United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit
No. 21-1363
ROSA LÓPEZ-HERNÁNDEZ,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
TERUMO PUERTO RICO LLC,
Defendant, Appellee,
TERUMO MEDICAL DEVICES COMPANY,
Defendant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Jay A. García-Gregory, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Kayatta, Howard and Gelpí, Circuit Judges.
Juan M. Frontera-Suau, with whom Frontera Suau Law Offices, PSC, was on brief, for appellant. Mariana Muñiz Lara, with whom Janine Guzmán and DLA Piper (Puerto Rico) LLC, were on brief, for appellee. March 30, 2023 GELPÍ, Circuit Judge. This is an employment
discrimination case brought by an employee who displayed
disruptive behavior in the workplace, was denied a promotion for
not meeting the qualifications for the job position, and ultimately
was dismissed, with the employer citing her pattern of
malperformance. Plaintiff-Appellant Rosa López-Hernández
("López-Hernández" or "Appellant") sued Defendant-Appellee Terumo
Puerto Rico LLC ("Terumo") alleging gender discrimination and
retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq. ("Title VII") and related claims
under Puerto Rico law. The district court granted Terumo's motion
for summary judgment, López-Hernández appealed. We affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
López-Hernández brought this action in the District of Puerto
Rico. Upon conclusion of discovery, Terumo moved for summary
judgment. The district court determined that López-Hernández
failed to put forth evidence to allow a reasonable juror to find
that Terumo's reasons for not selecting López-Hernández for a
promotion and for terminating her employment were pretextual and
that those actions were really motivated by gender discrimination
or retaliatory motives. Rather, the district court found that
there was sufficient unrefuted evidence demonstrating López-
Hernández's poor performance, deficient supervisory and
interpersonal skills, and violations of company policies
- 3 - justifying the failure to promote and the eventual termination.
Further, the district court found that López-Hernández did not
show that Terumo's reasons were implausible or inconsistent, that
she was treated differently than similarly situated male
employees, or that decisionmakers made gender-based comments
related to the termination decision. The district court lastly
found that the only alleged comment related to gender was not
related to the employment decision in question and was not made by
a decisionmaker.
The district court granted Terumo's motion for summary
judgment and dismissed López-Hernández's claims with prejudice,
finding that she failed to show that Terumo's decisions not to
promote her, and later to terminate her employment, were motivated
by discriminatory animus. This appeal followed.
II. DISCUSSION
A. LOCAL RULE 56
Before delving into the merits of this appeal we find it
instructive to first address López-Hernández's failure to comply
with District of Puerto Rico's Local Rule 56. Local Rule 56
requires that a motion for summary judgment "be supported by a
separate, short, and concise statement of material facts, set forth
in numbered paragraphs, as to which the moving party contends there
is no genuine issue of material fact to be tried." D.P.R. Civ. R.
56(b). The party opposing the motion for summary judgment must
- 4 - then "submit with its opposition a separate, short, and concise
statement of material facts. The opposing statement shall admit,
deny or qualify the facts supporting the motion for summary
judgment by reference to each numbered paragraph of the moving
party's statement of material facts." Id. 56(c). The facts
themselves must be supported by "a citation to the specific page
or paragraph of identified record material supporting the
assertion." Id. 56(e). Importantly, the court may disregard facts
if they are not supported by such a citation. Id. Lastly, facts
contained either in the "supporting or opposing statement of
material facts, if supported by record citations . . . shall be
deemed admitted unless properly controverted." Id.
"Local Rule 56 is in service to Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 56." Tropigas de P.R., Inc. v. Certain Underwriters at
Lloyd's of London, 637 F.3d 53, 56 (1st Cir. 2011). Under Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 56, a "party cannot successfully oppose a
motion for summary judgment by resting 'upon mere allegations or
denials of [her] pleading.'" Garmon v. Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp.,
844 F.3d 307, 312 (1st Cir. 2016) (alteration in original) (quoting
Pina v. Child.'s Place, 740 F.3d 785, 795 (1st Cir. 2014)).
