Soto v. Carrasquillo

January 22, 1997
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit

No. 96-1024
FLOR MARIA SOTO,
Plaintiff, Appellee,

v.

CARLOS FLORES, ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellants.

ERRATA SHEET
ERRATA SHEET

The opinion of this Court issued on January 13, 1997 is corrected
as follows:

On cover sheet, line 26: substitute "Laffitte" for "Lafitte".

On page 21, line 2: substitute "Kneipp v. Tedder, 95 F.3d 1199,

1201 (3d Cir. 1996)" for "Kneipp, 95 F.3d at 1201".

United States Court of Appeals
for the First Circuit

No. 96-1024

FLOR MARIA SOTO,

Plaintiff, Appellant,

v.

CARLOS FLORES, ET AL.

Defendants, Appellees.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Hector M. Laffitte, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Torruella, Chief Judge,

Campbell, Senior Circuit Judge,

and Lynch, Circuit Judge.

Jose Enrique Colon Santana, with whom Gary Broida was on brief,

for appellant.
Vannessa Ramirez, Assistant Solicitor General, Department of

Justice, with whom Carlos Lugo-Fiol, Solicitor General, was on brief

for appellees.

January 13, 1997

LYNCH, Circuit Judge. On April 21, 1991, Angel
LYNCH, Circuit Judge.

Rodriguez shot to death his two young children and then

killed himself. This tragedy occurred four days after

Rodriguez's wife, Flor Maria Soto, complained to the police

about the physical and emotional abuse she suffered at

Rodriguez's hands. The police, knowing Rodriguez had

threatened to kill Soto and her family if Soto went to the

police to have him jailed for his spousal abuse, nonetheless

violated their obligations of confidentiality and informed

Rodriguez of Soto's complaints. Having done so, the police

did not jail Rodriguez or take steps to protect Soto and her

family. Soto's lawsuit alleges that Rodriguez did what he

had threatened to do and that the state created this danger.

Rather than pursue any claims available to her under Puerto

Rican law, Soto chose to bring suit in federal court alleging

constitutional tort theories.

Soto brought suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, claiming

that the actions of the defendants, Carlos Flores, a police

officer, and Ismael Betancourt-Lebron, Puerto Rico's

superintendent of police, violated her and her children's

rights to substantive due process and to equal protection of

the laws. The district court granted summary judgment in

favor of the defendants. We do not reach the difficult

question of whether Soto, in her capacity as a representative

of her dead children, has presented a due process claim that

would survive summary judgment, because we find that the

defendant officers are protected by qualified immunity on

that claim. As to the equal protection claim, we adopt a

standard for measuring such claims in domestic violence

cases. Testing the evidence against that standard, we find

that Soto has not adduced sufficient evidence of

discriminatory intent to survive summary judgment.

Accordingly, we affirm the district court.

I. Facts

We recite the facts in the light most favorable to

the plaintiff, the party opposing summary judgment. Flor

Maria Soto married Angel Rodriguez, nicknamed Rafi, in 1981.

Rodriguez and Soto had two children: Sally was born in 1983,

and Chayanne, a boy, in 1988. Approximately a year into

their marriage, Rodriguez began to abuse Soto emotionally and

physically. This abuse, often connected to Rodriguez's

drinking, continued throughout their marriage. The abuse was

apparent to family and friends. As one neighbor put it,

"anyone who visited them could tell that [Soto] was an abused

wife." Despite his constant mistreatment of Soto, Rodriguez

never abused the children.

Rodriguez did gardening and vehicle repair work for

the police officers at Palmer Police Station, a sub-station

of the Rio Grande precinct. Rodriguez was friends with

several of the officers from Palmer Station, including Luis

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Carrasquillo-Morales ("Carrasquillo")1 and defendant Carlos

Flores-Moreira ("Flores"). Rodriguez visited the station

almost daily. Many of the officers, when on patrol in the

area, would visit the Rodriguez-Soto home for coffee or a

drink. Flores and Rodriguez were particularly friendly;

about once a week, during his patrol rounds, Flores would

stop by the house for an hour's visit.

On Wednesday, April 17, 1991, Rodriguez struck Soto

about her face and neck, bruising her, and called her

insulting names. When Rodriguez fell drunkenly asleep, Soto

gathered the children and went to her mother's house. Soto's

mother, Hipolita Vega, convinced her to go to the police and

file a complaint. In nine years of beatings, some of them

worse than the one on April 17, Soto had never sought help

because she believed that the police would do nothing,

because she had nowhere to go, and because she was afraid of

Rodriguez. Rodriguez had threatened her with a gun on

several occasions and told her that he would kill her and

other members of her family if she went to the police.

Knowing that Rodriguez was friendly with the police, Soto

feared that the police would do nothing except tell Rodriguez

that she had complained.

1. Carrasquillo was originally named as a defendant in this
action, but defaulted in the district court proceedings. In
order to have a final judgment from which she could appeal,
Soto sought and was granted a voluntary dismissal of her
claim against Carrasquillo.

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On that night, despite her fear, Soto went with her

mother and her children to the Palmer Police Station. When

she arrived, she was met by Flores, who was the desk officer

on duty. Flores could see that Soto was crying and marked

with bruises, "pretty ugly hematomas." Soto explained that

Rodriguez had beaten her. Flores then radioed for the patrol

officers to come in and take her complaint, referring to Soto

on the radio as "Rafi's wife" and saying that it was a Law 54

case. During the fifteen to twenty minutes that Soto and

Flores waited for the patrol officers to arrive, Flores told

Soto that he himself had domestic violence problems, and that

his wife wanted him to be put in jail. He urged Soto to

patch things up with Rodriguez. Soto responded by telling

Flores that Rodriguez's beatings were too much to stand and

that, as Flores knew, Rodriguez was a heavy drinker, who

became violent when drunk. Soto told Flores about everything

that Rodriguez had done and what he would do to her. Flores

offered Soto the opportunity to stay overnight at the

station.

Sergeant Orta,2 the supervisor, arrived, and Flores

told him that Soto was "the lady with the Law 54 complaint."

