XIOMARA SANTIAGO, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. MUNICIPALITY OF UTUADO, Defendant, Appellee.
No. 22-1284
United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit
August 22, 2024
Hon. Jay A. Garcia-Gregory, U.S. District Judge
Kenneth Colon, with whom Juan M. Frontera-Suau and Frontera Suau Law Offices, PSC were on brief, for appellant.
Eliezer A. Aldarondo-Lopez, with whom Aldarondo & Lopez-Bras, LLC was on brief, for appellee.
THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. The Puerto Rico Municipality of Utuado hired Xiomara Santiago to be the Deputy Director for the local Head Start/Early Head Start Program (hereinafter “Head Start” or “the Program“). Not long after her hire, a mayoral election changed the town‘s administration and the new chief exec terminated Santiago‘s employment. Claiming her dismissal violated her Fourteenth Amendment due process rights and was the result of political discrimination in violation of her First Amendment rights, Santiago sued the Municipality and sought a preliminary injunction to get her job back. After the district court held a series of hearings on Santiago‘s motion -- four days of testimony between May 17 and July 2, 2021 from three witnesses -- it ultimately denied her request, concluding she had not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of either claim.1 Santiago now appeals the district court‘s decision, contending its conclusion was an abuse of discretion. For the reasons set forth herein, we affirm.
Background
With the basic scene in place, we now turn to the record details that are relevant to the claims and arguments at issue on
Plaintiff Xiomara Santiago holds a bachelor‘s degree in Pre-School Education but worked as the Director of Landscaping and Recycling for the Municipality of Utuado for five years from 2013 until 2018. She next transitioned into the early education field teaching pre-school for a private company called Urban Strategies in the Municipality of Ponce. Following her teaching stint, in March 2020 Santiago successfully applied for the position of Deputy Director at Head Start for the Municipality of Utuado.
The posting for that position included the following minimum requirements and application details: (1) a bachelor‘s degree in Business Administration or Education; (2) three years of Head Start experience; (3) one year in a similar management position; and (4) English language proficiency (including speaking, reading, and writing). To apply, the posting instructed candidates to submit a college credit transcript, a diploma, a certificate of Good Conduct and/or Criminal Record, and a document certifying compliance with filing tax returns for the prior four years. The posting also clearly stated that “[t]he candidate must meet the minimum requirements before the closing date and provide evidence of [all] documents stipulated in the vacancy announcement[]” and that “incomplete applications . . . or applications submitted after the closing date” would not be considered.
Blas Rosado, head of Human Resources at Head Start, received Santiago‘s application and forwarded the materials to the Program‘s Parents Committee (officially known as the Guideline Policy Council -- a body comprised of two parents from each Head Start center within the region who are elected by the parents of children enrolled in the Program). A subcommittee evaluated all of the applications and decided whether each candidate met the requirements from the posted job description. At the preliminary injunction hearing, Rosado testified that Santiago‘s application was complete and that she “fulfill[ed] the required academic preparation and experience,” noting her six years of management experience “directing and supervising personnel” as well as her experience as a Head Start teacher when she worked at Urban Strategies. Rosado also testified that the Parents Committee had agreed she met all the requirements for the position, interviewed two candidates, and chosen Santiago to advance to the then-mayor for his okay.
When the Municipality hired Santiago in August 2020 to be Head Start‘s Deputy Director, the mayor was Ernesto Irizarry Salva, a member of the Popular Democratic Party (“PDP“). Santiago‘s first months on the job coincided with Utuado‘s municipal elections. She demonstrated her interest in the election process by working as (what she called) a “coordinator for a school for the [PDP].” In this municipal
In late October, Perez sent a text message just to Santiago which said: “Greetings friend, I only ask you to do things right, friend.” Perez explained at the preliminary injunction hearing that he sent the message after trying unsuccessfully to reach Santiago by phone. When Santiago received the text, she called Perez, who, according to Perez, told her he had filed a complaint with the Puerto Rico Police against Rosado (the Head Start Human Resources director and a leader of the PDP with Mayor Irizarry), alleging Rosado had engaged in election fraud by impersonating a NPP official to get mail-in ballots. Perez said he did not want to file a complaint against her as well. According to Perez, he implored her to “do things right so she wouldn‘t get mixed up in those messes,” seemingly implying that he thought she too had engaged in similar election irregularities. According to Perez, he was “warning her because she was [his] friend and [he] didn‘t want her to be affected.” He “wanted her to do the correct thing and not do the same thing.” Santiago, for her part, testified Perez “told [her] that there was a list containing [her] name; that [she] was going to be investigated by the feds for electoral fraud.” Santiago testified that Perez was very upset; the tone of his voice hostile as he told her that he had the list of people being investigated and she was on it. She felt threatened by the call even though she knew the fraud accusation was false. After that call, she continued her political work with the PDP. When the November 3, 2020 election day rolled around, Perez defeated Irizarry to become Utuado‘s new mayor. Santiago says she never heard anything else about a fraud investigation after that, and she continued with her Head Start work.
