Diaz-Vazquez v. Alvarez-Rubio ( 2015 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
Nos. 14-1050
14-1052
DAMARIS APONTE-RAMOS; ELIZABETH DE JESUS-AFANADOR; OSVALDO
DE LA ROSA-VIDAL; MARTA I. FELICIANO-MONTILLA; JOSE
ARNALDO FLORES-GARCIA; WANDA I. GONZÁLEZ-SEGARRA; MARITZA
LEBRÓN-GARCÍA; DAMARIS MARTÍNEZ-GONZÁLEZ; SYLVIA
MARTÍNEZ-MARTÍNEZ; LUCY A. ORTIZ-RIVAS; DAVID PÉREZ-VÁZQUEZ;
NEIDA I. RAMOS-TORRES; LORNA S. RIVERA-CORREA; LYDIA
PRINCIPE-RODRIGUEZ; CARLOS J. RIVERA-RIVERA; WANDA J.
SANTIAGO-SERRANO; MARYLIN SIERRA-GARCIA; EDGARDO
TORRES-CABRERA; MARIA D. TORRES-HERNANDEZ; JUAN L.
VÁZQUEZ-LOPEZ; RAFAEL ZAYAS-MORALES; CATHERINE
GONZÁLEZ-RIVERA; MAYRA L. ALMODOVAR-CORTÉS; HUMBERTO
VERGARA-AGOSTINI; ABRAHAM PÉREZ-VALENTÍN; LILLIAN
GARCIA-CHANTA; LUZ E. BURGOS-RAMÍREZ; LUIS R. RAMOS-NAVARRO;
FRANCISCO ESPINOSA-HUERTAS; IVETTE DÍAZ-VÁZQUEZ; JOSÉ O.
RODRÍGUEZ-POMALES; ORLANDO ALDEBOL-BORRERO,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
FABIÁN LABOY-RODRÍGUEZ; OSVALDO DE LA ROSA-VIDAL; HÉCTOR
RIVERA-RIVERA; HÉCTOR TORRES-RESTO; MARITZA VÁZQUEZ-RAMOS;
ANTONIO SEDA-ZACOUR; HUMBERTO VERGARA-AGOSTINI; OMAR
NEGRÓN-SANTIAGO,
Plaintiffs,
v.
ZOIMÉ ÁLVAREZ-RUBIO, in her personal and official capacity as
Executive Director of the State Insurance Fund; SAÚL
RIVERA-RIVERA, in his personal and official capacity as
Human Services Director of the State Insurance Fund;
STATE INSURANCE FUND CORPORATION,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Gustavo A. Gelpí, U.S. District Judge;
Hon. Marcos E. López, U.S. Magistrate Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Howard and Kayatta, Circuit Judges.
Jorge Martínez-Luciano, with whom Emil Rodríguez-Escudero
and Martínez-Luciano & Rodríguez-Escudero Law Office were on brief,
for appellants.
Damaris Ortiz-González, with whom Sifre & Muñoz-Noya PSC
was on brief, for appellee State Insurance Fund Corporation.
Tanaira Padilla-Rodriguez, with whom Susana I.
Peñagarícano-Brown, Assistant Solicitor General, and Margarita
Mercado-Echegaray, Solicitor General, were on brief, for appellees
Zoimé Álvarez-Rubio and Saúl Rivera-Rivera.
April 3, 2015
LYNCH, Chief Judge. These two appeals arise out of
similar lawsuits in which plaintiffs, current and previous
employees of the Puerto Rico State Insurance Fund Corporation
(SIFC), have alleged that defendants, the SIFC and its high-level
administrators, selectively enforced Puerto Rico's merit principle
against them. This "selective enforcement" is said to be in
violation of the Equal Protection Clause. U.S. Const. amend. XIV,
§ 1.
Plaintiffs were appointed from 2001 to 2008 to career
managerial positions at the SIFC. Control of the Puerto Rico
government changed parties in early 2009. A later 2009 audit
revealed that these plaintiffs were appointed through internal job
postings, rather than through open announcements as required by
SIFC regulation. Finding the appointments to have violated the
merit principle, the new administration annulled the appointments.