"[M]ere allegations are not entitled to weight in the summary
judgment calculus." Borges ex rel. S.M.B.W. v. Serrano-Isern, 605
F.3d 1, 3 (1st Cir. 2010). The nonmoving party must instead
marshal sufficient evidence to show that a genuine issue of
- 5 - material fact exists. Cherkaoui v. City of Quincy, 877 F.3d 14,
24 (1st Cir. 2017). "Like [Federal] Rule [of Civil Procedure] 56
itself, [Local Rule 56] makes clear that its focus is on facts,
not speculation or argumentation." Tropigas, 637 F.3d at 56-57.
"Moreover, these facts must be material." Id. at 57.
Under Local Rule 56, "a district court is free, in the
exercise of its sound discretion, to accept the moving party's
facts as stated" D.P.R. Civ. R. 56(e) when the statements contained
in the movant's Statement of Uncontested Facts ("SUF") are not
properly controverted." Advanced Flexible Cirs., Inc. v. GE
Sensing & Inspection Techs. GmbH, 781 F.3d 510, 521 (1st Cir. 2015)
(quoting Cabán Hernández v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 486 F.3d 1,
7 (1st Cir. 2007)). Said anti-ferret rule is intended to protect
the district court from perusing through the summary judgment
record in search of disputed material facts and prevent litigants
from shifting that burden onto the court. See CMI Cap. Mkt. Inv.,
LLC v. González–Toro, 520 F.3d 58, 62 (1st Cir. 2008); P.R. Am.
Ins. Co. v. Rivera-Vázquez, 603 F.3d 125, 131–32 (1st Cir. 2010).
We have repeatedly emphasized the importance of complying with
said local rule and have implored litigants to comply or ignore it
"at their peril." Mariani-Colón v. Dep't of Homeland Sec. ex rel.
Chertoff, 511 F.3d 216, 219 (1st Cir. 2007) (quoting Cabán
Hernández, 486 F.3d at 7); see also Rodríguez-Severino v. UTC
Aerospace Sys., 52 F.4th 448, 458 (1st Cir. 2022).
- 6 - Before us now is yet another example of the consequence
to a litigant who fails to comply with the District of Puerto
Rico's Local Rules on summary judgment. See Sánchez-Figueroa v.
Banco Popular de P.R., 527 F.3d 209, 210-11 (1st Cir. 2008).
Violations of this local rule are astoundingly common and
constitute an unnecessary burden to the trial court's docket and
time, and frequently make their way before us for review.
López-Hernández responded to Terumo's motion for summary
judgment, denying fifty-nine and qualifying seven of Terumo's SUF.
These failed to adhere to Local Rule 56(c) & (e)'s record citation
requirement. Numerous "facts" memorialized in her opposition
statement were supported only by general references to
López-Hernández's SUF yet those citations -- to deposition
transcripts -- collectively comprised hundreds of pages. First,
many of López-Hernández's responses failed to contradict the
proffered facts because they included extraneous and irrelevant
details, consisting of speculation and conclusory assertions.
Additionally, many of the qualifications and denials were not
properly supported by a citation. Many of López-Hernández's
factual assertions do not actually oppose the truth of the
statements Terumo offered, were unaccompanied by "a citation to
the specific page or paragraph of identified record material
supporting the assertion," D.P.R. Civ. R. 56(e), or cited to
lengthy deposition testimony without providing a more specific
- 7 - location. See Ruiz Rivera v. Riley, 209 F.3d 24, 28 (1st Cir.
