Rodriguez v. Nazario

719 F. Supp. 52, 1989 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9245, 1989 WL 91693
District Court, D. Puerto Rico·Decided July 31, 1989·No. Civ. 85-0663(RLA)·Published·Cited by 12 cases

Opinion

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. 1 See 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985(3). As for Rivera, plaintiff appears to allege a violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1986 2 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 *54 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 plaintiffs 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 *55 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 plaintiffs claims for damages against her in her official capacity and she does not dispute plaintiffs 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.

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Rodriguez v. Nazario, 719 F. Supp. 52, 1989 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9245, 1989 WL 91693 (prd 1989).

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