United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 01-2640
RAMON BADILLO-SANTIAGO, M.D.
Plaintiff, Appellant,
and
UNITED STATES,
Intervenor,
v.
HON. MIRIAM NAVEIRA-MERLY, in her official capacity
as Administrator of the Judiciary System; HON. LIRIO
BERNAL SANCHEZ, in her official capacity as Director of
the Courts Administration of Puerto Rico; WILFREDO
GIRAU-TOLEDO, in his official capacity as Director of
the Public Buildings Authority; THE COMMONWEALTH OF
PUERTO RICO; ADMINISTRACION DE TRIBUNALES, Adm. de
Tribunales de P.R.; AUTORIDAD DE EDIFICIOS PUBLICOS,
Defendants, Appellees,
_____________
JOSE A. FUENTES-AGOSTINI, in his official capacity as
Secretary of Justice of Puerto Rico; JULIO BERRIOS-JIMÉNEZ,
Judge, in his official and personal capacity,
Defendants.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Salvador E. Casellas, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Selya, Lynch, and Lipez, Circuit Judges.
Marc P. Charmatz, with whom Mary C. Vargas, Rosaline
Crawford, and National Association of the Deaf Law Center were on
brief, for appellant.
Kevin K. Russell, Attorney, Department of Justice, with
whom R. Alexander Acosta, Assistant Attorney General, Ralph F. Boyd
Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Jessica Dunsay Silver, Attorney,
and Seth M. Galanter, Attorney, were on brief, for intervenor
United States.
Alfredo Fernandez-Martinez, with whom Delgado &
Fernandez, LLP was on brief, for appellees Administrator of the
Judiciary System and Director of the Courts Administration of
Puerto Rico.
Hiram Melendez, with whom Roberto J. Sánchez Ramos,
Solicitor General, Vanessa Lugo Flores, Deputy Solicitor General,
Kenneth Pamias Velázquez, Deputy Solicitor General, Leticia
Casalduc Rabell, Assistant Solicitor General, and Camelia Fernández
Romeu, Assistant Solicitor General, were on brief, for appellee
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
July 29, 2004
LYNCH, Circuit Judge. This case raising several different
federalism issues arose from a dispute in the courts of Puerto Rico
over the sale of a house.
In August 1995, Amparo Fuentes-Gonzalez sued Ramon
Badillo-Santiago ("Badillo"), along with Badillo's wife and
brother, in the Superior Court of Puerto Rico in connection with a
purchase and sale contract for a house. Badillo is the plaintiff
and appellant here.
Before trial, Badillo never asserted that his hearing was
disabled or that he would require accommodation. The only pre-
trial reference to his hearing was in his answer to the complaint.
In paragraph 20 of his answer, he stated: "The right to have
witnesses and to have [the deed] read aloud was declined,
especially by me, since I do not hear well and rely on hearing
aids." Trial started on September 2, 1997. On that first day of
trial, Badillo's counsel informed the court about Badillo's hearing
impairment and asked that he be permitted to sit near witnesses.
That request was granted. On the second day of trial, Badillo
stated that he had heard very little of a witness's testimony. At
that point, the trial judge stated that Badillo's demeanor
indicated otherwise, as Badillo had made signs of approval and
disapproval of the testimony.
On the third day of trial, defendant Badillo moved for a
new trial on the ground that no reasonable accommodation had been
-3-
provided to him for his hearing impairment, as required by the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq.
In support of that motion, Badillo submitted a report that had been
prepared by a clinical audiologist two days earlier, on September
6. The trial court, which had already accommodated both Badillo's
request to sit near witnesses and his request that counsel be
required to examine him from the podium, denied the motion. The
court did, however, order that Badillo be provided with a chair on
wheels that he could move around the courtroom. The court allowed
Badillo to move freely around the courtroom in order to hear better
and advised him to stand up and inform the court if he could not
hear testimony. Badillo claims that he attempted to comply, but
that he still could not hear witnesses, and claims that he was
humiliated and embarrassed by the conditions. The court ultimately
ruled in favor of the plaintiff on the merits and Badillo appealed,
inter alia, on the ground that the trial court had failed to
provide him with reasonable accommodation for his hearing
impairment, which, in turn, prevented him from receiving a fair
trial.