The Equal Protection Clause does not provide a basis to
undo these employment actions. Rather, this case can be viewed as
an effort to circumvent the limits imposed on First Amendment
claims. Indeed, we recently affirmed entry of summary judgment for
defendants in a suit by a former employee alleging that a similar
annulment constituted political discrimination in violation of the
First Amendment. Reyes-Pérez v. State Ins. Fund Corp., 755 F.3d
49, 50-52, 55 (1st Cir. 2014). These plaintiffs challenge the
annulment under the Equal Protection Clause, expressly disavowing
-3-
any First Amendment claim. The district courts granted summary
judgment to defendants because plaintiffs failed to identify
similarly situated individuals treated differently by defendants.
We affirm on the same basis.
I.
When reviewing a grant of a motion for summary judgment,
"we recite the facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving
party, drawing all reasonable inferences in his favor." Id. at 50.
Plaintiffs are thirty-seven individuals who were
appointed to career managerial positions at the SIFC, the Puerto
Rico government entity that administers the local workers'
compensation program, between January 1, 2001, and December 31,
2008. A "career managerial employee" is one of five employee
categories at the SIFC. The term is defined as a permanent
employee of the SIFC "who is assigned semi-skilled and unskilled
technical professional duties and who does not belong to any of the
appropriate bargaining units for purposes of collective contracting
existing in the [SIFC]." For example, one of the plaintiffs here,
José O. Rodríguez-Pomales, held a career managerial position of
Budget Officer.
Plaintiffs were appointed while one of Puerto Rico's two
major political parties, the Popular Democratic Party (PDP), was in
power. In 2009, when the New Progressive Party (NPP) came to
-4-
power, the new administration performed an audit of all personnel
transactions that had occurred between January 1, 2001, and
December 31, 2008. Defendants reviewed the personnel files of all
3,835 employees at the SIFC. According to the October 28, 2009,
audit report, 232 appointments of career managerial employees --
including those of the plaintiffs -- were made through internal job
postings rather than public announcements. In the SIFC's view,
this exclusion of outside candidates contravened Article 14.1 of
the SIFC Employee Manual, which, implementing Puerto Rico's "merit
principle," requires that positions be filled "by means of open
competition."1 See P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 3, § 1461(42) (2011)
(defining the "merit principle" as the "concept on which basis all
public employees shall be selected, promoted, retained and treated
in all matters concerning their employment based upon their
capability and without discrimination"). In January 2010, the SIFC
began to annul all of those appointments, including those of the
plaintiffs, regardless of the appointee's party affiliation. See
generally González-Segarra v. State Ins. Fund Corp., 188 P.R. Dec.
1
In 2003, the SIFC Administrative Director had recommended
that the SIFC begin using internal job posting to recruit
managerial employees in part because employees had complained that
they were consistently losing out to candidates outside the SIFC
when seeking managerial positions. There is no suggestion that
this is the type of exception to the merit principle authorized by
Puerto Rico law. See González-Segarra v. State Ins. Fund Corp.,
188 P.R. Dec. 252, __ P.R. Offic. Trans. __ (P.R. 2013) (discussing
the scope of exceptions to the merit principle and finding that
none applied to the parties' appointments from the 2009 audit).
-5-
252, __ P.R. Offic. Trans. __ (P.R. 2013) (describing the events
giving rise to the annulments and holding that plaintiffs'
appointments made through closed job announcements violate the
merit principle).
The Aponte-Ramos plaintiffs filed suit in federal
district court in Puerto Rico on December 7, 2010,2 and the Díaz-
Vázquez plaintiffs did so on April 29, 2011. Using 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983, plaintiffs sued the SIFC, its executive director, and its
director of human resources, in both their official and personal
capacities, seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as
injunctive relief reinstating plaintiffs. Both sets of plaintiffs
alleged that defendants selectively enforced the merit principle
against them, in violation of Equal Protection Clause, along with
several other federal and Puerto Rico law claims.3 The district
court in Díaz-Vázquez granted summary judgment for the defendants
on October 22, 2013, and denied a motion for reconsideration on
December 4, 2013, finding that the plaintiffs had not identified
similarly situated individuals who had been treated differently by
defendants. See Díaz-Vázquez v. Álvarez-Rubio, Civ. No. 11-1405
2
A second case, filed on May 16, 2011, was consolidated in
the district court with Aponte-Ramos on July 6, 2011.
