When this case was last before us, we stated unequivocally that the Complaint in this matter failed to state any viable constitutional claims.
Pagán v. Calderón,
The facts giving rise to the Complaint fully were set forth by this Court in
Pa-gdn,
and need not be repeated in detail here.
See Pagán,
After this Court’s decision in
Pagdn,
the remaining claims of the underlying Complaint, if alive at all, were on life support. In
Pagán,
we had before us Calderon’s appeal of the District Court’s denial of her motion to dismiss all claims against her on the grounds of qualified immunity. We first took up the issue of justiciability, and concluded that only ARCAM had standing to pursue its claims against Defendants. We therefore dismissed the claims of all other Plaintiffs. With all Plaintiffs except ARCAM out of the picture, and only AR-CAM’s equal protection and substantive due process claims remaining, we turned to Calderon’s claim of qualified immunity.
Id.
at 23. Applying the usual qualified immunity rubric,
see, e.g., Limone v. Condon,
On remand, the District Court quite predictably ordered the parties to show cause why the remaining claims should not be dismissed based on the holding of
Pagdn.
After considering the parties’ submissions, the Court then incor
*3
porated
in toto
this Court’s analysis in
Pagan,
and disposed of all further pending matters, including supplemental claims raised under Puerto Rican law.
2
Now before us is ARCAM’s last-gasp appeal of the District Court’s dismissal of its remaining claims against Pellot and Faria. ARCAM stands on shaky ground when it claims that this Court’s analysis in
Pagan
was little more than dicta as to Pellot and Faria. We have held that “when a statement in a judicial decision is essential to the result reached in the case, it becomes part of the court’s holding.”
Rossiter v. Potter,
Because Calderón was the sole appellant in
Pagan,
our reversal of the District Court’s refusal to dismiss ARCAM’s equal protection and substantive due process claims technically related only to those allegations aimed at Calderón. However, the holding was premised on the essential finding that ARCAM’s allegations “do not state viable constitutional claims,” a determination that was by no means uniquely applicable to Calderón, but instead spoke broadly to the failings of the Complaint as a whole.
Pagán,
As to ARCAM’s specific allegation that Calderón transgressed its substantive due process rights when, through Pellot and Faria, she exerted undue influence over BDE’s directors so that they would deny ARCAM’s loan request, we concluded that “the mere withholding of the loan, simplicitor, cannot support a constitutional claim.” Id. at 33. This conclusion required dismissal of ARCAM’s substantive due process claim, was not dicta, and applies with equal force to the identical claims alleged against Pellot and Faria. We were similarly forthright with regard to ARCAM’s equal protection claim: “... [the claim] does not pass constitutional muster.” Id. at 35. Here, the analysis was two-pronged: first, ARCAM failed to plead facts establishing that a similarly situated borrower was treated differently than it; and second, the Complaint offered no allegations indicating that the disparate treatment of which ARCAM complains resulted from a gross abuse of power, invidious discrimination, or fundamentally unfair procedures. 3 These flaws doomed AR- *4 CAM’s equal protection claims against all remaining Defendants, not just Calderón.
Though our holding in Pagan was limited to Calderon’s appeal, it cannot, as AR-CAM urges, reasonably be read in isolation from the case as a whole. Rather, as set forth above, the core holding of Pagan — that the Complaint in this matter fails to allege viable constitutional claims— extends with equal, if not more force to allegations aimed at Pellot and Faria. In sum, with our holding in Pagan, we sounded the death knell for ARCAM’s remaining claims against Pellot and Faria, leaving the District Court no choice but to bring down the axe.
The Order of the District Court dated November 27, 2006 is affirmed.
Notes
. Because only Calderón appealed the District Court's Order, this Court was compelled to return the case to the District Court for appropriate disposition of ARCAM's claims against Pellot and Faria.
. These claims, sounding solely in the law of Puerto Rico, were dismissed without prejudice.
. To the extent that ARCAM seeks to rely on its equal protection and due process claims against Calderón, Pellot, and Faria to redress what it alleges to have been unconstitutional political discrimination or retaliation, it cannot do so.
Pagán v. Calderon,