When the patrol officers, Carrasquillo and Jose Serrano,

arrived, Flores said, "This is Rafi's wife," and told them

2. The district court denied a belated motion to add
Sergeant Orta as a defendant. No appeal is taken from the
denial of that motion.

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that she was there on a Law 54 complaint. Carrasquillo took

Soto into an interview room, three steps away from the desk

at which Flores sat. Soto was nervous and crying. The door

to the interview room remained open, and Flores listened to

everything that was said in Soto's conversation with

Carrasquillo.

In the interview room, Soto told Carrasquillo about

Rodriguez's behavior, and showed him her bruises.

Carrasquillo asked Soto whether she wanted Rodriguez jailed.

Soto replied by explaining her situation to the officers.

Specifically, she told Carrasquillo that Rodriguez had told

her that if she put him in jail, he would get out quickly

because his family had money and that he would then kill her.

She told Carrasquillo that Rodriguez had told her that if she

attempted to put him in jail, he would kill her mother and

sisters so that she would go to the wake and he would then

kill her there.

Having told the police officers about Rodriguez's

threats, Soto asked them to do what was appropriate.

Although Soto did not use the words "domestic violence

complaint," she believed that by describing her situation to

the officers she was initiating the complaint process.

Carrasquillo wrote down everything she said during the

interview, and Soto assumed that he was drafting a complaint

against Rodriguez.

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Soto's effort to get police assistance came a year

and a half after a new law aimed at curbing domestic violence

had gone into effect. In November 1989, the Puerto Rican

legislature enacted one of the nation's most comprehensive

domestic violence laws, the Domestic Abuse Prevention and

Intervention Act, known popularly as "Law 54." In addition

to defining criminal domestic violence broadly, Law 54 makes

arrest of an abuser mandatory whenever an officer has grounds

to believe that Law 54 has been violated. P.R. Laws Ann.

tit. 8, 631-635, 638 (Supp. 1995). Police officers are

required to take all steps necessary to prevent abuse from

recurring, including providing the complainant with

information about social services and, if she expresses

concern for her safety, with transportation to a safe place.

Id. 640. Law 54 also requires that police officers file a

written report on all domestic violence incidents, whether or

not any charges are ever filed. Id. 641. The police

superintendent is charged with establishing "norms to

guarantee confidentiality with regard to the identity of the

persons involved in incidents of domestic violence." Id.

Implementing regulations issued by the superintendent of

police detail the officer's responsibilities, and instruct

that arrest determinations are not to be affected by

irrelevant factors, including victim reluctance. Rules and

Procedures to Attend to Domestic Violence Incidents, Puerto

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Rico Police General Order No. 86-26m (Rev. 1). The

regulations explicitly state that police attempts at

mediation or reconciliation shall not substitute for arrest.

Id. at 4. The regulations require that domestic violence

reports be kept confidential, in separate files, and that

copies only be issued upon a court order. Id. at 19. These

regulations explicitly recognize that:

Domestic violence . . . frequently ends
in intra-family homicide and it affects
all the components of the family,
including the children.

Id. at 1.

Despite this legal framework, at the conclusion of

his interview with Soto, Carrasquillo took no action.

Carrasquillo did not tell Soto about the availability of

battered women's shelters or about procedures for obtaining

an order of protection. Nor did he prepare a domestic

violence report. Instead, Carrasquillo wrote up an "Other

Services Report," which falsely indicated that Soto had

visited the police solely for advice relating to child

custody.3 Soto returned to Vega's house.

3. Soto contends that she signed a domestic violence report
at the station that night and that the Other Services Report
produced by the defense is an after-the-fact forgery, and
part of a cover-up, which included pressure on Flores to
commit perjury. Her claim of forgery is supported by the
testimony of a handwriting expert, and Flores's testimony
suggests that pressure was put on him.

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Carrasquillo discussed Soto's complaint with his

supervisor, Sergeant Orta, that evening. When Sergeant Orta

signed the Other Services Report he did so despite

information that this was a Law 54 situation and that the men

under his supervision were not doing what the law required.

Sergeant Orta discussed the "Other Services" report with

Flores.4 Flores told him that Rodriguez and Soto had

marital problems because Rodriguez was an alcoholic. Flores

said he would talk to Rodriguez the next day.

Sometime the next day, April 18, Officer Flores,

despite knowing of Rodriguez's threats to commit murder if

Soto went to the police in an effort to jail him, went to the

Rodriguez-Soto home and told Rodriguez about Soto's visit to

the police station. That night, Rodriguez arrived at Vega's

home, very upset. He told Vega and Glorivee Soto, Soto's

sister, that "the boys" from the police station had told him

that Soto wanted to put him in jail and that he would not

allow that to happen. Vega managed to calm him and he left.

The next day, Friday, April 19, Rodriguez ran into

the plaintiff at a local tire shop. Rodriguez, visibly

4. A police department internal investigation followed the
killings. On August 31, 1992, the examiner concluded that
Carrasquillo and Sergeant Orta, the supervisor who signed the
Other Services Report prepared by Carrasquillo, merited
reprimands for failing to act pursuant to the norms
established by Law 54. Neither Betancourt-Lebron nor Flores
was a subject of that investigation, although Flores was
interviewed regarding his knowledge of the events.

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upset, told plaintiff that Officer Flores had been to their

home and had told him that Soto was going to throw him in

jail. Soto, fearing violence, denied it. She tried to calm

Rodriguez down, but Rodriguez kept repeating that Flores had

told him she wanted him jailed.

On Saturday, the twentieth of April, Rodriguez

again came to Vega's home and invited Soto to the beach.

Soto refused to go, but the children, excited at the rare

prospect of an outing with their father, got into the car.

Rodriguez did not bring the children back that day as he had

promised. Soto went twice to try to pick them up, but both

times Rodriguez refused to give the children to her.

Finally, at 8:00 p.m. on April 21, Soto, mindful

that the next day was a school day, went back to the family

home determined to get the children. As she stood on the

lawn, Soto heard both children tell Rodriguez that she had

arrived. Sally shouted, "Run, Mommy, please run!" Rodriguez

then shot his son in the forehead. Soto heard Sally say to

her father, "Daddy, no, Daddy, no." Rodriguez then shot

Sally through her mouth. Soto heard a third shot. Rodriguez

had killed himself. When the police, including

Carrasquillo and Serrano, arrived, Rodriguez was dead. The

children were still alive and the police rushed them to the

hospital. Both children were dead on arrival.