While he pursued his claims in the court system of Puerto
Rico, Badillo also filed this suit, pro se, in the U.S. District
Court for the District of Puerto Rico on August 31, 1998. The suit
alleged claims under the ADA and under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for
violations of his due process and equal protection rights. Badillo
-4-
named as defendants the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and numerous
heads of Puerto Rico government entities in their official
capacities, including the presiding judge of the Puerto Rico
Supreme Court and the trial judge who had presided over the civil
case against Badillo. Badillo also sued the trial judge in his
individual capacity. He sought compensatory and punitive damages
and an injunction ordering the defendants to bring the courts of
Puerto Rico into compliance with Title II of the ADA.
The defendants in the federal suit filed motions to
dismiss for failure to state a claim, which Badillo, still pro se,
opposed. On February 11, 1999, the United States successfully
moved for leave to appear as amicus curiae to oppose the motion to
dismiss. On September 29, 1999, counsel entered an appearance for
Badillo. On September 30, 1999, the district court (1) dismissed
the ADA claim against the trial judge in his official capacity, (2)
dismissed the claim against the trial judge in his individual
capacity on grounds of judicial immunity, (3) dismissed the § 1983
claims against all of the individual defendants in their official
capacities on the ground that those claims were barred by the
Eleventh Amendment, and (4) declined to dismiss Badillo's ADA
claims against the Commonwealth and the other individual defendants
in their official capacities.
Badillo subsequently sought leave to amend his complaint
to add claims under § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, arguing that
-5-
the court should grant him leave to amend because of the
difficulties he had faced as a pro se litigant. The district court
denied his requests to amend, noting that Badillo had almost a year
after the filing of his federal complaint to retain a lawyer.
Badillo also asked the court to reconsider its dismissal of the §
1983 claims for injunctive relief against the individual defendants
in their official capacities, pointing to Ex parte Young, 209 U.S.
123 (1908). The district court denied these requests as well.
On August 31, 2000, Puerto Rico's intermediate appellate
court, the Circuit Court of Appeals, reversed the judgment of the
Puerto Rico Superior Court and granted Badillo a new trial,
concluding that the accommodation provided by the trial court was
not adequate under the ADA. Because the court found that a new
trial was necessary, it did not reach several other issues raised
by Badillo. The plaintiff in the Commonwealth action, Fuentes-
Gonzalez, appealed the judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals to
the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico.
In March 2001, the remaining defendants1 in the federal
suit filed new motions to dismiss the Title II ADA claims on
Eleventh Amendment grounds. On September 28, 2001, the district
court entered judgment dismissing the ADA claims against those
defendants on the ground that it had no jurisdiction in light of
1
After the dismissals of September 30, 1999, one of the
official-capacity defendants, Fuentes-Agostini, successfully moved
to have the ADA claims against him dismissed.
-6-
Puerto Rico's Eleventh Amendment immunity. Badillo-Santiago v.
Andreu-Garcia, 167 F. Supp. 2d 194 (D. P.R. 2001). Badillo
appealed that ruling to this court, and also argued that the
district court had erred both in not permitting him to amend to
assert a § 504 claim and also in dismissing his Ex parte Young
claims for injunctive relief.
We heard oral arguments in the case on September 12,
2002, at which time the parties agreed to stay the appeal pending
the outcome of the parallel appeal in the Supreme Court of Puerto
Rico. On September 30, 2003, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico
reversed the judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals, finding no
violation of Badillo's due process right to a fair trial, and
remanded the case to the intermediate appellate court so that it
could pass on the remaining issues appealed by Badillo. In
analyzing whether the trial court had violated Badillo's procedural
due process rights, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico explained that
it "need not resort to the obligations imposed by the ADA on public
entities, inasmuch as such obligations have been incorporated into
the Puerto Rican law system as part of the due process of law."
The court explicitly adopted the definition of the procedural due
process rights under the U.S. Constitution as it was set forth in
Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976). The court then offered
its definition of reasonable accommodation:
We define reasonable accommodation, within the context of
the services rendered by the court system, as one that
-7-
does not involve modification of such magnitude as may
fundamentally alter the nature of the service -- in this
case, the trial on the merits. Reasonable accommodation
must guarantee significant access to the benefits,
rights, and guarantees that a trial on the merits
entails; this, however, should not be mistaken for the
creation or addition of substantive benefits different
from those provided to persons without disabilities. The
purpose of reasonable accommodation is to facilitate the
equal and equitable use and enjoyment of recognized
services and rights by all users. Thus, we deem
unreasonable an accommodation that imposes a
disproportionate financial or administrative burden on
the court system and on the users.