Between election day and January 11, 2021 (when Perez got sworn in as mayor), Mayor Irizarry, as allowed by Puerto Rico law, sought and received permission from the Director of Human Resources for the Government of Puerto Rico to renew employment contracts for over 200 Head Start employees whose transitory services contracts were set to expire on December 30.2
A quick aside to explain Head Start‘s governance structure will be useful to an understanding of Santiago‘s eventual employment termination. As described during the hearing, Head Start programs are operated through grants given by the federal government to a “regulatory concessionaire” or grantee, such as the Municipality
The federal grant funds for the Program are budgeted from January 1 through December 31 of each year. Santiago‘s employment -- as well as that of all her colleagues -- was subject to renewal each year because the regional office approved the Head Start budget for one-year periods only. Santiago‘s 2021 employment contract (which Irizarry had renewed prior to his departure) included several terms and conditions for her re-appointment to the Deputy Director position.3 As relevant to this case, one condition of employment was that she met the minimum requirements of the position. An attachment to the contract spelled out the Deputy Director‘s duties and responsibilities which, among other things, included: assisting the Director to plan, direct, coordinate, supervise, and evaluate the Program‘s work and performance; conducting staff orientation meetings; preparing reports; helping to draft the annual budget; making presentations to parents, staff, the governing body, and community groups; and maintaining relationships with schools, agencies, and community partners. The renewal contract also listed circumstances under which the Municipality could terminate her employment, including if she received “a deficient performance evaluation . . . during the term of the contract,” was “unable to perform the tasks for which she was hired,” budget changes, restructuring or reorganization of the “offices, centers and/or areas,” or “any other extraordinary situation warranting the termination of th[e] [c]ontract.”
Turning again to Perez. He took his oath of office on January 11, 2021, and his first month proved somewhat chaotic on the Head Start front after he learned that the Municipality‘s program was in trouble with the managing office in New York. The Program‘s problems included drastically lower student enrollment -- post Hurricane Maria 356 children enrolled versus the 740 children that the program had represented to the managing office. Also problematic and not reported to the New York office was the closure of several locations for repairs though staff members in those shuttered facilities were retained on the payroll. The new mayor also discovered the Program‘s noncompliance with the grants’ reporting requirements, including financial management of the grants, all of which sent Perez scrambling to find and provide documentation which ultimately saved $5,000,000 in funding from one grant but resulted in the loss of $12,000,000 from another grant. During this time, Perez wrote a letter to the Director of Head
In addition to appointing Santiago to Acting Director (whose authority, at least on paper, expanded to signing all documents, including purchase orders, requisitions, and human resources-related documents) Perez decided to bring in Manual Mena, a close friend he‘d known for 30 years to whom he refers as his “second father,” as a volunteer with “experience and knowledge”5 to serve as Perez‘s “aide” as Perez navigated the issues between Head Start and the managing office in New York. In a letter to Mena with a cc to the New York office, Perez wrote that he was assigning Mena as “In-Charge for the [Head Start] and [Early Head Start] Program[s] for the Municipality of Utuado, effective immediately as to provide continuity for Program processes and compliance with Federal Regu[l]ations.” According to to Santiago, she did not benefit from Mena‘s presence. As she tells it, during Mena‘s first weeks at the Program, he met with her co-workers several times without inviting her, which made her feel “pushed aside” and like she did not “have a voice or a vote at work. . . . They took away all my [work] functions. . . . [I]n fact, they put a deputy, an interim deputy director, and interim director above me.”