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On the wall of the room where Rodriguez shot his

children, Rodriguez had written a message which confirmed

that Flores had told him of Soto's visit to the police. The

message said, among other things, "you left me, and Officer

Flores knows it," and "Law 54, which is only a tool for women

to make men do whatever they want, is not liberty."

II. Procedural History

Soto's initial section 1983 complaint alleged that

the acts and omissions of Officer Flores deprived her of her

rights to due process and to equal protection of the laws.

Additionally, she alleged that Superintendent Betancourt-

Lebron was liable for his failure to properly train and

supervise his subordinate officers.

After discovery, Flores and Betancourt-Lebron moved

to dismiss, and, in the alternative, for summary judgment.

In addition to arguing that Soto's claims lacked merit, the

defendants asserted that they were entitled to the

protections of qualified immunity. In an opinion dated

January 20, 1995, the district court granted the motion for

summary judgment. As to the due process claim, the court

held that, because an individual may not bring a section 1983

action for deprivation of due process based on injury to a

family member, the death of Soto's children did not give rise

to a cognizable claim. Soto v. Carrasquillo, 878 F. Supp.

324, 327 (D.P.R. 1996)(citing Valdivieso-Ortiz v. Burgos, 807

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F.2d 6, 7-10 (1st Cir. 1986)). As to the equal protection

claim, the court held that Soto had failed to adduce enough

evidence on discriminatory intent and causation to defeat

summary judgment. Soto, 878 F. Supp. at 331-32.

Soto requested reconsideration; as part of her

motion, she asked for leave to amend her complaint to bring

the action as a representative of her children. The district

court treated the complaint as amended, but dismissed the

claim on behalf of the children, holding it barred by

DeShaney v. Winnebago County, 489 U.S. 189 (1989). The court

accordingly denied Soto's motion for reconsideration. Soto

appeals.

III. The Section 1983 Claims

Soto presses two distinct claims. First, she

alleges that the defendants' actions violated her and her

children's rights to due process. Second, Soto asserts that

the defendants had a custom or policy of providing less

protection to victims of domestic violence than to victims of

other assaults, that this was the result of gender

discrimination, that this caused her injuries, and that

defendants thus violated her right to equal protection. We

consider each of these claims in turn.

A claim under section 1983 has two essential

elements. First, the challenged conduct must be attributable

to a person acting under color of state law (including Puerto

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Rico law); second, the conduct must have worked a denial of

rights secured by the Constitution or by federal law.

Martinez v. Colon, 54 F.3d 980, 984 (1st Cir.), cert. denied,

116 S. Ct. 515 (1995). The second element requires the

plaintiff to prove not only a deprivation of federal right,

but also that the defendant's conduct was a cause in fact of

the alleged deprivation. See Maldonado-Santiago v.

Velazquez-Garcia, 821 F.2d 822, 831 (1st Cir. 1987)("Section

1983 imposes a causation requirement similar to that of

ordinary tort law.").

A. The Due Process Claim

Soto claims that the deaths of her children are

attributable to the defendants' actions, and that those

actions deprived both her and her children of what she terms

a "substantive due process life interest."5 We examine

separately Soto's individual claim and her claim on behalf of

her children.

1. Soto's Individual Claim.

5. Some victims of abuse have brought section 1983 claims
alleging that official nonfeasance deprived them of
procedural due process. See, e.g., Meador v. Cabinet for

Human Resources, 902 F.2d 474, 476-77 (6th Cir.), cert.

denied, 448 U.S. 867 (1990); Coffman v. Wilson Police Dep't,

739 F. Supp. 257, 263-66 (E.D. Pa. 1990). In these cases,
the plaintiffs argued that state law made certain protective
processes mandatory, and thus created entitlements subject to
due process protection against deprivation. See, e.g,

Coffman, 739 F. Supp at 263-64. However, from our reading of

the record, Soto does not appear to make a procedural due
process claim. Thus, we do not address whether the
protective provisions of Law 54 create such an entitlement.

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The district court held that Soto, in her

individual capacity, could not bring a due process claim

based on injury to her children. Soto, 878 F. Supp. at 327.

On appeal, Soto argues both that the district court erred in

so holding and that the injury she complains of is not

limited to the loss of the companionship of her children, but

also comprehends the mental anguish she has suffered

personally.

We review the district court's grant of summary

judgment de novo. Dominique v. Weld, 73 F.3d 1156, 1158 (1st

Cir. 1996). We examine, viewing the record in the light most

favorable to the nonmoving party, whether the district court

correctly applied the substantive law and whether any

disputed facts have the potential to change the outcome of

the suit. See Martinez v. Colon, 54 F.3d 980, 983-84 (1st

Cir. 1995).

There is no absolute constitutional right to enjoy

the companionship of one's family members free from all

encroachments by the state. See Valdivieso-Ortiz v. Burgos,

807 F.2d 6, 8 (1st Cir. 1986). "State action that affects

the parental relationship only incidentally . . . even though

the deprivation may be permanent . . . is not sufficient to

establish a violation of a identified liberty interest."

Pittsley v. Warish, 927 F.2d 3, 8 (1st Cir.), cert. denied,

502 U.S. 879 (1991). Thus, the death of a family member will

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not ordinarily give those still alive a cognizable due

process claim under section 1983. See Manarite v.

Springfield, 957 F.2d 953, 960 (1st Cir.)(child could not sue

police for failure to prevent father's suicide), cert.

denied, 506 U.S. 837 (1992); Valdivieso-Ortiz, 807 F.2d at 10

(stepfather and siblings had no cause of action where prison

guards beat inmate to death). Here, the defendants' actions,

despite the tragic outcome, were not specifically aimed at

ending or affecting Soto's relationship with her children.

