United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 19-2243

IN RE: THE FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT BOARD FOR PUERTO 

RICO, AS REPRESENTATIVE FOR THE COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO; THE 

FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT BOARD FOR PUERTO RICO, AS 

REPRESENTATIVE FOR THE PUERTO RICO HIGHWAYS AND TRANSPORTATION 

AUTHORITY; THE FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT BOARD FOR 

PUERTO RICO, AS REPRESENTATIVE FOR THE PUERTO RICO ELECTRIC 

POWER AUTHORITY (PREPA); THE FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT 

BOARD FOR PUERTO RICO, AS REPRESENTATIVE FOR THE PUERTO RICO 

SALES TAX FINANCING CORPORATION, a/k/a Cofina; THE FINANCIAL 

OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT BOARD FOR PUERTO RICO, AS 

REPRESENTATIVE FOR THE EMPLOYEES RETIREMENT SYSTEM OF THE 

GOVERNMENT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO; THE FINANCIAL 

OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT BOARD FOR PUERTO RICO, AS 

REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PUERTO RICO PUBLIC BUILDINGS AUTHORITY,

Debtors.

________________________

HERMANDAD DE EMPLEADOS DEL FONDO DEL SEGURO DEL ESTADO, INC.,

a/k/a Unión de Empleados de la Corporación del Fondo del Seguro 

del Estado (UECFSE); UNIÓN DE MÉDICOS DE LA CORPORACIÓN DEL

FONDO DEL SEGURO DEL ESTADO CORP. (UMCFSE); LIZBETH MERCADO

CORDERO; FRANCISCO J. REYES MÁRQUEZ,

Plaintiffs, Appellants,

ASOCIACIÓN DE EMPLEADOS GERENCIALES DEL FONDO DEL SEGURO DEL 

ESTADO CORP. (AEGFSE); EVA E. MELÉNDEZ FRAGUADA; 

JOSÉ E. ORTIZ TORRES,

Plaintiffs,

v.

UNITED STATES; FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT BOARD;

COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO,

Defendants, Appellees,
RICARDO ROSSELLÓ NEVARES, through the Secretary of Justice;

ROSA E. RODRÍGUEZ-VÉLEZ,

Defendants.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Laura Taylor Swain,* U.S. District Judge]

Before

Thompson, Kayatta, and Barron, 

Circuit Judges.

Rolando Emmanuelli Jiménez, with whom Jessica E. Méndez 

Colberg and Bufete Emmanuelli, C.S.P. were on brief, for 

appellants.

Benjamin H. Torrance, Assistant United States Attorney, with 

whom Geoffrey S. Berman, United States Attorney, and David S. 

Jones, Assistant United States Attorney, were on brief, for 

appellee the United States. 

Mark D. Harris, with whom Timothy W. Mungovan, John E. 

Roberts, Laura Stafford, Larry Alan Rappaport, Martin J. 

Bienenstock, Stephen L. Ratner, Jeffrey W. Levitan, Shiloh 

Rainwater, and Proskauer Rose LLP were on brief, for appellees the 

Financial Oversight and Management Board and the Commonwealth of

Puerto Rico. 

April 16, 2021

* Of the Southern District of New York, sitting by 

designation. 
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BARRON, Circuit Judge. Two unions representing public 

employees in Puerto Rico together with one of their individual 

members brought this suit against the United States, the Financial

Oversight and Management Board ("FOMB"), and the Commonwealth 

raising a range of claims under federal constitutional and 

international law. The claims all concern the legal status of 

Puerto Rico. The District Court dismissed them because it 

concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring them under 

Article III of the federal Constitution. We affirm.

I.

The plaintiffs are two unions, Hermandad de Empleados 

del Fondo del Seguro del Estado, Inc., and Unión de Médicos de la 

Corporación del Fondo del Seguro del Estado Corp., and one of their 

members, Lizbeth Mercado Cordero.1 The unions have a combined 

membership of about two thousand employees, and they have each 

entered into collective bargaining agreements with CFSE, which is 

Puerto Rico's State Insurance Fund Corporation. 

The plaintiffs brought their suit in May 2018 and filed 

their second amended complaint on October 5, 2018, against the 

United States, the FOMB, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The 

eighty-one-page complaint requests a declaration that the Puerto 

Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act 

1 Francisco J. Reyes Márquez was an additional individual 

plaintiff below, but has since passed away. 
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("PROMESA"), see 48 U.S.C. § 2101 et seq., and all of the FOMB's 

actions taken pursuant to it violate the First, Fifth, Thirteenth, 

Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution; 

seeks to "enjoin[] and stay[]" the defendants "from pursuing this 

and any . . . cases" under PROMESA and from taking any other 

actions under that law; requests a declaration "overruling the 

Insular Cases because they instituted an unconstitutional colonial 

regime"; and requests an order "declar[ing] the existence of an 

illegal colonial regime that is subject to the procedures enacted 

by international law to decolonize[] Puerto Rico, under the 

Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries 

and Peoples, adopted by General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 

December 14, 1960." 

On the defendants' motions, the District Court dismissed 

the plaintiffs' claims for declaratory relief for lack of subject 

matter jurisdiction. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1). It reasoned 

that the plaintiffs had failed to allege concrete and 

particularized injuries that their requested relief could redress. 

It concluded on this ground that the plaintiffs had "failed to 

demonstrate that they have standing to pursue their claims."2 The 

plaintiffs timely appealed.

2 The District Court did not reach the defendants' Rule 

12(b)(6) arguments. 
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II.