One day in late January or early February (none of the witnesses could remember the precise date), Perez held a three-hour meeting with a dozen or so Head Start managers and coordinators from various departments to figure out how to resolve the financial reporting issues with the managing office before the February 28 deadline the New York office had imposed. Throughout the meeting, Perez asked Santiago many general questions about the status of approximately twenty projects, as well as about proposals and budgets, but she was unable to answer any of the questions. That was so, Santiago says, because Quinones-Figueroa “was out on sick leave and those questions that I could not answer because at the time I did not have the information.” During this meeting Perez also learned that Santiago did not have access to the three electronic databases with information and data about the projects about which he was inquiring, and Santiago could not tell him why Quinones-Figueroa had allowed some staff to work from home and collect their pay while other staff members were not allowed to work remotely. Nor could she shed any light on a new employee supposedly hired on December 31 to fill a fiscal position.
At some point after this meeting, Perez showed up at Santiago‘s office alone. Santiago reported he seemed upset and was looking for Rosado‘s office. Admittedly nervous, Santiago tearfully told him she
Santiago‘s termination followed shortly thereafter. According to Perez, Santiago‘s inability to answer any of the questions he asked at the staff meeting “showed [him] that [she] lacked any knowledge of the essentials [of] Head Start‘s administrative operations or was obstructing the new administration efforts to obtain the status and continue with a healthy operation.” Rosado testified that the decision to terminate one of the top positions at Head Start, including the Deputy Director, had to be approved by the Program‘s Governing Board and that the Parents Committee had to be notified. At a monthly Board of Directors meeting held on February 11, Perez discussed his concerns about Head Start and asked the Board to terminate Santiago. According to Perez, he had only decided the morning of the meeting to ask the Board to take this personnel action. In his hearing testimony, he told the district court that he decided to terminate Santiago‘s contract for several reasons: (1) because, when probed, she did not have a plan to face Head Start‘s current crisis of enrollment and problems with financial reporting; (2) she lacked the experience or knowledge to fulfill the responsibilities of her role; (3) her position as Deputy Director was not needed given the impact of COVID-19 on the demand for services and he was working out how many staff employees the Program would ultimately need to dismiss given the significant drop in enrollment; and (4) she was not proficient in English when this had been one of the minimum requirements for the position and she had attested in her job application that she spoke or wrote in English.6 In Perez‘s eyes, this lack of language proficiency, in particular, resulted in the mis-entering of program data and the subsequent jeopardy and loss of Head Start grant funds. In a radio interview Perez gave for a local radio station in early March, amidst a discussion of the problems at Head Start he had inherited when he took office, he stated that Santiago had been hired without proper qualifications at a time when the Program couldn‘t justify hiring a Deputy Director under the governing regulations due to flagging enrollment.
After the February 11 Board meeting but prior to Santiago receiving word that she was to be dismissed from her position, Mena wrote a memo to all staff announcing that another Head Start employee now had the exclusive authority to sign all reports, documents, certifications, etc., effectively removing Santiago‘s authority to sign documents as Acting Director on Quinones-Figueroa‘s behalf while he was on leave.
On February 26, Santiago received notice of her termination via a letter hand delivered to her by the Municipality‘s Human Resources Director. The letter stated that “[t]he Governing Board, at a meeting held on February 11th of 2021 and upon my request as Mayor and President of [the Governing] Board, unanimously removed and dismissed (you as) Deputy Director of the Head Start Program, effective Friday, March 5th of 2021.”
In the week following her termination, several big changes occurred at Utuado‘s Head Start Program. For one, Quinones-Figueroa resigned as Director. For another, between the first day of the preliminary
In March 2021, Santiago initiated this litigation by filing her verified complaint against the Municipality of Utuado, alleging political discrimination and due process claims as well as violations of several commonwealth laws. In her motion for preliminary injunction, she requested the court order the Municipality to reinstate her to Deputy Director and to enjoin it from further violating her rights.7
Soon after the conclusion of the fourth and final day of testimony, the magistrate judge to whom this case had been referred issued a Report & Recommendation (“R&R“) concluding that Santiago had not shown a likelihood of success on the merits on either of her constitutional claims and recommending that the district court deny her motion for preliminary injunction. Santiago objected to the R&R, contending the magistrate judge failed to address certain facts and placed the wrong emphasis on others, leading to the wrong conclusion about Santiago‘s likelihood of success on her claims. The district court adopted the R&R in its entirety and denied the motion, briefly noting that, in her objection, Santiago had simply rehashed the same arguments that she had put forth in her motion.