Nor can Soto successfully distinguish her case from the cited

precedents of this court by pointing to her own mental

anguish. The question is not one of a degree of suffering,

but whether the plaintiff can establish a violation of

federal right. While Soto's loss was of enormous,

heartbreaking magnitude, the Constitution does not protect

against all harms. She herself was not deprived of a

constitutionally protected interest, and she may not bring a

section 1983 due process claim on her own behalf.

2. Soto's Claim as a Representative of Her

Children.

In deciding Soto's motion for reconsideration, the

district court granted Soto's request to amend her complaint

so as to bring a claim as a representative of her children.

The court then found that the children's claim was foreclosed

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by DeShaney, dismissed the claim and denied the motion for

reconsideration of the due process claim.

Review of denial of a motion for reconsideration is

for abuse of discretion. See Airline Pilots Ass'n v.

Precision Valley Aviation, Inc., 26 F.3d 220, 227 (1st Cir.

1994). For purposes of this appeal, we consider Soto's

complaint, as amended, to determine if the district court

committed legal error in holding that Soto, as a

representative of her children, failed to state a claim upon

which relief could be granted. See Cooter & Gell v.

Hartmarx, 496 U.S. 384, 405 (1990) (district court abuses

discretion when it makes error of law); cf. Glassman v.

Computervision Corp., 90 F.3d 617 (1st Cir. 1996)(in

reviewing denial of leave to amend complaint, court considers

whether complaint as amended would state cognizable claim).

Defendants argue, and the district court held, that

any claim on behalf of Soto's children is barred by DeShaney,

which held that "a State's failure to protect an individual

against private violence simply does not constitute a

violation of the Due Process Clause." 489 U.S. at 197. We

agree that if Soto's argument were simply that Flores and his

brother officers failed to protect her children from

Rodriguez, it would clearly fail. See, e.g, Pinder v.

Johnson, 54 F.3d 1169 (4th Cir.) (en banc) (rejecting due

process claim based upon police failure to protect domestic

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violence victim), cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 530 (1995);

Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep't, 901 F.2d 696 (9th Cir.

1990)(same).

However, Soto alleges more than a mere failure to

protect. She claims, and her claim has support in the

record, that Officer Flores visited Rodriguez at home and

told him that Soto had been to the police station and wished

to jail him. She further alleges that when he did so Flores

was fully aware of how Rodriguez would likely react to this

information, not only because Flores knew Rodriguez's

character well, but also because Flores knew that Rodriguez

had threatened to murder her and her family members if she

went to the police and attempted to stop his abuse by having

him jailed. Soto alleges that Flores misused information

that he had obtained in an official capacity, and that this

affirmative act rendered her children more vulnerable to the

danger posed by Rodriguez and thus led to their deaths.

Soto alleges that Flores's conduct violated a duty

of constitutional dimension owed to Soto's children.

DeShaney clearly establishes that the state does not have a

constitutional duty to protect its citizens from private

violence. DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 197. However, in DeShaney,

the Supreme Court also recognized a distinction between the

case before it and other cases in which the state created the

risk faced by the plaintiff:

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While the State may have been aware of
the dangers that [the plaintiff] faced in
the free world, it played no part in
their creation, nor did it do anything to
render him any more vulnerable to them.
[By returning the plaintiff child to his
abusive father, the State] placed him in
no worse position than that in which he
would have been had it not acted at all.

Id. at 201. The situation here arises from the state actor's

affirmative acts, which played a part in creating the danger

to the children and rendered them more vulnerable to harm.

Soto thus contends that it falls outside the scope of

DeShaney, in that it "implicates the alternate framework of

1983 liability wherein a plaintiff alleges that some

conduct by an officer directly caused harm to the

plaintiff."6 Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1176 n.* (emphasis in

original); see also Dwares v. City of New York, 985 F.2d 94,

99 (2d Cir. 1993)("[T]hough an allegation simply that police

officers had failed to act upon reports of past violence

would not implicate the victim's rights under the Due Process

Clause, an allegation that the officers in some way had

6. The distinction between duty-to-protect cases and danger-
creation cases was colorfully described by the Seventh
Circuit in Bowers v. De Vito, 686 F.2d 616 (7th Cir. 1982).

While holding that "there is no constitutional right to be
protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or
madmen," Judge Posner pointed out that "[i]f the state puts a
man in a position of danger from private persons and then
fails to protect him, . . . it is as much an active
tortfeasor as if it had thrown him into a snake pit." Id. at

618.

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assisted in creating or increasing the danger to the victim

would indeed implicate those rights.").

Not every negligent, or even willfully reckless,

state action that renders a person more vulnerable to danger

"take[s] on the added character of [a] violation[] of the

federal Constitution." Monahan v. Dorchester Counseling

Ctr., Inc., 961 F.2d 987, 993 (1st Cir. 1992). In a creation

of risk situation, where the ultimate harm is caused by a

third party, courts must be careful to distinguish between

conventional torts and constitutional violations, as well as

between state inaction and action. See id.; Pinder, 54 F.3d

at 1175-78.

The scope of any permissible section 1983 action

based on a state-created danger theory is a difficult

question. See, e.g., Pinder, 54 F.3d at 1175; Monahan, 961

F.2d at 993-94. Because we find that this claim may be

resolved on immunity grounds, we choose not to reach this

question.

3. Qualified Immunity.

Assuming arguendo that Soto had stated a claim that

Flores and Betancourt-Lebron violated her children's

constitutional rights, the issue becomes whether the

defendants are entitled, as they argue, to qualified immunity

from suit. There are two prongs to qualified immunity

analysis. See St. Hilaire v. Laconia, 71 F.3d 20, 24 (1st

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Cir. 1995). First, the court must determine, as a matter of

law, whether the constitutional right in question was clearly

established at the time of the alleged violation. Id. If

the right is clearly established, the court must then ask

whether a reasonable similarly situated officer "should have

understood that the challenged conduct violated" that right.

Id.

To begin, Soto's arguments against qualified

immunity appear to misconstrue the doctrine. Soto argues,

with evidentiary support, that not only did the defendants

violate Law 54 and the pertinent regulations, but also that

they knew or reasonably should have known that they were

violating it. According to Soto, "[n]o good faith defense is

possible if the official knew he was violating plaintiff's

rights."