2000) (abrogated on other grounds by Casanova v. Dubois, 289 F.3d
142 (1st Cir. 2002) ("[F]ailure to present a statement of disputed
facts, embroidered with specific citations to the record,
justifies the court's deeming the facts presented in the movant's
statement of undisputed facts admitted."). Appellant's record
citations, rather than cite a "specific page or paragraph" as Rule
56(e) requires, often cite generally to multiple exhibits which
are themselves voluminous.1 "This is far removed from compliance
with the requirement that '[a]n assertion of fact . . . shall be
followed by a citation to the specific page or paragraph of
1 For example, at paragraph 20 of its SUF, Terumo states that since López-Hernández started working at the Caguas worksite, she had communication and interpersonal problems because she was not receptive to others' suggestions and made decisions without the required consultation. López-Hernández denies this fact by referencing twenty-one proposed facts from her own statement of additional facts. At paragraph 21 of its SUF, Terumo states that between 2016 and early 2017, López-Hernández showed a lack of supervisory skills because she was the first supervisor that the worksite's management team ever received continuous complaints about from the people that she supervised, as well as her peers and support personnel. López-Hernández denies this fact citing to twenty-nine proposed facts from her own additional statement of facts that do not refute Terumo's paragraph 21. At paragraph 30 of its SUF, Terumo states that Abigail Rodríguez -- Human Resources Generalist -- received and investigated several complaints against López-Hernández in 2016 that ended in López-Hernández receiving feedback on how to improve how she managed situations and completed quality documentation. López-Hernández denies this fact, citing to nine proposed facts from her additional statement of facts that do not refute the fact included in Terumo's SUF or the supporting documents which substantiate it.
- 8 - identified record material supporting the assertion.'" Cabán
Hernández, 486 F.3d at 7–8 (quoting D.P.R. Civ. R. 56(e)).
Because of López-Hernández's failure to properly
controvert Terumo's statement of uncontested facts, we deem
Terumo's statement of uncontested facts admitted under Local Rule
56. With this backdrop we next address our review of the district
court's entry of summary judgment.
B. MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
López-Hernández claims that she was discriminated
against on the basis of sex in two contexts. First, she was not
selected for a promotion and, close in time, Rafael Benítez
("Benítez"), Operations Director at Terumo, allegedly made
comments about not liking her and about not being used to working
with women. Second, she was terminated from her employment several
months after complaining about Benítez's alleged sex
discrimination. We address each in turn.
1. STANDARD OF REVIEW
Summary judgment is proper when there is no genuine
dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to
judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). At summary
judgment, "the judge's function is not himself [or herself] to
weigh the evidence and determine the truth of the matter but to
determine whether there is a genuine issue for trial." Anderson
- 9 - v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249 (1986); see also Dusel
v. Factory Mut. Ins. Co., 52 F.4th 495, 503 (1st Cir. 2022).
We review a district court's grant or denial of summary
judgment de novo, examining the record in the light most favorable
to the nonmovant and drawing all reasonable inferences in that
party's favor. Murray v. Kindred Nursing Ctrs. W. LLC, 789 F.3d
20, 25 (1st Cir. 2015). "The party moving for summary judgment
must show that 'there is no genuine dispute as to any material
fact' and that it 'is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.'"
Rodríguez-Severino, 52 F.4th at 461 (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P.
56(a)).
2. Title VII: SEX DISCRIMINATION
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids a
covered employer from "discriminat[ing] against any individual
with respect to his [or her] compensation, terms, conditions, or
privileges of employment, because of such individual's . . . sex."
42 U.S.C. § 2000e–2(a)(1). A plaintiff alleging sex
discrimination must establish that the adverse employment action
was motivated by the employer's discriminatory animus. Lockridge
v. Univ. of Me. Sys., 597 F.3d 464, 470 (1st Cir. 2010).
López-Hernández seeks to make that showing in this case only by
applying the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework.
McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802-03 (1973). In
the failure-to-promote context, we have previously said that: "[A
- 10 - plaintiff] must show that (1) [s]he is a member of a protected
class, (2) [s]he was qualified for the position to which [s]he
applied, (3) [s]he was not hired, and (4) an applicant with similar
qualifications received the position." Henderson v. Mass. Bay
Transp. Auth., 977 F.3d 20, 29 (1st Cir. 2020).
Once the plaintiff establishes a prima facie case, the
burden of production shifts to the employer to articulate "a
legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason" for the adverse employment
action. Kosereis v. Rhode Island, 331 F.3d 207, 212 (1st Cir.