[T]he determination to provide such an accommodation
within the context of a trial requires a thorough
consideration of the interests of all the parties
affected by the procedure. . . . [I]t is vitally
important to also consider the date on which the request
for accommodation was submitted, [and] the quality and
degree of evidence presented to show the degree and
extent of the disability . . . .
The court noted that the audiology report submitted by Badillo
indicated that his hearing impairment was partial and that he could
hear people up to a distance of four feet if he faced them and
resorted to lip reading. Accordingly, the court said, the
accommodation provided by the trial court met due process
requirements because it conformed to the degree of Badillo's
disability.
The parties filed supplemental briefs addressing the
effect of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court decision on this federal
suit. We advised the parties that we would withhold ruling on this
appeal until the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in
Tennessee v. Lane, 124 S. Ct. 1978 (2004), on the constitutionality
-8-
of Title II of the ADA insofar as it purported to abrogate Eleventh
Amendment immunity. The parties later provided supplemental
briefing on how Lane impacts this appeal.
I.
We review de novo the district court's grant of the
defendants' motions to dismiss and may affirm on any independently
sufficient ground. Willhauck v. Halpin, 953 F.2d 689, 704 (1st
Cir. 1991). The district court dismissed Badillo's Title II ADA
claims against the Commonwealth and its officials in their official
capacities on Eleventh Amendment grounds, concluding that Congress
did not validly abrogate the Commonwealth's sovereign immunity to
such claims. 167 F. Supp. 2d at 198-201. That ruling, on these
facts, turned out to be contrary to Tennessee v. Lane, 124 S. Ct.
1978 (2004), in which the Supreme Court held that Congress did
validly abrogate states' sovereign immunity to certain
constitutionally-based claims under Title II of the ADA, on an as-
applied basis. Id. at 1994.
In Lane, the Court held that Title II of the ADA enforces
a number of constitutional rights and that a history of
unconstitutional disability discrimination supported Congress's
enactment of prophylactic legislation. Id. at 1988-92 (applying
the first two parts of the three-part analysis of Fourteenth
Amendment legislation created by City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S.
507 (1997)). Considering next whether Title II is an appropriate
-9-
response to the history and pattern of unequal treatment of
individuals with disabilities, the Court declined to "examine the
broad range of Title II's applications all at once" and instead
concluded that the only question before it was "whether Congress
had the power under § 5 to enforce the constitutional right of
access to the courts." Id. at 1992-93. The Court held that Title
II's "requirement of program accessibility . . . is congruent and
proportional to its object of enforcing the right of access to the
courts" as it requires only "'reasonable modifications' that would
not fundamentally alter the nature of the service provided" and
does not require states to "undertake measures that would impose an
undue financial or administrative burden." Id. at 1993-94. The
court thus concluded that Title II, "as it applies to the class of
cases implicating the fundamental right of access to the courts,"
is a valid exercise of Congress's authority under § 5 of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Here, at least one of Badillo's federal
claims implicates his right of access to the courts and thus falls
within the holding of Lane, and so is not barred by the Eleventh
Amendment. That is his claim that during his trial he was denied
due process because there was no reasonable accommodation of his
hearing impairment.2
2
For present purposes, we assume arguendo that his
impairment rose to the level of a disability.
-10-
It does not follow, though, that Badillo is now entitled
to go forward in federal court and try to establish the merits of
that claim. Given the decision of the Supreme Court of Puerto
Rico, this case now presents a potential and separate bar to
federal court jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine
(and/or the issue preclusion doctrine). The Rooker-Feldman
doctrine provides that the district courts lack jurisdiction over
any action that is effectively or substantially an appeal from a
state court's judgment. See Wilson v. Shumway, 264 F.3d 120, 125
(1st Cir. 2001); Hill v. Town of Conway, 193 F.3d 33, 34-35 (1st
Cir. 1999). Rooker-Feldman applies to state or territorial court
judgments to which the federal courts would accord preclusive
effect, Cruz v. Melecio, 204 F.3d 14, 21 n.5 (1st Cir. 2000), and
the federal courts "can ascribe no greater preclusive force to a
state court judgment than would the courts of that state," id. at
21.
