Torres-Rivera v. Lozada-Crespo, et al

Filing

OPINION issued by Sandra L. Lynch, Chief Appellate Judge; Jeffrey R. Howard, Appellate Judge and Rogeriee Thompson, Appellate Judge. Published. [14-1297]

Case: 14-1297

Document: 00116819798

Page: 1

Date Filed: 04/06/2015

Entry ID: 5898098

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 14-1297
HONORABLE BASILIO TORRES-RIVERA,
President of the Puerto Rico Industrial Commission,
Plaintiff, Appellee,
v.
ALEJANDRO GARCÍA-PADILLA, individually and as Governor of
Puerto Rico; GRACE SYLVETTE LOZADA-CRESPO, individually and as
Designated President of the Puerto Rico Industrial Commission,
Defendants, Appellants.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Francisco

A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge]

Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Howard and Thompson, Circuit Judges.

Margarita L. Mercado-Echegaray, Solicitor General, Puerto Rico
Department of Justice, with whom Susana I. Peñagarícano-Brown,
Assistant Solicitor General, Puerto Rico Department of Justice, was
on brief, for appellants.
Fredeswin Pérez-Caballero, with whom Pérez-Caballero Law
Office was on brief, for appellee.

April 6, 2015

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LYNCH, Chief Judge.

Date Filed: 04/06/2015

Entry ID: 5898098

The government of Puerto Rico

changed hands as a result of the November 2012 General Elections,
and quickly passed laws to "reorganize" different agencies.

Many

of the officials displaced as a result brought suit, claiming
political discrimination and due process violations.

See Torres-

Rivera v. Garcia-Padilla, No. 14-1040, 2014 WL 357172, at *1 n.2
(D.P.R. Jan. 31, 2014) (listing cases).
This is an interlocutory appeal from one of those cases.
It concerns the change effected by Law 180-2013, which explicitly
made the position of the Chair of the Puerto Rico Industrial
Commission

("PRIC")

freely

removable,

and

Governor

Alejandro

García-Padilla's subsequent decision to remove the then-Chair,
Basilio Torres-Rivera, and to appoint a replacement. Torres-Rivera
responded almost immediately by bringing suit against GarcíaPadilla and the new PRIC Chair, Grace Sylvette Lozada-Crespo,
alleging violations of his constitutional rights under the First,
Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as violations of Puerto
Rico constitutional and statutory law.

The district court granted

a preliminary injunction based on Torres-Rivera's due process claim
that, inter alia, vacated the appointment of his replacement,
Lozada-Crespo, and reinstated Torres-Rivera.
Federal injunctive relief concerning the selection of
high-level political appointments in Commonwealth government is as
extraordinary as it is rare.

Since the district court issued its

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preliminary injunction, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico has made
clear the importance of these cases to the Commonwealth's own
constitutional balance of powers, see Díaz-Carrasquillo v. GarcíaPadilla, 2014 TSPR 75, 2014 WL 3013335 (P.R. 2014) (certified
translation provided by the parties), and the parties agree that
the relief available under Commonwealth law is adequate here.
Accordingly, we again face the question of whether Torres-Rivera
remains entitled to federal injunctive relief for his due process
claim given the conceded adequacy of Commonwealth remedies.

Cf.

Montañez-Allman v. García-Padilla, No. 13-2384 (1st Cir. Apr. 1,
2015); Acevedo-Feliciano v. Ruiz-Hernández, 447 F.3d 115, 124 (1st
Cir. 2006).

In light of the extraordinariness of the relief

sought, the immense importance of this case to the Commonwealth's
own constitutional balance of powers, and Torres-Rivera's failure
to allege that Commonwealth procedure is inadequate, we remand with
instructions to vacate the preliminary injunction within thirty
days of the date of this opinion, and for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
I.
We summarize only the facts necessary to resolve the
appeal.
Established in 1935, the PRIC is the Puerto Rico agency
charged with reviewing decisions made by the Administrator of the
State Insurance Fund on claims for workers' compensation.

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The

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governor appoints the Commissioners of the PRIC with the advice and
consent of the Senate of Puerto Rico.

The governor also appoints

the Chair, with the advice and consent of the Senate, who "serve[s]
simultaneously as a Commissioner and the Administrative Head of
[the] Agency."

P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 11, § 8 (2010).