2003). After the employer presents evidence of a
non-discriminatory reason, the plaintiff must show that the
proffered non-discriminatory reasons are a pretext for unlawful
discrimination. Mulero-Rodríguez v. Ponte, Inc., 98 F.3d 670, 673
(1st Cir. 1996). At all times the burden of persuasion remains
with the plaintiff. Tex. Dept. of Cmty. Affs. v. Burdine, 450
U.S. 248, 255-56 (1981); Mariani-Colón, 511 F.3d at 221.
Although we draw all reasonable inferences in the
nonmovant's favor, we will not "draw unreasonable inferences or
credit bald assertions, empty conclusions, rank conjecture, or
vitriolic invective." Cabán-Hernández, 486 F.3d at 8. It bears
repeating that genuine issues of material fact are "not the stuff
of an opposing party's dreams," Mesnick v. Gen. Elec. Co., 950
F.2d 816, 822 (1st Cir. 1991), and "a party cannot successfully
oppose a motion for summary judgment by resting 'upon mere
- 11 - allegations or denials of his pleading,'" Pina, 740 F.3d at 795
(quoting LeBlanc v. Great Am. Ins., 6 F.3d 836, 841 (1st Cir.
1993)).
López-Hernández places great weight on her deposition
testimony that, when reviewing her 2016 performance evaluation,
during the selection process for the Senior Production Manager,
Benítez told her that he treated her differently because of her
gender, because she was commanding, and he did not think that women
could have backbone and character. In her deposition, López-
Hernández also testified that Benítez told her that he would decide
who held the Senior Production Supervisor role.
Notwithstanding, if the record shows as a matter of law
that López-Hernández was not qualified for the position of Senior
Production Supervisor, her discrimination claim must fail. See,
e.g., Goncalves v. Plymouth Cnty. Sheriff's Dep't, 659 F.3d 101,
107 (1st Cir. 2011) (affirming grant of summary judgment for the
employer because the plaintiff "failed to show that she was . . .
qualified" and thus could not "meet her burden of showing a prima
facie case of discrimination"); Rathbun v. Autozone, Inc., 361
F.3d 62, 71 (1st Cir. 2004) (explaining that a plaintiff must show
that she "was qualified for an open position for which she applied"
as a prima facie element of a failure-to-promote claim). That is
the case here, as evidenced by the facts deemed admitted under
Local Rule 56.
- 12 - The Senior Production Supervisor job required:
Excellent communication, interpersonal, supervisory and teamwork skills, including abilities for people management, motivating the personnel to obtain top performance, handling personnel scheduling, evaluating discipline, providing coaching, ensuring adequate communication with staff, serving as liaison with other production supervisors for efficient transitions, ensuring compliance with all procedures, and communicating in English and Spanish.
Under Terumo's Employee Manual, an internal candidate seeking a
promotion must have satisfactorily performed in his/her current
role for a minimum of one year and must meet the qualifications
for the new position in order to be considered.
In the three and a half years in which López-Hernández
worked for Terumo and its predecessor, the company received a
steady stream of complaints from López-Hernández's peers,
subordinates, and support personnel about her interpersonal,
supervisory, and communication skills. These complaints included
reports that López-Hernández was disrespectful to her
subordinates, that she showed favoritism to some employees and
retaliated against others, that she gave her subordinates
incorrect or conflicting instructions about procedures, that the
team she supervised did not complete pending tasks and required
documentation, and that she did not verify that operators under
her supervision were following quality procedures. Terumo
produced exhibits from twenty different individuals (including
- 13 - human resources professionals, López-Hernández's supervisors, and
employees who had submitted complaints regarding López-Hernández
to the company) to evidence these complaints. López-Hernández was
given feedback, repeatedly, for failing to adequately perform her
duties as a supervisor, including for her mistreatment of employees
and failure to maintain quality controls.
