry of summary judgment against them on their claims for deprivation of due process and political discrimination, brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. After careful consideration of the record, we affirm.

I.

A. Factual Background

In the Puerto Rico general elections of November 2004, Enrique Questell–Alvarado (“Questell”), a member of Puerto Rico's New Progressive Party (“NPP”), was elected Mayor of the Municipality of Santa Isabel (“the Municipality”). He took office on January 10, 2005. In February 2005, Mayor Questell appointed Natalie Rodríguez–Cardona (“Rodríguez”) to be director of the city's Human Resources Department.

Prior to Mayor Questell's election, the Popular Democratic Party (“PDP”) had been in power in Santa Isabel for eight consecutive years. The 2004 mayoral election was hotly contested, as Mayor Questell bested the incumbent, PDP-affiliated Mayor, Ángel Sánchez. The tension between the parties carried over into the transition process, culminating in Mayor Questell filing a writ of mandamus in a Puerto Rico court in December of 2004 to compel the outgoing Mayor's participation in the transition.

At the time of Mayor Questell's election, the appellants were all employed by the Municipality of Santa Isabel. Twenty-one of the appellants were employed in career positions, akin to civil service employment, while the remainder were temporary or transitory employees, or were employed under Puerto Rico's Law 52, which authorizes the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to fund municipal employee salaries in order to subsidize locally managed programs and ameliorate unemployment. See Acevedo–Feliciano v. Ruiz–Hernández, 447 F.3d 115, 117 (1st Cir.2006).

In January 2005, Mayor Questell hired an independent accounting firm to evaluate the state of Santa Isabel's budget. The firm produced a “Transition Report” in February ¹ that evaluated the Municipality's financial status at the close of the 2004–2005 fiscal year. That report indicated that 82% of the Municipality's budget was consumed by payroll and benefits for municipal employees, leaving only 18% of the budget for other expenditures. The report further indicated that the outgoing administration had spent more than the allocated 50% of the Municipality's budget for the first half of the 2004–2005 fiscal year, in violation of Puerto Rico law, and that, having underestimated expenses and overestimated revenue, the outgoing administration left the Municipality with the functional equivalent of 27% of that budget. According to audits performed by the Puerto Rico Comptroller's Office, the Municipality had accumulated a budgetary deficit of $7,261,639. The audits also showed that Santa Isabel had more municipal employees during the 2004–2005 fiscal year than in any of the six previous fiscal years.

In response to the report, the defendants began terminating individual employees as early as March 30, 2005. In June 2005, the contracts of numerous temporary employees expired and were not renewed. That same month, the Santa Isabel Municipal Legislature passed Municipal Ordinance # 28 (“Ordinance 28”), which approved a broad plan to lay off, transfer, or demote municipal employees in accordance with the needs of the Municipality and the availability of municipal funds. Ordinance 28 mandated that “the least efficient employees will be the first to be dismissed” unless the Municipality lacked valid information about employee performance. If such information was lacking, Ordinance 28 required employee terminations to be based exclusively on seniority. Mayor Questell signed Ordinance 28 into law on June 27, 2005, at which time it was posted on bulletin boards in every department of the Municipality.

As of June 2005, the Municipality did not have a reliable system for evaluating the job performance of its career employees. The previous Mayor had signed into law an ordinance “to enact the implementation of an evaluation and motivation system for Santa Isabel municipal employees.” According to a certification signed by Mayor Questell, however, the evaluation system had never been used. A municipal audit conducted in 2005 further confirms this fact.

On August 1, 2005, in conformance with the procedural requirements of Ordinance 28, the Municipality's Human Resources Department provided each career employee with a written calculation of his or her years of service based on a review of the employee's personnel file.² The notice explicitly referenced Ordinance 28, and it advised employees of their right to submit a request for corrections to the calculation. Nineteen municipal employees, including six plaintiffs in this case, exercised this right. The Human Resources Department produced an amended seniority list, copies of which were posted on bulletin boards at Santa Isabel's City Hall.

On September 1, 2005, Mayor Questell ordered Rodríguez to perform an evaluation of the existing positions within the Municipality and to submit her recommendation as to the number of positions that could be eliminated in order to alleviate the budgetary deficit. On September 12, Rodríguez informed Mayor Questell by letter that eighty-five job posts could be eliminated from within the Municipality. The letter stated that this number was aggregated from information provided by the managers or directors of nine municipal departments when asked about the positions whose elimination would cause “the less severe impact” on the provision of municipal services. It did not identify the employees who occupied the positions that would be eliminated, but merely stated how many of each type of municipal job the department managers considered expendable.

On September 15, Mayor Questell ordered Rodríguez to eliminate forty-six of the eighty-five positions recommended. According to an affidavit signed by Rodríguez, she did not have any personal involvement in deciding which jobs within the Municipality would be eliminated. Mayor Questell did not review any personnel files or make any individualized determinations before issuing this order, nor did he discover the identities of the terminated employees until their termination letters had been prepared.³ Within each job type, Mayor Questell ordered that the dismissals were to be based strictly on seniority.

On October 17, the Municipality approved a municipal ordinance that amended Ordinance 28 by allowing the Municipality to consider other alternatives to employee terminations if financially viable. The next day, as rumors of imminent layoffs spread, a group of municipal employees politically affiliated with the PDP, including many of the plaintiffs in this case, gathered in front of Santa Isabel City Hall to protest. Several NPP-affiliated employees who remained inside City Hall mocked and laughed at the protesters.

On the day of the protests, written termination notices were provided to the selected career employees of the Municipality, including the plaintiffs. The notices advised that the terminations were to take effect in 30 days. They also informed employees of their right to appeal the termination to the Puerto Rico Appellate Commission of the Human Resources System. Nineteen career employees appealed their terminations through this process.⁴

B. Procedural History

In June 2006, the sixty-one appellants, along with thirty-seven other plaintiffs, filed this civil rights suit in federal district court, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The complaint alleged that the defendants had unconstitutionally terminated the plaintiffs on account of their political affiliation with the PDP, and had failed to provide those plaintiffs who had been career employees, including twenty-one of the appellants here, with a pre-termination hearing to which they were constitutionally entitled. The plaintiffs also brought supplemental state tort claims under articles 1802 and 1803 of the Puerto Rico Civil Code, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31, §§ 5141–5142. ⁵

In due course, the defendants moved for summary judgment on all counts against all plaintiffs. The district court granted that motion in part. In its opinion and order, the district court held that the due process claims of the plaintiffs who had been career employees were foiled by the Parratt– Hudson doctrine.⁶ The court characterized the defendants' failure to provide those plaintiffs with a pre-termination hearing as a “random and unauthorized deprivation.” It then reasoned that the plaintiffs' claims could not succeed because they had failed to show that the available post-deprivation remedies were inadequate. The court also rejected the political discrimination claims of all but twenty-three plaintiffs because they had not shown that Mayor Questell, who made the ultimate decision to terminate their employment, knew of their political affiliation. The court denied the motion with respect to the political discrimination claims of the twenty-three plaintiffs whose political affiliation Mayor Questell admitted to knowing in his deposition.⁷

This appeal followed. After the appeal was docketed, but before...