The law of Puerto Rico accords preclusive effect only to
judgments that are "final and unappealable," id. at 20, so "a
commonwealth court judgment cannot be accorded preclusive effect
until all available appeals have been exhausted (or the time for
taking them has expired)," id. When the district court issued its
decision dismissing Badillo's ADA claims on September 28, 2001,
Badillo's case in the Commonwealth courts was still pending review
by the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. Accordingly, the lack of
-11-
finality of judgment in the case at that time prevented the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine from coming into play. Because Puerto Rico's
highest court has since issued a final judgment, and because the
claims in this federal suit appear to be the functional equivalent
of an appeal from that judgment, we remand the case to the district
court so that it can address whether it has jurisdiction under
Rooker-Feldman. For the same reasons, if the district court
determines that it does have jurisdiction over the suit, then it
should address the res judicata and issue preclusion effects (if
any) of the judgment by the Commonwealth's highest court.
We remand because the issue whether the federal suit is
barred is not straightforward, nor has it adequately been briefed
to this court by the parties. Indeed, the Commonwealth has not
raised Rooker-Feldman, but we are obliged to do so because the
Rooker-Feldman doctrine is jurisdictional. Maymo-Melendez v.
Alvarez-Ramirez, 364 F.3d 27, 33 n.7 (1st Cir. 2004) (the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine is jurisdictional).
It is true that the Commonwealth officer defendants were
not nominally parties in the state court proceedings. Cf. Perez-
Guzman v. Gracia, 346 F.3d 229, 238 & n.5 (1st Cir. 2003)
(cautioning that Rooker-Feldman may not apply where there is no
identity of parties under Puerto Rico law). It is equally true
that the Puerto Rico Supreme Court has adjudicated the merits of
Badillo's denial of due process claim and has done so under federal
-12-
due process standards and has articulated a reasonable
accommodation standard essentially equivalent to the Lane standard.
We thus reject Badillo's argument that the standard used by the
Puerto Rico Supreme Court was different from the ADA standard. We
also reject Badillo's argument that the Puerto Rico Supreme Court's
analysis was affected by its allocation of the burden of proof as
to the reasonableness of an accommodation. Nothing about the
outcome reached by the Puerto Rico Supreme Court turned on who had
what burden of proof.
Although we remand, we caution Badillo about whether it
is worth continuing his suit. Whether or not the decision of the
Supreme Court of Puerto Rico precludes him from having the lower
federal courts adjudicate his claim, Badillo should be aware that
the merits of his claim have been thoughtfully received and were
found to be wanting.
II.
Badillo also appeals from the dismissal of his claims
under § 1983 against Commonwealth officials. The only place where
this might make a difference is in his request that the defendants
be enjoined to prepare a plan to secure compliance with the ADA and
educate the public.
It is not clear if Badillo intends this as an independent
claim or whether he wishes to pursue it at all. If, on remand, he
pursues the claim, then a number of issues must be resolved:
-13-
whether such a claim is stated under the ADA, whether Badillo has
standing, whether the Eleventh Amendment and Lane foreclose such a
claim, and others. These issues may be addressed initially in the
district court.
III.
This leaves only Badillo's appeal from the district
court's refusal to allow him to amend his complaint to add claims
under § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. We review the district
court's denial of leave to amend for abuse of discretion and pay
deference "to any adequate reason for the denial." Acosta-Mestre
v. Hilton Int'l of P.R., Inc., 156 F.3d 49, 51 (1st Cir. 1998). We
affirm.
Badillo filed this case on August 31, 1998. Before the
end of 1998, the defendants had filed several motions to dismiss.
Yet Badillo waited until September 1999 to retain counsel (counsel
made his first appearance on September 29, 1999), and he did not
file the motion to amend until October 22, 1999 -- almost one month
after the court had ruled on the defendants' motions to dismiss and
more than a full year after the filing of the complaint. Under
those circumstances, it was within the district court's discretion
to deny the belated motion to amend. See Hayes v. New England
Millwork Distribs., Inc., 602 F.2d 15, 20 (1st Cir. 1979) (undue
delay can be a basis for denial of leave to amend).
-14-
IV.
The judgment of the district court dismissing the ADA
claim is vacated, the denial of the motion to amend to add a § 504
claim is affirmed, and the case is remanded for proceedings
consistent with this opinion. No costs are awarded.
-15-