López-Hernández did not communicate effectively and was
often hostile and disrespectful to other employees in documented
incidents. She rejected feedback and coaching opportunities
despite being offered multiple opportunities to improve. The
Senior Production Supervisor position required the ability to
energize and motivate subordinates; López-Hernández, however, had
created such a hostile work environment among her group that
several of her subordinates sought psychiatric services, several
asked to have their shifts changed so that they no longer had to
work with her, and her team reported feeling tense and unmotivated.
Moreover, the Senior Production Supervisor role required
leadership in achieving quality and safety goals, and here too
López-Hernández fell short. She had not mastered fundamental
information about the production process and quality requirements
and had, instead, implemented changes that would have been
detrimental to the production process and allowed subordinate
employees to work in areas for which they were not certified or
perform tasks they were not prepared to complete. López-Hernández
- 14 - and her subordinates had also consistently failed to complete
required documentation about the production process as required
for quality procedures, and when she did complete the
documentation, she did so incorrectly, which required other
employees to revise or re-do the documentation. This pattern of
behavior persisted throughout López-Hernández's tenure at two
different sites and while she was supervised by three different
supervisors, and her 2014, 2015, and 2016 evaluations identified
her interpersonal, supervisory, and communication skills as "areas
of opportunity" requiring improvement. Because of
López-Hernández's deficiencies in her Production Supervisor role -
- specifically, the performance issues and multiple complaints
made by so many different individuals against her -- Human
Resources did not recommend that she be promoted to the Senior
Production Supervisor job. Finally, the Senior Production
Supervisor needed to be bilingual in English and Spanish, and
López-Hernández was not a fluent English-speaker. Terumo fully
supported this litany of shortcomings in its statement of material
facts, which were in turn supported by citations to the record.
Appellant, in turn, failed to properly controvert the same,
disregarding Local Rule 56.
López-Hernández also contends that if her performance
issues were "as ample and as ongoing" as Terumo asserted, then she
should have been terminated. This does not actually deny the
- 15 - complaints made against her or the performance deficiencies
identified by Terumo, and the company made clear that it raised
these deficiencies with López-Hernández in repeated attempts to
help her improve her job performance, thus explaining why she was
not previously terminated.
López-Hernández asks us to disregard Terumo's evidence,
arguing that it comes from interested witnesses and therefore may
not be considered under Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc.,
530 U.S. 133 (2000). In Reeves, the Supreme Court explained that,
at summary judgment, a court:
Must disregard all evidence favorable to the moving party that the jury is not required to believe. That is, the court should give credence to the evidence favoring the nonmovant as well as that 'evidence supporting the moving party that is uncontradicted and unimpeached, at least to the extent that that evidence comes from disinterested witnesses.'
Id. at 151. (quoting 9A C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice
and Procedure § 2529, at 300 (2d ed.1995)).
In Dennis v. Osram Sylvania, Inc., as here, the appellant
argued that the district court at the summary judgment stage should
not have credited certain declarations because the proponents were
interested parties. 549 F.3d 851, 856 (1st Cir. 2008). We held
that the appellant misread the scope of Reeves and explained that
"[a]t summary judgment we need not exclude all interested
testimony, specifically testimony that is uncontradicted by the
- 16 - nonmovant." Id. (citing Lauren W. ex rel. Jean W. v. DeFlaminis,
480 F.3d 259, 271–72 (3d Cir. 2007)). Doing so, we acknowledged,
would make it impossible for employers at the summary judgment
stage to defend against retaliation claims, especially at the
second step of the burden-shifting framework described infra. Id.
And in this case, any argument for ignoring fulsome evidence of
performance deficiencies is undercut by the volume of specific and
similar complaints over time from so many different employees,
documented long before the decision at issue here was made.
As we concluded previously, López-Hernández failed to
adequately controvert Terumo's statement of uncontested material
facts, and like the appellant in Dennis, she reads Reeves too
narrowly to compel the result she seeks. We therefore conclude
that López-Hernández has failed to make out a prima facie case of
discrimination on her failure-to-promote claim.