This court has jurisdiction over Santiago‘s interlocutory appeal pursuant to
Discussion
Standard of Review and Preliminary Injunction Standard
This court reviews the district court‘s denial of a motion for preliminary injunction for abuse of discretion. Ocean State Tactical, LLC v. Rhode Island, 95 F.4th 38, 42 (1st Cir. 2024); see also Penalbert-Rosa v. Fortuno-Burset, 631 F.3d 592, 597 (1st Cir. 2011) (acknowledging the abuse-of-discretion standard of review for denial of requested injunctive relief in a political discrimination claim but deferring to discussion of Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss). Using this deferential standard, “[w]e review the district court‘s factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo.” Ocean State Tactical, LLC, 95 F.4th at 42-43 (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Together Emps. v. Mass Gen. Brigham Inc., 32 F.4th 82, 85 (1st Cir. 2022)). We must conclude an abuse of discretion occurred when a district court “base[s] its ruling on an erroneous view of the law or on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence.” Joseph v. Lincare, Inc., 989 F.3d 147, 155 (1st Cir. 2021) (quoting Highmark Inc. v. Allcare Health Mgmt. Sys., Inc., 572 U.S. 559, 563 n.2 (2014)).
When a party seeks a preliminary injunction, the district court considers four long-established elements: (1) “the probability of the movant‘s success on the merits” of their claim(s); (2) “the prospect of irreparable harm absent the injunction“; (3) “the balance of the relevant equities (focusing upon the hardship to the movant
Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Claim
The district court concluded Santiago was not likely to succeed on the merits of her due process claim because her initial hire to Head Start was contrary to Puerto Rico law and, as a result, she did not have the requisite property interest in her employment. Santiago puts forth only one argument challenging this conclusion: She says the district court applied the wrong Puerto Rico law when it drew this conclusion and that the correct law would have yielded a different conclusion. As we explain below, however, her argument is waived. To make our holding clear, it will be helpful to start with the broad principles for such a due process claim in the employment context and describe the district court‘s reasoning behind its conclusion.
The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution prohibit the deprivation of property by the federal or state government without due process of law.
Even so, the district court concluded Santiago had not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of her due process claim because it determined she should never have been appointed to the Deputy Director position in the first place. The district court concluded Santiago‘s appointment to the Deputy Director position had been contrary to the merit principle reflected in Puerto Rico Law No. 107-2020 applicable to hiring
(more on this law in a moment) because she had not met the minimum requirements for the Deputy Director position. As the district court reasoned, on the March 2020 closing day for applications to the position, Santiago submitted only a partially completed application -- demonstrated by the July 2020 date reflected on two of the required documents for a complete application listed on the job posting (the “[c]ertificate of [g]ood [c]onduct and/or [c]riminal [r]ecord” and “[c]ompliance with the applicable provisions of the Income Tax Act, as amended, regarding the filing of tax returns for the four (4) years prior to the application“). The district court also explained that Santiago‘s apparent lack of knowledge about some “fundamental operational topics . . . bolster[ed] the Municipality‘s contention that [she] was not qualified to hold the position” and therefore could not have the requisite property interest in her employment contract to win a due process claim.
On appeal, Santiago insists she did have a property interest in her employment, one created by the renewed transitory contract, and the Municipality deprived her of this interest when it summarily terminated her employment two months into the contract‘s term. In her objection to the R&R, Santiago challenged the magistrate judge‘s conclusion regarding the incomplete application but she does not press that same argument on appeal. Instead, she debuts an argument that the district court applied anincorrect Puerto Rico law when it concluded that her initial appointment as Deputy Director was unlawful because, according to her, the law on which the district court relied (Law No. 107-2020) did not come into effect until a few weeks after her initial appointment. The district court should instead, says Santiago, have applied federal regulations governing Head Start and Act 81 (a law which was either partially or completely repealed when Law No. 107-2020 went into effect). Santiago contends she met the minimum requirements for the Deputy Director position when she was initially hired and that her appointment complied with Puerto Rico law, including its “merit principle,” as well as
interest in her transitory employment contract for the duration ofits tenure, Santiago leans on her contention that she was afforded no due process rights adjacent to her termination, i.e., she was given no specific reason for her dismissal nor any opportunity to contest it. As a result, she says, the district court‘s conclusion that she had no likelihood of success on the merits of her due process claim was an “abuse[ of] its discretion.”