Article III limits the judicial power to actual cases 

and controversies. See U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1. An 

actual case or controversy only exists if the plaintiff has 

demonstrated "such a personal stake in the outcome of the 

controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens 

the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely 

depends." Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204 (1962). 

"To satisfy the personal stake requirement, [the]

plaintiff must establish each part of a familiar triad: injury, 

causation, and redressability." Katz v. Pershing, LLC, 672 F.3d 

64, 71 (1st Cir. 2012) (citing Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 

U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992)). The redressability element of 

constitutional standing requires that the plaintiff show "that a 

favorable resolution of [the] claim would likely redress the 

professed injury." Id. at 72. That means "it cannot be merely 

speculative that, if a court grants the requested relief, the 

injury will be redressed." Dantzler, Inc. v. Empresas Berríos 

Inventory & Operations, Inc., 958 F.3d 38, 47 (1st Cir. 2020) 

(citing Simon v. E. Ky. Welfare Rts. Org., 426 U.S. 26, 42-43 

(1976)). And although the plaintiff "need not demonstrate that 

[the] entire injury will be redressed by a favorable judgment, 

[the plaintiff] must show that the court can fashion a remedy that 

will at least lessen [the] injury." Id. at 49 (citing Antilles 
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Cement Corp. v. Fortuño, 670 F.3d 310, 318 (1st Cir. 2012)). Our 

review of a ruling as to whether the requirements of Article III 

standing have been met is de novo. See Me. People's All. v. 

Mallinckrodt, Inc., 471 F.3d 277, 283 (1st Cir. 2006).

The plaintiffs contend that the District Court erred in 

dismissing their suit on Article III grounds in part because their 

second amended complaint had alleged that "the enactment of laws 

by the Commonwealth that were incorporated to the Fiscal Plans 

certified by the FOMB" "inva[ded]" their "pecuniary interest, 

collective bargaining agreement and property (employment, 

salaries, bonuses, pensions and health plans)." The laws in 

question are Acts 66-2014, 3-2017, 8-2017, and 26-2017, each of 

which the plaintiffs allege "impair[s] . . . labor rights and 

benefits" that their collective bargaining agreements had 

previously secured. The fiscal plan in question is the 

Commonwealth's Fiscal Plan of 2018, certified by the FOMB on June 

29 of that year. That plan provides in relevant part that a 

payroll and hiring freeze for public employees as well as certain 

restrictions to their healthcare and to their sick and vacation 

days "must be continued." 

The problem with the plaintiffs' contention is that none 

of the relief that they seek would prevent any of the laws that 

they contend caused them pecuniary harm from continuing to have 

full force and effect. For that reason, it is entirely speculative 
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on this record that any of that relief would spare the plaintiffs

the pecuniary harm that they trace back to those laws. And,

because it is entirely speculative on this record that such relief

would redress the claimed pecuniary harm, that claimed pecuniary 

harm provides no support for the plaintiffs' argument that the 

District Court erred in dismissing their claims for lack of Article 

III standing. See Dantzler, 958 F.3d at 47, 49.

The plaintiffs do separately contend that they have 

standing to seek the relief at issue because PROMESA's constraints 

and the FOMB's oversight powers dilute the power of their vote in 

elections in Puerto Rico due to the limits that PROMESA and the 

FOMB place on the powers of the Puerto Rico government. But, the 

plaintiffs do not contend that any of these limits have diluted 

their voting power within Puerto Rico vis-à-vis others in Puerto 

Rico. Thus, the precedents on which they rely to show that the 

burden imposed on their right to vote suffices to secure their 

standing under Article III are readily distinguished. See, e.g., 

Baker, 369 U.S. at 207-08 (explaining that the statute in question 

inflicted an injury on the plaintiffs because it "disfavor[ed] the 

voters in the counties in which they reside, placing them in a 

position of constitutionally unjustifiable inequality vis-à-vis

voters in irrationally favored counties").

In the end, the plaintiffs are contending that the harm 

they have suffered results from the fact that PROMESA and the 
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FOMB's actions are preemptive of local law. The plaintiffs fail 

to explain, however, why this type of harm is not a generalized 

grievance of just the sort that cannot suffice the demands of 

Article III. See Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 1916, 1923 (2018)

(explaining that plaintiffs must show a concrete and 

particularized injury to demonstrate that they have a "'personal 

stake in the outcome,' distinct from a 'generally available 

grievance about government'" (citation omitted) (first quoting 

Baker, 369 U.S. at 204; and then quoting Lance v. Coffman, 549 

U.S. 437, 439 (2007))).

The plaintiffs do assert at one point in their briefing 

that "the fact that they do not have a right to vote for the 

federal officers who appointed and imposed PROMESA, aggravates 

their [voting rights] injury." But, even assuming that this 

assertion is responsive to the concern that the plaintiffs are 

seeking relief for what is merely a generalized grievance, none of 

the relief that they seek would redress their injury insofar as it 

inheres in restrictions in their ability to vote in federal 

elections. Thus, this argument, too, fails to show that the 

District Court erred in dismissing their claim on standing grounds. 

III.

The issues that the plaintiffs' complaint raises 

concerning the legal status of Puerto Rico are weighty ones. But, 

to be fit for adjudication in federal court, they must be raised 
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in a suit that satisfies the requirements of Article III. Because 

we agree with the District Court that the plaintiffs have not met 

their burden to satisfy those federal constitutional requirements, 

we affirm the order dismissing their claims for lack of standing.