3. Title VII: Retaliation
López-Hernández further contends that the district court
erroneously dismissed her retaliation claim under Title VII. She
posits that, nearly five months after she lodged an internal sex
discrimination complaint against Benítez, Terumo terminated her
employment in retaliation. She further acknowledges that while
temporal proximity may suggest retaliation, it is not sufficient
in certain cases to sustain a reasonable inference of the but-for
causation required to prevail in a retaliation action.
- 17 - The district court concluded that "[a]ssuming arguendo
that [López-Hernández] could make a prima facie case of
retaliation, [Terumo] has produced substantial evidence of a non-
discriminatory reason for Plaintiff's termination, namely the
plethora of complaints filed against her for violations of company
policies and mistreatment of her coworkers." López-Hernández,
2021 WL 1811641, at *4. The district court also concluded that
the Appellant had simply not shown that Terumo's stated reason was
false and pretextual, nor had she provided sufficient evidence to
even establish the existence of a trial-worthy issue. Moreover,
it reasoned that Appellant's reliance on temporal proximity was
misplaced. "[W]hile temporal proximity is one factor from which
an employer's bad motive can be inferred, by itself, it is not
enough -- especially if the surrounding circumstances undermine
any claim of causation." López-Hernández, 2021 WL 1811641, at *4
(quoting Carrero-Ojeda v. Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica, 755 F.3d
711, 720 (1st Cir. 2014)).
"Title VII bars employers from retaliating against
an . . . employee because she 'has opposed any practice made an
unlawful employment practice by this subchapter, or because [s]he
has made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any
manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under this
subchapter.'" Garayalde-Rijos v. Mun. of Carolina, 747 F.3d 15,
24 (1st Cir. 2014) (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–3(a)).
- 18 - When direct evidence of retaliation is lacking, as it is
here, we utilize a familiar burden-shifting framework. To
establish a prima facie case of retaliation, López-Hernández must
show: "(1) she engaged in protected conduct; (2) she suffered an
adverse employment action; and (3) that a 'causal nexus exists
between the protected [conduct] and the adverse action.'"
Garayalde-Rijos, 747 F.3d at 24 (third alteration in original)
(quoting Ponte v. Steelcase Inc., 741 F.3d 310, 321 (1st Cir.
2014)); see also Univ. of Tex. S.W. Med. Ctr. v. Nassar, 570 U.S.
338, 360 (2013) ("Title VII retaliation claims must be proved
according to traditional principles of but-for causation.").
"Once the plaintiff makes out this prima facie case, the burden
shifts to the defendant to articulate a legitimate, non-
retaliatory explanation for its actions." Planadeball v. Wyndham
Vacation Resorts, Inc., 793 F.3d 169, 175 (1st Cir. 2015). If the
defendant is able to do so, the burden then returns to the
plaintiff "to show that the defendant's explanation is a pretext
for unlawful retaliation." Id.
We now turn to the first requirement: protected
activity. Neither party disputes that the internal complaint
constituted protected activity. The parties also agree that
Appellant satisfies the second requirement, as termination is an
adverse employment event. Marrero v. Goya of P.R., Inc., 304 F.3d
- 19 - 7, 23 (1st Cir. 2002) (citing Hernandez-Torres v. Intercontinental
Trading, Inc., 158 F.3d 43, 47 (1st Cir. 1998)).
Terumo argues that López-Hernández cannot show the
requisite causal connection between the internal complaint and her
termination since its decision to terminate her was based on her
misconduct and Benítez was not involved in said decision. We
agree. The temporal proximity of almost five months between the
internal complaint and the misconduct that led to
López-Hernández's dismissal does not evidence that there was a
causal connection between Appellant's complaint and her
termination. Calero–Cerezo v. U.S. Dep't of Just., 355 F.3d 6,
25 (1st Cir. 2004) ("Three and four month periods have been held
insufficient to establish a causal connection based on temporal
proximity."). Besides asserting that she was dismissed four and
a half months after filing an internal complaint, López-Hernández
fails to set forth evidence connecting her protected activity to
the adverse action. See Ramírez Rodríguez v. Boehringer Ingelheim
Pharms., Inc., 425 F.3d 67, 85 (1st Cir. 2005); Wright v.