A threshold obstacle stands in the way of Santiago‘s argument. As we noted and as the Municipality correctly counters in its brief, Santiago is raising this wrong-law-applied argument for the first time on appeal. She did not contradict the Municipality‘s assertion, say for instance, by filing a reply brief to protest this lack of preservation asseveration. And our review of the record reveals she did not mention -- in either her writtenor oral arguments to the district court -- Act 81 or the federal regulations governing Head Start, even though the Municipality discussed the asserted applicability of Law No. 107-2020 throughout its written opposition to the motion for preliminary injunction. Nor did she object to the R&R on this basis to the district judge. As a result, we deem the argument waived. See Marcano-Martínez v. Cooperativa de Seguros Múltiples de P.R., 991 F.3d 336, 339 (1st Cir. 2021) (“Delay in raising arguments wastes time and money; absent unusual circumstances, arguments raised for the first time on appeal should fail almost automatically.“).
We would usually say no more on a waived issue, but there is one additional important point to make because, had Santiago not waived her argument, our consideration of its merits would have been stymied by Santiago‘s failure to provide us with a certified translation of Law No. 107-2020. We explain. Santiago alleges in her complaint that her initial contract started on August 1, 2020, and she argues that, with Law No. 107-2020 coming into effect on August 14 of that year, Act 81 governed her initial hire (as well as how she -- in
With that, we move on to Santiago‘s political discrimination claim.
First Amendment Political Discrimination Claim10
Santiago challenges the district court‘s conclusion that she had not shown political animus drove the Municipality‘sdecision to terminate her employment. As with Santiago‘s due process claim, it will be helpful to start our discussion of her political discrimination claim by setting forth some broad legal principles.
“Government officials are forbidden by the First Amendment from taking adverse action against public employees on the basis of political affiliation, unless political loyalty is an appropriate requirement of the employment.” Ocasio-Hernández v. Fortuño-Burset, 640 F.3d 1, 13 (1st Cir. 2011) (citing Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill., 497 U.S. 62, 75-76 (1990)). A plaintiff claiming political discrimination establishes a prima facie case by proving four elements: “(1) that the plaintiff and defendant have opposing political affiliations, (2) that the defendant is aware of the plaintiff‘s affiliation, (3) that an adverse employment action occurred, and (4) that political affiliation was a substantial or motivating factor for the adverse employment action.” Id. (quoting Lamboy-Ortiz v. Ortiz-Vélez, 630 F.3d 228, 239 (1st Cir. 2010)); Hatfield-Bermudez v. Aldanondo-Rivera, 496 F.3d 51, 61 (1st Cir. 2007) (referring to these four elements as the prima facie case); Peguero-Moronta v. Santiago, 464 F.3d 29, 48 (1st Cir. 2006). “Proving that political affiliation was a substantial or motivating factor in an adverse employment decision requires more than ‘merely juxtaposing a protected characteristic--someone else‘s politics-with the fact that the plaintiff was treated unfairly.‘” Peguero-Moronta, 464 F.3d at 45 (cleaned up) (quoting Padilla-García v. Guillermo Rodríguez, 212 F.3d 69, 74 (1st Cir. 2000)). “The Supreme Court has cautioned
As the district court recognized, the first three elements are not in dispute here: Santiago supported the PDP; Mayor Pérez, who is a member of the NPP, knew she supported the PDP; and she was terminated before the end of her employment contract. The district court concluded Santiago hadn‘t provided enough evidence to show the fourth element -- that “political discriminatory animus was at the center of the decision to terminate her employment” -- and therefore had not shown likelihood of success on a prima facie claim of political discrimination.