In May 2012, then-Governor Luis Fortuño appointed TorresRivera as Commissioner and Chair of the PRIC, and the Puerto Rico
Senate confirmed his appointment a month later.1

At the time of

his appointment, the term of office was six years, pursuant to Law
45 of 1935, as amended through Law 141-2009.2

The parties dispute

1

We follow the district court in using the term "Chair"
instead of "President" to be "consistent with the English
translation of the Puerto Rico law."
Torres-Rivera, 2014 WL
357172, at *1 n.1.
2

Law 45, as amended and in effect in 2012, reads in relevant

part:
A Commission is hereby created, to be denominated as the
'Puerto Rico Industrial Commission,' constituted by five
(5) Commissioners appointed by the Governor with the
advice and consent of the Senate of Puerto Rico, who
shall be attorneys-at-law duly admitted to the bar in
Puerto Rico. The Governor, with the advice and consent
of the Senate, shall designate the Chair, who shall serve
simultaneously as a Commissioner and the Administrative
Head of this Agency, who shall set forth and administer
the public policy with discharge rulemaking authority or
to delegate such authority. In order to carry out this
task, he/she shall preside and direct the functions of
the Commissioner panel, whose appointments shall have an
effective term of six (6) years.
Commissioners shall remain in office until their
successors are legally designated and take office.
P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 11, § 8 (2010).
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whether this six-year term attached to a joint position of Chairand-Commissioner,

jointly

to

both

positions,

or

only

to

the

following

the

position of Commissioner.
When

García-Padilla

became

Governor

November 2012 General Elections, a series of laws were enacted "to
usher the Governor's political supporters into office."
Rivera, 2014 WL 357172, at *1.

Torres-

One of these, Law 180-2013, made

the PRIC Chair a freely removable position, arguably eliminating
the six-year term that the position may have had.

By letter dated

January 11, 2014, García-Padilla notified Torres-Rivera of this
change.

García-Padilla's letter also informed Torres-Rivera that

he could continue on as Commissioner, but that a new Chair had been
appointed.

Less than a week later, Torres-Rivera filed suit in

federal district court against García-Padilla and the new Chair,
Lozada-Crespo, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief as well as
damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201-02, the Puerto
Rico constitution, and Commonwealth law.
The district court found that Torres-Rivera was likely to
succeed on his due process claim, reasoning that he had been
deprived of his property interest in continuing as PRIC Chair for
the six-year term to which he had been appointed.

The district

court

basis

issued

a

preliminary

injunction

on

this

that:

(1) vacated Lozada-Crespo's appointment as Chair and Commissioner;
(2) ordered that Torres-Rivera be "maintain[ed]" as Chair and

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Commissioner; and (3) enjoined Torres-Rivera's removal from his
position as Chair and Commissioner without due process.

This

appeal followed.
II.
The

parties

vigorously

dispute

several

points

of

Commonwealth law that they argue are relevant to the question of
whether Torres-Rivera had a property interest in the position of
Chair, and, if so, whether that interest survived Law 180.3

They

also dispute both the applicability and the authority of the Puerto
Rico

Supreme

Court's

decision

in

the

related

case

of

Díaz-

Carrasquillo v. García-Padilla, 2014 TSPR 75, 2014 WL 3013335 (P.R.
2014).
We need not and will not adjudicate these disputes.
Reinstatement is an equitable remedy, and, even if available, is
not inevitable.

Rosario-Torres v. Hernandez-Colon, 889 F.2d 314,

321 (1st Cir. 1989) (en banc) (noting that reinstatement must be
"tailor[ed] . . . on a case by case basis").

The parties agreed at

oral argument that the relief available in Commonwealth court is
adequate, and so we must consider whether the rather extraordinary

3

In particular, they disagree as to whether the position of
Chair is a separate position from that of Commissioner, which they
argue is relevant to whether the six-year term attached to one or
both, or could have been abolished as to one but not the other.
They also disagree as to whether the nature of the PRIC Chair is
quasi-judicial or purely executive, again relevant to the validity
of any term and removal limitations that could create a property
interest.
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federal injunctive relief reinstating a Commonwealth political
appointment and removing the now-reinstated appointee's replacement
remains appropriate. See Montañez-Allman, No. 13-2384; cf. El Dia,
Inc. v. Hernandez-Colon, 963 F.2d 488, 496-98 (1st Cir. 1992)
("[E]quitable remedies should be granted only as a matter of
judicial discretion . . . ." (citation and internal quotation marks
omitted)).
When we last resolved this issue in Montañez-Allman, we
observed that "in determining entitlement to federal relief for due
process violations, a relevant consideration is the adequacy of
'existing state remedies.'"

Montañez-Allman, No. 13-2384 (quoting

Acevedo-Feliciano, 447 F.3d at 124).

We explained that this is

particularly true where, as here, the relief sought implicates
comity concerns, but is not "necessary to prevent great and
irreparable injury."

Id. (quoting Mass. State Grange v. Benton,

272 U.S. 525, 527-29 (1926) (Holmes, J.)) (internal quotation marks
omitted); see also Rosario-Torres, 889 F.2d at 323 (urging caution
"[i]n shaping equitable remedies, [where] comity concerns can loom
large"); cf. R.R. Comm'n of Tex. v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 50001 (1941) (holding that federal courts must "exercis[e] a wise
discretion" in administering equitable relief to "avoid[] . . .
needless friction with state policies" (citations and internal
quotation marks omitted)).