The Supreme Court has considered, and rejected,

this approach to qualified immunity. Davis v. Scherer, 468

U.S. 183, 193-95 (1984). In Davis, the plaintiff argued that

official conduct that contravened a statute or regulation

could not be objectively reasonable because officials may

reasonably be expected to conform their conduct to legal

norms. Id. at 193. The Court rejected this approach because

it would "disrupt the balance . . . between the interests in

vindication of citizens' constitutional rights and in public

officials' effective performance of their duties." Id. at

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195. "Officials sued for constitutional violations do not

lose their qualified immunity merely because their conduct

violates some statutory or administrative provision." Id. at

194; see also Borucki v. Ryan, 827 F.2d 836, 847 n.18 (1st

Cir. 1987). Accordingly, Soto's arguments with regard to Law

54, even if her alleged facts are true, do not resolve the

qualified immunity question. The focus is rather on whether

there is clearly settled law on the constitutional violation

at issue. This inquiry is sharpened by two narrowing

principles. The right must be stated with sufficient

particularity so that a "'reasonable officer would understand

that what he is doing violates that right'" and the right

must have been "clearly established at the time of the

defendants' alleged improper actions, and . . . not . . .

through the use of hindsight." Souza v. Pina, 53 F.3d 423,

425 (1st Cir. 1995) (quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S.

635, 640 (1987)). The issue is thus whether the

constitutional duty not to affirmatively abuse governmental

power so as to create danger to individuals and render them

more vulnerable to harm was clearly established in April

1991, the time of the events giving rise to this suit.

What the Third Circuit termed the "'state-created

danger theory,'" Kneipp v. Tedder, 95 F.3d 1199, 1201 (3d

Cir. 1996), has been recognized by some federal courts as a

viable mechanism for establishing a constitutional claim at

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least since 1979. See White v. Rochford, 592 F.2d 381, 383

(7th Cir. 1979) (finding Due Process Clause violation where

"unjustified and arbitrary refusal of police officers to lend

aid to children endangered by the performance of official

duty . . . ultimately result[ed] in physical and emotional

injury to the children"); see also Cornelius v. Town of

Highland Lake, 880 F.2d 348 (11th Cir. 1989), cert. denied,

494 U.S. 1066 (1990); Wood v. Ostrander, 879 F.2d 583 (9th

Cir. 1989), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 938 (1990); Checki v.

Webb, 785 F.2d 534, 538 (5th Cir. 1986). In DeShaney, the

Supreme Court acknowledged that state actions that create

dangers or render private citizens more vulnerable to harm

could amount to constitutional violations. See DeShaney, 489

U.S. at 201. Since DeShaney, seven circuit courts of appeals

have recognized that state-created dangers may, in proper

circumstances, give rise to constitutional claims under

section 1983. See Kneipp, 95 F.3d at 1208 (citing cases and

tracing history of state-created danger theory).

While this history would appear to militate in

favor of finding that there is clearly established law in

this area, in 1991 the First Circuit had not yet addressed

the issue of state-created dangers. The first case from this

court to discuss the contours of that doctrine was Monahan

v. Dorchester Counseling Ctr., Inc., 961 F.2d 987 (1st Cir.

1992), and that case held that, on the facts alleged, there

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22

was no constitutional violation. Of course, a violation of

clearly settled law may be found even where the Supreme Court

and the circuit in question have not specifically addressed

the question. See 2 Nahmod, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Litigation: The Law of Section 1983, 8.07, at 134-35 (3d

ed. 1991) (citing cases).

However, we cannot extract a clearly established

right from a somewhat confusing body of caselaw through the

use of hindsight, or "permit claims of qualified immunity to

turn on the eventual outcome of a hitherto problematic

constitutional analysis." Martinez-Rodriguez v. Colon-

Pizarro, 54 F.3d 980, 989 (1st Cir. 1995). The history of

the state-created danger theory, although recently

comprehensively described by the Third Circuit in Kneipp, is

an uneven one. The distinction between affirmatively

rendering citizens more vulnerable to harm and simply failing

to protect them has been blurred. Moreover, courts have

sometimes found that a given action, while rendering the

plaintiff more vulnerable to danger, did not amount to a

constitutional violation, but instead should be viewed as a

state law tort. See, e.g., Cannon v. Taylor, 782 F.2d 947,

950 (11th Cir. 1986). It is more recent judicial opinions

that have begun to clarify the contours of this doctrine.

See, e.g., Kneipp, 95 F.3d at 1208-10; Pinder, 54 F.3d at

1174-1177.

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23

We conclude therefore that, in 1991, "the contours

of the right were [not] sufficiently plain that a reasonably

prudent state actor would have realized not merely that his

conduct might be wrong, but that it violated a particular

constitutional right." Martinez-Rodriguez, 53 F.3d at 988.

Accordingly, we find that the defendants are entitled to the

protections of qualified immunity, and affirm the district

court's grant of summary judgment on plaintiff's substantive

due process claim.

B. The Equal Protection Claim

In DeShaney, the Supreme Court acknowledged that

"[t]he State may not, of course, selectively deny its

protective services to certain disfavored minorities without

violating the Equal Protection Clause." 489 U.S. at 197 n.3.

Soto alleges an equal protection violation in her

assertion that "[d]efendants have a custom, policy and

practice of treating complaints from, or on behalf of, women

threatened with violence in domestic disputes differently

from other complaints of violence. Defendants have

discriminated on the basis of the sex of the complaining

victim." The district court measured Soto's equal protection

claim7 under the standard for such claims brought by domestic

7. The district court correctly found that Valdivieso-

Ortiz's bar on section 1983 actions for due process

violations based on the death of a family member has not been
extended to equal protection claims. Soto, 878 F. Supp. at

328 n.6.

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24

violence victims that was first articulated by the Tenth

Circuit in Watson v. City of Kansas City, 857 F.2d 690 (10th

Cir. 1988), and subsequently adopted by several other

circuits. Under the Watson standard, a plaintiff seeking to

defeat a motion for summary judgment must:

proffer sufficient evidence that would allow a
reasonable jury to infer that it is the policy or
custom of the police to provide less protection to
victims of domestic violence than to other victims
of violence, that discrimination against women was
a motivating factor, and that the plaintiff was
injured by the policy or custom.

