Opinion ID: 202046
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mayor Román

Text: 59 The verdict against Mayor Román, however, is easily supported by the manner in which his administration implemented the decision to privatize. A jury could readily conclude that the Román administration implemented privatization in a manner designed to discriminate. The administration did so, or so a jury could find, in violation of multiple separate requirements of local law: (1) two provisions of the municipal privatization ordinance, (2) the previously adopted Layoff Plan, and (3) the procedural rights of career employees. The municipal ordinance did not authorize Román to terminate the career plaintiffs' employment. Instead, it required that the private sanitation firm consider the municipal sanitation workers for jobs, and that sanitation workers who did not take jobs with the private firm be  retained in their positions or . . . relocated to other dependencies of the municipality.  The ordinance also stated that the Municipality agreed to protect and guarantee the vested rights of the career plaintiffs. The privatization system Román and Norat actually implemented did neither of these things. As to the 1997 Layoff Plan, González testified that it applied to privatizations and that she advised the Mayor to follow the law, and Mayor Román himself conceded that if the Layoff Plan applied, transitory workers had to be laid off before any career employee. The jury could easily conclude that political motivation was a substantial reason and, indeed, the but-for reason for the decisions not to follow these laws. 60 In addition, there were explicit statements by Mayor Román of an intent to discriminate. González testified that the Mayor said that with this privatization process, they were going to be able to get rid of employees that were not belonging to the political party of the people in power. She also testified that Román said the Layoff Plan was ignored because it would have been an obstacle to firing NPP workers. Others testified that the Mayor went so far as to instruct ARB officials not to offer the fired workers jobs in San Lorenzo. 61 Further, the Mayor took the stand, and on important questions where his testimony was flatly contradicted by other witnesses, the jury could easily have concluded his testimony was not credible. Mayor Román testified that discrimination played no role in the privatization decision. But the jury also heard testimony that Román believed (correctly) that the sanitation division was a nest of NPP-affiliated workers, and that discrimination did play a role in the decision to privatize. 62 Mayor Román also testified that he shaped the privatization plan in reliance on advice from his human resources director and attorney. Here, too, a reasonable jury could conclude that Mayor Román's testimony was deliberately untrue: his human resources director, González, testified both that she did not in fact give Mayor Román such advice and that Mayor Román structured the privatization plan the way he did specifically so he could fire NPP-affiliated workers. The defendants also failed to call as a witness the attorney on whose legal advice the Mayor purportedly relied. 63 The defendants also testified that they intended to ensure the career plaintiffs jobs at ARB and rehire them at the Municipality if necessary. However, a reasonable jury easily could have concluded that this too was a lie, and that no such system was in place. Most of the career plaintiffs never acquired jobs at ARB or the Municipality, even when they sought them out. Some were explicitly told that Román had ordered that they not be rehired. And those who did receive employment offers were confronted with jobs vastly inferior, either in terms of benefits (transitory employment) or working conditions (private-sector positions with long commutes and questionable job security), to those they had previously held. 64 Furthermore, the jury heard specific and detailed testimony that most, if not all, of the municipal workers hired since the privatization were PDP-affiliated, and that some of those new PDP workers performed jobs that the fired sanitation workers had done, just under the guise of different job titles. This, in combination with the evidence described above, is more than sufficient. See Acevedo-Garcia v. Monroig, 351 F.3d 547, 565-66 (1st Cir.2003).