On appeal, Santiago asserts she did provide “specific facts necessary” to show beyond mere speculation that her political affiliation with the PDP was a substantial or motivating factor for her termination, meaning that political discriminatory animus drove the decision to end her employment with Head Start and the district court abused its discretion by concluding otherwise. As support from the record, she highlights Pérez‘s contact with herprior to the election (the missed phone call, the text, and phone conversation), Pérez‘s withdrawal (prior to her termination) of her authorization to sign official documents on behalf of the Head Start Director who was out on sick leave, Pérez announcing his longtime friend and mentor as “in charge” of Head Start in a volunteer capacity and who immediately took actions to usurp her authority as Deputy Director, Pérez‘s decision to terminate her employment without -- Santiago says -- the required approval of a legally formed Governing Board or the Parents Committee,11 and Pérez‘s comments during a radio interview given a few weeks after
her dismissal.”12 Santiago does not, however, attempt
The Municipality counters that Santiago‘s appellate arguments reflect her disagreement with the district court‘s view of the evidence but that the district court‘s analysis was correct, lacking clear error or any abuse of discretion. The Municipality argues (and Santiago acknowledges) that the short span of time between Pérez taking office and Santiago‘s termination is notsufficient on its own, and it refutes each of the pieces of evidence Santiago argued should have tipped her across the line from speculative to indicative of likelihood of success on the merits. For example, it says that the text messages sent during the campaign season as well as the phone conversation did not show his political animus but instead, his disdain for the acts of electoral fraud he believed had occurred. The radio interview, says the Municipality, did not show political animus towards Santiago but frustration at the way the previous administration had run Head Start. Finally, the Municipality asserts that Santiago was not terminated as a result of political animus but because she lacked the minimum requirements for the Deputy Director position as well as the knowledge required to execute the responsibilities of the position. As for Santiago‘s argument that the Head Start Board was not properly constituted at the time it approved her proposed termination or that the Parents Committee was deprived of an opportunity to weigh in, the Municipality points out that Santiago does not provide any indication that the approvals from these bodies were a standard operating procedure or practice at Head Start such that this alleged deviation could be evidence of animus.14
In our view, the record does not show that the district court clearly erred in its interpretation of the evidence before it or abused its discretion by concluding that Santiago‘s affiliation with or support of the PDP was not a substantial factor in Pérez‘s decision to terminate her contract mid-term. The only politically-inflected exchanges between Pérez and Santiago, as far as the record reveals, are Pérez‘s text messages to Santiago asking for her support and warning her to avoid any shenanigans, and his telephone conversation with her about election irregularities. But these events occurred months before he took office, and nothing about his conduct after becoming mayor shows that his actions towards Santiago were motivated by political ill-will rather than appropriate managerial considerations.
In the first weeks in his role as mayor, he discovered Head Start was in quite a bad spot vis-à-vis the managing office in New York and the events described and documented on the record reveal the quick
To be sure, Santiago‘s termination letter provided no explanation for her dismissal, but such lack of notice is not alone dispositive. To show a likelihood of success on this “substantial or motivating factor” element, she needs more than a “[m]ere[] juxtaposi[tion]” of her support for the PDP with any arguably unfair treatment she experienced in the lead up to and including her termination. Peguero-Moronta, 464 F.3d at 45 (first alteration in original). Santiago acknowledges this requirement in her brief to us. But she has not provided any evidence such as proof of a highly charged political office atmosphere or evidence of comments by Pérez or any colleagues at Head Start that the administration wanted to focus on dismissing or laying off employees who were known supporters of the PDP. See Borges Colón, 438 F.3d at 11, 18, 22 (highlighting evidence that plaintiff‘s replacement was from a different political party, the mayor made comments about “get[ting] rid” of opposing party supporters who were employed in the office, and refutation of the stated reason for non-renewal of plaintiff‘s employment contract to affirm a jury verdict on apolitical discrimination First Amendment claim). Moreover, she makes no argument that the Head Start employees laid off after Santiago‘s termination were PDP supporters.
The final problem is that, as we mentioned above, Santiago hasn‘t pointed us to any cases indicating that, based on our law governing political discrimination claims, the district court made the wrong call about her likelihood of success on the merits. See United States v. De La Cruz, 514 F.3d 121, 133 (1st Cir. 2008) (rejecting an appellant‘s argument in part for not citing to any cases which specifically supported the articulated appellate argument and for only citing cases which supported general propositions relevant to the constitutional issue at hand). In all, the district court‘s conclusion that Santiago‘s support for the PDP was not a substantial factor in the termination decision is well-supported by the record and Santiago has not provided any reasons based on the record or case law to indicate that the district court abused its substantial discretion.15
Given our conclusions above about Santiago‘s challenges to the district court‘s conclusions about the likelihood of success on the merits of her two claims, we need not explore the other factors required to secure a preliminary injunction. The denial of Santiago‘s motion for preliminary injunction is affirmed. Each side to bear their own costs.
Notes
Act 81 (from the Autonomous Municipalities Act of 1991) provided in part that
[t]he municipal public service shall be governed by the merit principle to ensure that those who serve the Municipal Government are the fittest. The Municipal Personnel service shall ensure that all career employees of the municipality shall be selected, trained, promoted, retained and treated with consideration of their merits and capability with regard to their employment, without any discrimination for race, color, sex, birth, age, social origin or condition, nor political or religious beliefs.
1991 Laws of Puerto Rico 570-71. Act 81 defined 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.” Aponte-Ramos v. Álvarez-Rubio, 783 F.3d 905, 907 (1st Cir. 2015) (quoting
According to the Municipality‘s briefing, “[o]n August 13, 2020, the Puerto Rico Legislature abrogated the Law of Autonomous Municipalities by way of the Municipal Code,