Ricketts v. City of Columbia, 36 F.3d 775, 779 (8th Cir.

1994) (citing Watson, 857 F.2d at 694), cert. denied, 115 S.

Ct. 1839 (1995).

The district court found that Soto had adduced

sufficient evidence to create a genuine issue as to whether

the police force had a custom or policy of providing less

protection to victims of domestic violence than to other

assault victims. Soto, 878 F. Supp. at 329. We agree. The

court also found that plaintiff had failed to meet her burden

in opposing summary judgment8 on either the discriminatory

intent prong or the causation prong of the Watson standard.

Id. at 332.

8. It was part of Soto's prima facie case to proffer
sufficient evidence of discriminatory intent. See, e.g.,

Lipsett, 864 F.2d at 896. In opposing summary judgment, it

was Soto's burden to adduce sufficient evidence of that
intent to create a trialworthy issue. See National

Amusements, Inc. v. Town of Dedham, 43 F.3d 731, 743-44 (1st

Cir.), cert. denied, 115 S. Ct. 2247 (1995).

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25

In a matter of first impression for this court, we

adopt the Watson standard for section 1983 equal protection

claims brought by domestic violence victims. Several other

circuits have considered similar claims. These tragedies

follow a sadly similar pattern; an abuse victim, after

repeatedly seeking police protection from her abuser, is

gravely injured or killed. The victim, or her next of kin,

claims under section 1983 that law enforcement policies

provide lesser protection to victims of domestic violence and

discriminate on the basis of gender. See, e.g, Navarro v.

Block, 72 F.3d 712 (9th Cir. 1996); Eagleston v. Guido, 41

F.3d 865 (2d Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 53 (1995);

Ricketts, 36 F.3d at 775; Brown v. Grabowski, 922 F.2d 1097

(3d Cir. 1990), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1218 (1991); McKee v.

City of Rockwall, 877 F.2d 409 (5th Cir. 1989), cert. denied,

493 U.S. 1023 (1990); Watson, 857 F.2d at 690.

Under the standard we adopt today, Soto must show

that there is a policy or custom of providing less protection

to victims of domestic violence than to victims of other

crimes, that gender discrimination is a motivating factor,

and that Soto was injured by the practice. See Watson, 857

F.2d at 694. Soto has adduced evidence sufficient to create

an issue as to whether there was a custom or policy of

providing less protection to domestic violence victims.

Closer questions are whether Soto adduces evidence sufficient

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26

to permit the drawing of the necessary inference of an intent

to discriminate against women and whether Soto provides

sufficient evidence that her injuries were caused by the

alleged custom or policy.

Soto's argument may be summarized as follows: (1)

that the Preamble to Law 54 explicitly recognizes that "women

are usually the victims of . . . conjugal abuse" and that Law

54 expresses a legislative intent to protect women and

children from domestic violence;9 (2) that, although 95% of

domestic violence complaints involve females as victims and

males as perpetrators, one out of every four persons in jail

in Puerto Rico for domestic violence is female;10 (3) that

statements of the individual in charge of the police in

Puerto Rico, Betancourt-Lebron, demonstrate both that Law 54

is not enforced as are other laws and that his disagreement

with the law, which may reasonably be understood to be gender

motivated, has led to non-enforcement by subordinate

9. Law 54 has been noted in academic literature for "its
ambitious and comprehensive approach to domestic violence."
See Rivera, Puerto Rico's Domestic Violence Prevention and

Intervention Law and the United States Violence Against Women

Act of 1994: The Limitations of Legislative Responses, 5

Colum. J. Gender & L. 78, 80 (1995). Rivera also describes
how official resistance to Law 54 has been an impediment to
implementation. Id. at 94-95.

10. While Soto admits that she presented no evidence of
arrest rates for men charged with domestic violence as
compared to arrest rates for women charged with domestic
violence, she asserts that such comparisons are impossible
because Puerto Rico has chosen not to gather this data.

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27

officers; (4) that there was no police training on domestic

violence prior to the events at issue; (5) that statements by

Sergeant Orta, and Officers Flores and Carrasquillo

acknowledge that police officers in the Rio Grande precinct

in 1991 did not enforce Law 54; (6) that statements by

individual officers demonstrate gender bias and stereotyping,

indicating that the Law was not enforced for discriminatory

reasons; (7) that the non-discriminatory reasons offered for

the non-enforcement are pretextual; (8) that differential

enforcement of Law 54 therefore permits an inference of an

intent to discriminate; and (9) that her injuries were caused

by the non-enforcement of the domestic violence law.

Defendants argue that no intent to discriminate can

be inferred from mere non-enforcement of a law. It is a

truism that under current Equal Protection Clause

jurisprudence, a showing of disproportionate impact alone is

not enough to establish a constitutional violation.11 See

Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 242 (1976). While

"impact provides an important starting point" for a court

seeking to determine if the adverse effect reflects invidious

gender-based discrimination, "purposeful discrimination is

11. "The Court's refusal to treat selective indifference as
an equal protection violation suggests a preference for a
stingy process theory over one that invites surreptitious
introduction of impact analysis." Klarman, An Interpretive

History of Modern Equal Protection, 90 Mich. L. Rev. 213, 299

(1991).

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28

'the condition that offends the Constitution.'" Personnel

Administrator v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 274 (1979) (citation

omitted) (upholding a veteran's preference in civil service

hiring where 98% of veterans were male). "[T]he mere

existence of disparate treatment -- even widely disparate

treatment -- does not furnish adequate basis for an inference

that the discrimination was [impermissibly] motivated."

Dartmouth Review v. Dartmouth College, 889 F.2d 13, 19

(1989); see Siegel, "The Rule of Love": Wife Beating as

Prerogative and Privacy, 105 Yale L.J. 2117, 2190-94

(1996)(modern doctrines of equal protection have encouraged

the development of facially neutral policies that are

difficult to challenge on constitutional grounds).