Relying on such comity considerations

and the discretion inherent in equitable relief, we found that

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federal equitable relief was no longer appropriate given the
importance of the case to the Commonwealth's constitutional balance
of powers and the adequacy of relief that had become available
under

the

Puerto

Carrasquillo.

Rico

See

Supreme

Court's

Montañez-Allman,

decision

No.

13-2384

in

Díaz-

(finding

"applicable" Justice Holmes's "'important rule'" that injunctive
relief "'ought [not] issue against officers of a State . . . unless
in a case reasonably free from doubt and when necessary to prevent
great and irreparable injury'" (alteration in original) (quoting
Mass. State Grange, 272 U.S. at 527-29)).
The parties believe that this presents a different case
from both Montañez-Allman and Díaz-Carrasquillo.
they are correct:

Superficially,

Montañez-Allman and Díaz-Carrasquillo present

"abolishment" cases, concerning limits on the legislature's ability
to effect a removal by "destroying" an executive office only to reestablish it under a new name, and the survival of a property
interest in the "destroyed" office as a property interest in the
"new" office.

By contrast, this case, Torres-Rivera, appears to

present a "removal" case, concerning limits on the legislature's
ability to destroy a property interest in an office (assuming there
was such an interest) by lifting whatever removal limitations
created the property interest in the first place.
Gobernadora,
(certified

165

P.R.

translation

Dec.

28,

provided

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2005
by

WL

the

Cf. Santana v.

1489094

parties)

(P.R.

2005)

(stating

the

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principle that where there is no mandatory time period, there is no
proprietary interest).4
But despite these superficial differences, these cases
are similar in one significant respect: they implicate questions
concerning the limitations on the Legislative Assembly's "power to
create, consolidate or reorganize executive departments" that are
important to Puerto Rico's own constitutional balance of powers.
P.R. Const. art. III, § 16.
courts

to

referee

a

That is, these cases ask the federal

political

dispute

about

Puerto

Rico's

constitutional limitations on structural changes to high-level
political appointments.

This we will not and need not do.

Cf. El

Dia, 963 F.2d at 497 ("Simply because an equitable remedy may be
available does not necessarily mean that it must automatically
issue.").
Comity concerns are particularly compelling on the facts
of this case.

Because the very existence of continuing property

interests in these high-level political appointments implicates

4

It must be emphasized that, to the extent that legislative
actions succeed in destroying property interests, there can be no
federal due process claim. It is well settled that "no due process
violation occurs when 'the legislature which creates a statutory
entitlement (or other property interest) . . . alter[s] or
terminat[es] the entitlement by subsequent legislative enactment.'"
Correa-Ruiz v. Fortuño, 573 F.3d 1, 14 (1st Cir. 2009) (alteration
in original) (quoting Gattis v. Gravett, 806 F.2d 778, 780 (8th
Cir. 1986)); see also id. at 14-15 (collecting cases). That aspect
of our decision in Díaz-Carrasquillo v. García-Padilla, 750 F.3d 7,
11 (1st Cir. 2014), remains good law.
Stronger procedural
protections may be required by the Commonwealth than under federal
law, but that issue is not before us.
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difficult

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Commonwealth

Date Filed: 04/06/2015

constitutional

Entry ID: 5898098

questions,

the

authority to remove these officials -- and so the necessity of predeprivation procedures -- may be obscure prior to litigation.

Cf.

S. Commons Condo. Ass'n v. Charlie Arment Trucking, Inc., 775 F.3d
82,

85-86

(1st

Cir.

2014)

(recognizing

that,

"in

some

circumstances," an "after-the-fact remedy" under state law may be
adequate).

Where, as here, the parties not only fail to allege

that Commonwealth law provides inadequate post-deprivation relief,
but agree that Commonwealth remedies would be adequate, comity
requires that we decline to interfere on procedural due process
grounds.

See Montañez-Allman, No. 13-2384; Rumford Pharmacy, Inc.

v. City of E. Providence, 970 F.2d 996, 999-1000 & n.6 (1st Cir.
1992); cf. San Gerónimo Caribe Project, Inc. v. Acevedo-Vilá, 687
F.3d 465, 480-81 (1st Cir. 2012) (en banc).
Accordingly,

we

remand

to

the

district

court

with

instructions to vacate the preliminary injunction within thirty
days of the date of this opinion (to provide time to file suit in
Commonwealth court), to dismiss without prejudice Torres-Rivera's
due process claim, to resolve Torres-Rivera's First Amendment
claim, and, if dismissed, to decline pendent jurisdiction over the
remaining Commonwealth claims. Cf. Desjardins v. Willard, 777 F.3d
43, 45-46 (1st Cir. 2015) (discussing standards for exercise of
supplemental jurisdiction).
So ordered.

No costs are awarded.

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