3
The Díaz-Vázquez plaintiffs asked the district court for
voluntary dismissal of their other constitutional claims, which the
district court granted. The Díaz-Vázquez district court then
declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state law
claims. In both cases, plaintiffs have appealed only on the Equal
Protection claim.
-6-
(MEL), 2013 WL 6281455, at * 11 (D.P.R. Oct. 22, 2013) (granting
summary judgment); Díaz-Vázquez v. Álvarez-Rubio, Civ. No. 11-1405
(MEL), 2013 WL 6282309, at *3 (D.P.R. Dec. 4, 2013) (denying
reconsideration). The district court in Aponte-Ramos granted
summary judgment for the defendants on December 10, 2013, adopting
the reasoning of the Díaz-Vázquez court. This appeal followed.
II.
We review a district court's grant of summary judgment de
novo. Klunder v. Brown Univ., 778 F.3d 24, 30 (1st Cir. 2015). In
so doing, we "scrutiniz[e] the facts in the light most agreeable"
to plaintiffs and "draw[] all reasonable inferences in [their]
favor." Id. (quoting Foote v. Town of Bedford, 642 F.3d 80, 82
(1st Cir. 2011)) (internal quotation marks omitted). "Summary
judgment is proper only when no genuine issue of material fact
exists and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of
law." Tobin v. Fed. Express Corp., 775 F.3d 448, 450 (1st Cir.
2014).
It is generally true that "[u]nder the Equal Protection
Clause, persons similarly situated must be accorded similar
governmental treatment." Marrero-Gutierrez v. Molina, 491 F.3d 1,
9 (1st Cir. 2007) (citing City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr.,
-7-
473 U.S. 432, 439 (1985)).4 In order to prove an Equal Protection
violation, plaintiffs must establish that, compared with other
similarly situated individuals, they were "selectively treated
. . . based on impermissible considerations such as race, religion,
intent to inhibit or punish the exercise of constitutional rights,
or malicious or bad faith intent to injure a person." See id.
(alteration in original) (quoting Rubinovitz v. Rogato, 60 F.3d
906, 910 (1st Cir. 1995)) (internal quotation marks omitted).5
"The formula for determining whether individuals or
entities are 'similarly situated' for equal protection purposes is
not always susceptible to precise demarcation." Id. "[T]he test
is whether a prudent person, looking objectively at the incidents,
would think them roughly equivalent and the protagonists similarly
situated. Much as in the lawyer's art of distinguishing cases, the
4
The individual defendants argue that we should construe
plaintiffs' claims as First Amendment political discrimination
claims, rather than as Fourteenth Amendment selective enforcement
claims. See, e.g., Uphoff Figueroa v. Alejandro, 597 F.3d 423, 430
n.8 (1st Cir. 2010) ("An equal protection claim alleging political
discrimination merely restates a First Amendment political
discrimination claim and . . . should [be] considered under the
First Amendment."). Plaintiffs respond that our cases say only
that plaintiffs bringing First Amendment claims may not "double-
dip" with a selective enforcement claim based on the same legal
theory. The argument is beside the point. It is clear that
plaintiffs cannot succeed under their asserted selective
enforcement theory.
5
The government has not argued that this claim should be
understood as a class-of-one theory, which is barred in the public
employment context, see Engquist v. Or. Dep't of Agric., 553 U.S.
591 (2008), so we do not address that argument.
-8-
'relevant aspects' are those factual elements which determine
whether reasoned analogy supports, or demands, a like result."
Barrington Cove Ltd. P'ship v. R.I. Hous. & Mortg. Fin. Corp., 246
F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir. 2001) (quoting Dartmouth Review v. Dartmouth
Coll., 889 F.2d 13, 19 (1st Cir. 1989), overruled on other grounds
by Educadores Puertorriqueños en Acción v. Hernández, 367 F.3d 61
(1st Cir. 2004)) (internal quotation marks omitted). The cases
must be similar "in all relevant respects": "[e]xact correlation is
neither likely nor necessary, but the cases must be fair congeners.
In other words, apples should be compared to apples." Id. (quoting
Dartmouth Review, 889 F.2d at 19) (internal quotation marks
omitted).