A domestic violence victim seeking to prove an

equal protection violation must thus show that the relevant

policymakers and actors were motivated, at least in part, by

a discriminatory purpose. Feeney, 442 U.S. at 274. The

Supreme Court has defined discriminatory purpose as being:

more than intent as volition or intent as
awareness of consequences. . . . It
implies that the decisionmaker . . .
selected or reaffirmed a course of action
at least in part "because of," not merely
"in spite of" its adverse effects upon an
identifiable group.

Id. at 279.

Without the smoking gun of an overtly

discriminatory statement by a decisionmaker, it may be very

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29

difficult to offer sufficient proof of such a purpose.12

See, e.g., Eagleston, 41 F.3d at 878 (statistics showing that

domestic violence complaints were less likely to result in

arrest than were stranger assault complaints and evidence of

underenforcement of official domestic violence policy did not

constitute evidence of discriminatory intent or purpose);

Ricketts, 36 F.3d at 781 (although over 90% of victims of

domestic abuse are women, and police statements offered

support for discriminatory intent toward domestic disputes,

plaintiff presented no evidence of intent to discriminate

against women). It is true, as Soto points out, that some

courts have allowed the equal protection claims of domestic

violence victims to proceed on an arguably lesser showing.

See Balistreri, 901 F.2d at 701 (remark of officer that

plaintiff's husband was entitled to hit her because she was

"carrying on" suggested an animus against women sufficient to

allow plaintiff's complaint to survive motion to dismiss);

Thurman v. City of Torrington, 595 F. Supp. 1521, 1528-29

(D. Conn. 1984)(viewing equal protection claim of domestic

violence victim in terms of "increasingly outdated

misconception" of husband's prerogative to discipline his

12. As the Third Circuit has recognized in the Title VII
context, it is rare that discrimination wears its garb openly
and it more often comes "masked in subtle forms." Triers of
fact may recognize those more subtle forms for what they are
and coded comments may raise inferences of discrimination.
Aman v. Cort Furniture Rental Corp., 85 F.3d 1074, 1082 (3d

Cir. 1996).

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30

wife) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)).

However, we think that the stringent standards imposed by the

majority of circuit courts are more in keeping with the

Supreme Court's approach to equal protection challenges to

facially neutral policies. It is in this light that we

evaluate Soto's equal protection claim.

This is not the usual case in which plaintiffs seek

to prove discriminatory intent from the mere fact of

differential impact. Nor is this the more common case where

a plaintiff in a civil rights action seeks to use the courts

to upset the majoritarian preferences expressed through the

legislative process. Rather, plaintiff here seeks the

benefit of the protection afforded by that majoritarian

legislative process and argues that she has been deprived of

that protection by the actions of individual public officials

motivated by a contrary, gender-discriminatory intent.

The statutory language of Law 54, and the

legislative intent evident from its preamble, serve to

differentiate this case from the typical disparate impact

case. The Law's prefatory "Statement of Motives" states that:

Although men as well as women may be
victims of conjugal abuse, studies show
that women are usually the victims of the
aggressive and violent conduct that we
call conjugal abuse. . . . The
investigators figure that 60% of all
married women in Puerto Rico are victims
of conjugal abuse.

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31

Statement of Motives, Domestic Abuse Prevention and

Intervention Act, Act No. 54 (Aug. 15, 1989)(citation

omitted). This recognition that the problem of domestic

violence impacts women most heavily is reiterated in the text

of Law 54 itself:

In developing the public policy on this
matter, we must give attention to the
handling of the difficulties that
domestic abuse presents, especially for

women and children.

P.R. Laws ann. tit. 8, 601 (Supp. 1995) (emphasis added).

Law 54 also explicitly recognizes that discrimination has

impeded institutional responses to domestic violence:

Domestic abuse is one of the most
critical manifestations of the effect of
inequities in the relationships between
men and women. The discriminatory ideas,
attitudes, and conduct also permeate

those social institutions called upon to

resolve and prevent the problem of

domestic abuse and its consequences.

The efforts of these institutions to
identify, understand and handle abuse
have been limited, and often inadequate.

Id. (emphasis added).

In the more usual equal protection case, a

plaintiff will present evidence of disparate impact upon a

disfavored group in an attempt to provide an "important

starting point" for proof of discriminatory intent. See,

e.g., Feeney, 442 U.S. at 274. Here, the Statement of

Motives of Law 54 contains an explicit legislative finding

that domestic violence has a greater impact on women and the

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32

Law expresses an intent to ameliorate that impact. This

legislative finding is evidence that underenforcement of Law

54 would indeed have a greater impact on women and might

therefore be motivated by gender discrimination.

Moreover, the express legislative desire to assist

women victims of domestic violence and recognition of the

problem of discrimination within responsible institutions are

important factors to be considered in the "give and take" of

the situation. See Feeney, 442 U.S. at 279 n.24

(discriminatory intent is often "made clear from what has

been called . . . 'the give and take of the situation'")

(citation omitted). The Supreme Court has said that the

discriminatory intent inquiry should look not only at the

different impact a policy has on a disfavored group, but also

at the history behind the development of a policy, including

looking at the problems it was intended to address. See

Arlington Heights, 429 U.S. at 266-68.

To the extent that decisions such as Feeney and

Arlington Heights are rooted in an appropriate judicial

deference to democratic processes and rational legislative

preferences, the rationale of deference is less compelling

here. See, e.g., Feeney, 442 U.S. at 271 ("The calculus of

effects, the manner in which a particular law reverberates in

a society, is a legislative and not a judicial

responsibility. . . .[I]t is presumed that 'even improvident

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33

decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic

process. . . .'" (citations omitted)); Arlington Heights, 429

U.S. at 265 ("[I]t is because legislators and administrators

are properly concerned with balancing numerous competing

considerations that courts refrain from reviewing the merits

of their decisions, absent a showing of arbitrariness or

irrationality."). With Law 54, the legislature of Puerto

Rico has expressed, through the democratic process, an intent

to protect the female victims of domestic violence and has

noted that enforcement agencies have been discriminatory and

part of the problem. Thus, underenforcement of Law 54 by

those charged with administering the law may in fact be a

subversion of majoritarian processes for individual,

illegitimate motives. We believe, in this context, that

action by officials leading to non-enforcement of Law 54 may

be some evidence of discriminatory intent by those

individuals. The policy Soto challenges is, of course, not

Law 54, but the decision not to implement the Law when she

sought its protections. In determining what, if anything,

motivated that decision, the factfinder may consider the

purposes of the Law itself, and draw appropriate inferences

about what might motivate a decision not to effectuate those

purposes. As the Law expressly seeks to aid women victims

and eradicate institutional discriminatory attitudes, a

decision not to implement the Law may well have been

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34

motivated not "in spite of," but "because of" the resulting

impact on women. We review the record to see whether there

issufficient evidence of intentas to eachof named defendants.