CompUSA, Inc., 352 F.3d 472, 478 (1st Cir. 2003) (explaining
chronological proximity does not establish causality by itself,
especially if "[t]he larger picture undercuts any claim of
causation" (quoting Soileau v. Guilford of Me., Inc., 105 F.3d 12,
16 (1st Cir. 1997))).
- 20 - In view of the uncontested facts, Appellant has not shown
that a reasonable jury could conclude that her internal sex
discrimination complaint was the but-for cause of her termination.
Summary judgment was thus also proper on López-Hernández’s
retaliation claim.
4. PUERTO RICO LAW CLAIMS
López-Hernández also raised claims under Puerto Rico
Laws 100, 69, and 115, the local counterparts to federal anti-sex
discrimination and retaliation statutes.2 These are subject to
the same analysis as their federal counterparts. Indeed, Title
VII's anti-retaliation law and the anti-retaliation provisions
under Puerto Rico Law 115 largely overlap. "Law 100, for all
intents and purposes, is . . . the Puerto Rican 'analog[ue] to
Title VII.'" Rivera-Rivera v. Medina & Medina, Inc., 898 F.3d 77,
97 (1st Cir. 2018) (quoting Monteagudo v. Asociación de Empleados
del Estado Libre Asociado de P.R., 554 F.3d 164, 169 n.3 (1st Cir.
2009)). Similarly, "Law 69's prohibitions on gender-based
employment discrimination . . . appears to be aligned with Title
VII law; the latter's precedents being used freely to construe the
former." Id. (quoting Gerald v. Univ. of P.R., 707 F.3d 7, 28
(1st Cir. 2013)).
2 Puerto Rico Law 100 of June 30, 1959, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 29, §§ 146 et seq., Puerto Rico Law 115 of December 20, 1991, Laws Ann. tit. 29, § 194a and Puerto Rico Law 69 of July 6, 1985, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 29 § 1321.
- 21 - Given the symmetry between the anti-retaliation
provisions under Title VII and Puerto Rico Laws discussed above,
we affirm the dismissal of López-Hernández's Puerto Rico
anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation claims for the same
reasons that we affirmed the dismissal of her Title VII claims.
See Bonilla-Ramirez v. MVM, Inc., 904 F.3d 88, 96-97 (1st Cir.
2018).
Lastly, López-Hernández also brought a claim under Law
80, which "requires employers to compensate at-will employees who
are discharged without just cause." Ruiz-Sánchez v. Goodyear Tire
& Rubber Co., 717 F.3d 249, 254 (1st Cir. 2013). While Law 80
does not have a federal equivalent, the record contains ample
evidence that López-Hernández was terminated for just cause.
Moreover, López-Hernández fails to develop any argument as to her
Law 80 claim and, thus, we deem it waived. See Rivera-Gomez v. de
Castro, 843 F.2d 631, 635 (1st Cir. 1988) (explaining that "a
litigant has an obligation 'to spell out its arguments squarely
and distinctly,' or else forever hold its peace." (quoting
Paterson-Leitch Co. v. Mass. Mun. Wholesale Elec. Co., 840 F.2d
985, 990 (1st Cir. 1988))).
As such, we affirm the dismissal of López-Hernández's
Puerto Rico law claims.3
Even if López-Hernández's Puerto Rico law claims survived 3
the dismissal of her Title VII discrimination and retaliation
- 22 - III. CONCLUSION
The judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.4
claims, we consider each waived for lack of any meaningful development since López-Hernández does not address said claims apart from one sentence at the conclusion of her brief. See United States v. Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990) ("[I]ssues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are deemed waived.").
It is also very helpful to this court when the district 4
court specifies precisely what facts it is deeming admitted due to the lack of an effective rejoinder compliant with Local Rule 56. This undoubtedly can involve more work, but it increases the likelihood of a correct result, saves much time on appeal, and reduces the likelihood of a do-over. See supra note 1..
- 23 -