Vives v. Fajardo

• Decision Date: 05 January 2007
• Docket Number: No. 05-2813.,05-2813.
• Citation: 472 F.3d 19
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit
• Parties: Margarita VIVES; Nelson Trinidad; Salvador Trinidad-Vives, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Victor FAJARDO, Secretary, Department of Education of Puerto Rico, María Del Carmen Reyes; María I. Rodríguez; Tania Sabo, Defendants, Appellees.

Page 19

472 F.3d 19

Margarita VIVES; Nelson Trinidad; Salvador Trinidad-Vives, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Victor FAJARDO, Secretary, Department of Education of Puerto Rico, María Del Carmen Reyes; María I. Rodríguez; Tania Sabo, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 05-2813.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard October 31, 2006.

Decided January 5, 2007.

Manuel A. Rodríguez Banchs with whom Nora Vargas Acosta, De Jesús, Hey & Vargas, and Sheila I. Vélez Martínez were on brief, for appellants.

Leticia Casalduc-Rabell, Assistant Solicitor General, with whom Salvador J. Antonetti-Stutts, Solicitor General, Mariana Negrón-Vargas, Deputy Solicitor General and Maite D. Oronoz Rodríguez, Deputy Solicitor General, were on brief, for appellees.

Before TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge, STAHL, Senior Circuit Judge, and HOWARD, Circuit Judge.

HOWARD, Circuit Judge.

Appellants Margarita Vives, Nelson Trinidad, and their son, Salvador Trinidad-Vives, brought an action in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico against the Secretary of Education, Victor Farjado, and three employees of the Puerto Rico Department of Education (Department), Maria Del Carmen Reyes, Maria Rodriguez, and Tania Sabo. The complaint alleged retaliation in violation of the Rehabilitation Act. See 29 U.S.C. § 794a; 45 C.F.R. § 80.7(e). Specifically, appellants claim that Reyes, Rodriguez, and Sabo told the Puerto Rico Department of Family (DOF) that Vives and Trinidad were negligent parents in retaliation for filing a complaint with a federal agency asserting disability discrimination against Salvador. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants on the ground that there was no evidence that the report to DOF was motivated by retaliatory animus. We affirm.

Vives' and Trinidad's son Salvador was diagnosed with autism at the age of two. For years, Vives and Trinidad have complained to the Department that the Puerto Rico schools had not provided Salvador with appropriate educational services. In March 1999, appellants filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education, alleging that its Puerto Rico counterpart had discriminated against Salvador on the basis of his disability by failing to provide him with an appropriate education. As a result of the complaint, the Office of Civil Rights reached an agreement with the Department to increase the services provided to Salvador. In September 1999, appellants filed a second complaint with the Office of Civil Rights, alleging that the Department continued to discriminate against Salvador by failing to provide him with the promised services.

While appellants were pursuing remedies with the Office of Civil Rights, the relationship between appellants and Salvador's school providers deteriorated. Appellants had substantial disagreements with Sabo, Salvador's teacher, about his care. For reasons discussed later, at the end of November 1999, the school principal, Rodriguez, in consultation with Sabo and the school social worker, Reyes, notified DOF that the school believed that Salvador was receiving negligent care from his parents.

The providers' decision to report Vives and Trinidad to DOF is the basis for appellants' retaliation claim. The providers moved for summary judgment on the ground that there was no evidence from which a jury could conclude that their decision to notify DOF was motivated by retaliatory animus. The district court agreed. It determined that there was "ample evidence" to support the providers' belief that Salvador was being neglected by his parents, and that the appellants had produced no evidence that the providers' reasons for notifying DOF were pretextual. The court also granted summary judgment sua sponte to the Secretary of Education because "there was no particular claim against the Secretary."

Appellants raise two arguments. First, they contend that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to the school providers because there was a material dispute of fact concerning their motive for contacting DOF. Second, appellants argue that, even if the providers were properly granted summary judgment, the court erred by granting the Secretary summary judgment sua sponte.

We review summary judgment rulings de novo. See Nieves-Vega v. Ortiz-Quinones, 443 F.3d 134, 136 (1st Cir.2006). Summary judgment is appropriately granted where there is no genuine issue of material fact, and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed R. Civ. P. 56(c). Even in retaliation cases, "where elusive concepts such as motive or intent are at issue, summary judgment is appropriate if the non-moving party rests merely upon conclusory allegations, improbable inferences, and unsupported speculation." Benoit v. Tech. Mfg. Corp., 331 F.3d 166, 173 (1st Cir.2003) (internal citations omitted).

Under the Rehabilitation Act, the appellants may assert a retaliation claim based on Vives' and Trinidad's complaint to the Office of Civil Rights on behalf of Salvador, even though neither Vives nor Trinidad are disabled. See Davis v. Flexman, 109 F.Supp.2d 776, 801-02 (S.D.Ohio 1999) (stating that the plaintiff's "lack of a disability does not deprive her of standing to bring a claim for retaliation under the Rehabilitation Act") (collecting cases); Whitehead v. Sch. Bd. of Hillsborough County, 918 F.Supp. 1515, 1522 (M.D.Fla. 1996) (similar). Such claims are typically evaluated through a variant of the McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), burden-shifting framework. See Calero-Cerezo v. United States Dep't of Justice, 355 F.3d 6, 25 (1st Cir.2004) (retaliation claim under Title VII); Hunt v. St. Peter Sch., 963 F.Supp. 843, 854 (W.D.Mo.1997) (third-party retaliation claim under the Rehabilitation Act). We have recognized, however, that on "summary judgment, the need to order the presentation of proof is largely obviated, and a court may often dispense with strict attention to the burden-shifting framework, focusing instead on whether the evidence as a whole is sufficient to make out a jury question as to pretext and discriminatory animus." Fennell v. First Step Designs, Ltd., 83 F.3d 526, 535 (1st Cir.1996). Thus, to survive summary judgment, the appellants needed to produce competent evidence from which a reasonable factfinder could conclude...