Plaintiffs do not argue that there are individuals hired
to career managerial positions in violation of the merit principle
from 2001 to 2008 whose appointments were not annulled. Rather,
they point to two other categories of individuals, appointed
earlier by other decisionmakers: (1) a group of individuals
appointed without any job announcement, open or closed, in the
1990s, and (2) several physicians appointed to career managerial
positions without any job announcement in 1995-1996. They also
point to a third category appointed after the time period covered
by the audit: union employees appointed though closed job
announcements after 2009. These obviously dissimilar appointments
simply present different factual situations to which the open
-9-
competition requirement may, or may not, apply. Indeed, the
Supreme Court of Puerto Rico has rejected any notion that the merit
principle applies in the same manner across the board, without
regard to context or circumstance. González-Segarra, __ P.R.
Offic. Trans. at __.
The first two groups were allegedly appointed to SIFC
positions without open job announcements, also allegedly in
violation of the merit principle. To plaintiffs, that is
similarity enough. Not so. First, plaintiffs have not established
that the open competition requirement applied to these individuals
at all. Díaz-Vázquez, 2013 WL 6282309, at *1 & n.1.
Plaintiffs fail to identify employees of a similar
category hired, promoted, or otherwise appointed in a similar way
who were not annulled following a similar audit. They rely
primarily on a collection of appointment letters and change reports
with dates ranging from 1993 to 1999.6 The appointments and
changes identified in the collection of letters fall into four
categories: promotions from temporary status to regular status
based on positive performance evaluations, appointments to
6
Plaintiffs also rely on an affidavit from a former SIFC
Human Resources employee who states that he has personal knowledge
of two categories of appointments, along with individuals appointed
to career managerial positions before 2001 without open job
announcements. The district court found these allegations "non-
specific and insufficient to carry plaintiffs' burden," as they
provide "[n]o details about these individuals or the circumstances
surrounding their appointments." Díaz-Vázquez, 2013 WL 6281455, at
*9 n.3. We agree.
-10-
temporary positions, salary increases, and a simple promotion.
There is no indication that these appointments involved career
managerial employees and were made through internal job postings;
to the contrary, it is undisputed that internal job announcements
were not used for career managerial employees before 2003 or after
2008.
Individuals given a smorgasbord of status changes through
a different process are hardly similarly situated to plaintiffs.
Citing González-Segarra, plaintiffs argue that the Puerto Rico
Supreme Court has explained that the merit principle applied in
full to employees before 2001 and that nominating authorities are
obligated to seek out and annul any violations of the merit
principle. González-Segarra, however, holds only that appointments
which were annulled as a result of the 2009 audit violated the
merit principle and were not justified by any exception. Id. The
opinion says nothing about the appointments from before 2001.
Finally, the first two groups also had their status
changed about a decade before the plaintiffs were appointed.
There was no reason for defendants to think these groups were
similar. Nor was it unreasonable for defendants to audit only the
prior eight years, which constituted the entire period of hiring
through closed job announcements. The Constitution does not
require the SIFC to audit indefinitely into the past, or even back
to the date of the last audit. Cf. Williamson v. Lee Optical of
-11-
Okla., Inc., 348 U.S. 483, 489 (1955) ("[T]he legislature may
select one phase of one field and apply a remedy there, neglecting
others. The prohibition of the Equal Protection Clause goes no
further than the invidious discrimination." (citation omitted));
Beeler v. Rounsavall, 328 F.3d 813, 817 (5th Cir. 2003) (finding
that two applicants for a permit were not similarly situated
because one was applying for a new permit and one was applying for
an existing permit, and the relevant regulation entailed
"differential treatment of businesses applying for their first
permit and businesses applying to renew their permits").
As to the union employees, plaintiffs do not dispute that
the SIFC is legally obligated to appoint some union employees via
internal job announcements because of applicable collective
bargaining agreements. Díaz-Vázquez, 2013 WL 6282309, at *3.
Union employees, by definition, are also not career managerial
employees. They are not similarly situated to plaintiffs in the
relevant respects.
III.
Plaintiffs' Equal Protection claims fail as a matter of
law. The district courts' grants of summary judgment are affirmed.
So ordered.
-12-