1. The Rio Grande Precinct

In reviewing whether the failure to enforce Law 54

was motivated by discriminatory intent, we look first to the

actions of the officers in the Rio Grande precinct. The key

actor at the precinct level was Sergeant Orta. Orta was told

Soto was making a Law 54 complaint, yet he signed an Other

Services Report in violation of Law 54 and took no steps to

have Rodriguez arrested. Nor did he take any steps to remove

Soto and her children from harm's way. He knew that Flores

was going to talk to Rodriguez and did not try to stop him.

He thus ratified and condoned the officers' disregard of Law

54.

Orta's statements, as described below, suggest a

discriminatory attitude towards women; this attitude may have

been one of the reasons behind the lack of enforcement of Law

54 at the Palmer substation of the Rio Grande precinct.

Sergeant Orta made statements which a trier of fact could

easily find reveal gender-discriminatory stereotypes and

biases. He testified as follows:

Q: What is your opinion of Act 54?

A: I told you the first time, and I remit
myself to the record, that I am in total
disagreement with that Act. I believe
that it is very unjust related to

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35

aggressions against women and I do not
agree with that.

Q: Why do you believe it is very unjust
with relation to aggressions against
women?

A: Sometimes men, including myself of
course, but sometimes one drinks on the
outside or has a woman on the side or a
friend on the side, and one has an
argument with one's lady friend and goes
home and takes it out on the wife. And I
believe that is not just.

. . .

Q: Then I ask you, again, what is your
opinion with relation to the law?

A: Well, the thing is that the law, in
spite of it mentioning both parties as
being able to complain, the woman is
always the person who is injured.
Credibility is given to the woman, where
there are occasions when that doesn't
happen that way.

The weight to be given to Sergeant Orta's comments

depends upon many factors. See National Amusements, 43 F.3d

at 743 (ambiguous comments standing alone are insufficient to

raise an inference of racial animus). The defendants here

have not offered a plausible alternative interpretation for

comments which in context suggest discrimination. See

Alexis v. McDonald's Restaurants, Inc., 67 F.3d 341, 348 (1st

Cir. 1995) ("[A] rational factfinder would be hard-pressed to

glean a more plausible inference [than discriminatory

intent], particularly since [defendant] has tendered no

alternative interpretation supported by the present

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36

record."). The comments were made by a person whose actions

allegedly contributed to the plaintiff's injury.

Sergeant Orta's statements are very troubling. His

hostility to enforcing the domestic violence law could

certainly be understood as arising from archaic stereotypes

which assume that men enjoy certain prerogatives towards

women, including beating them.13 Gender-based

"classifications may not be used, as they once were, to

create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic

inferiority of women." United States v. Virginia, 116 S. Ct.

at 2275 (citation omitted). Although Sergeant Orta is not a

defendant here, he was a supervisor and his attitudes are

13. "The Anglo-American common law originally provided that
a husband, as master of his household, could subject his wife
to corporal punishment or 'chastisement' so long as he did
not inflict permanent injury upon her." Siegel, "The Rule of

Love": Wife Beating as Prerogative and Privacy, 105 Yale L.J.

at 2118. This "right" of chastisement was recognized by
Blackstone's Commentaries in the eighteenth century. 1
William Blackstone, Commentaries *444. A wife could turn to

a court for protection through a writ of supplicavit. Id.

The doctrine of chastisement was met with some disfavor and
was not universally accepted in American legal culture. See

Tapping Reeve, The Law of Baron and Femme; of Guardian and

Child; of Master and Servant; and of the Power of Courts of

Chancery 65 (New Haven, Oliver Steele 1816); Siegel, supra,

at 2124.
By the late nineteenth century, around the time of
the enactment of the Equal Protection Clause, the doctrine of
the right of chastisement had fallen into disrepute in
America. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
expressly repudiated the doctrine in 1871. Commonwealth v.

McAfee, 108 Mass. 458 (1871). Alabama repudiated the

doctrine that same year. Fulgham v. State, 46 Ala. 143

(1871).

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37

evidence of whether the failure to enforce Law 54 at the

precinct level was based on discrimination.

Law 54 was enforced sporadically, at best, in the

precinct in 1991. Officer Flores testified that almost

everyone in his police detachment "shied away from" Law 54

complaints. Asked what happened to the victims when the

officers did not want to take complaints, Flores responded,

"Well, they had to continue complaining." Flores testified

that proper Law 54 procedures were followed only about 75% of

the time, and then just by certain officers. Sergeant Orta,

Flores's direct supervisor, stated that, despite Law 54,

domestic violence complaints were not given great importance

in 1991 and were commonly handled in the station as "Other

Services" reports. There would certainly be enough facts to

raise a reasonable inference that the failure to enforce Law

54 at the precinct level was based on gender discrimination.

That, however, does not answer the question as to

whether Officer Flores, who is the defendant here, acted out

of gender-based discriminatory intent in talking to

Rodriguez. It was not within Flores's responsibilities to

take Soto's complaint or to arrest Rodriguez. We find no

evidence to suggest that Flores's motivation in talking to

Rodriguez was based on gender discrimination. There is no

evidence that Flores himself attempted to avoid enforcement

of Law 54 at all, much less for discriminatory reasons.

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38

Flores, despite the lack of official training, undertook to

get some training for himself. When Soto came to the Palmer

substation, Flores called in the two patrol officers, whose

responsibility it was to take the complaint and act on it.

Flores described Soto's complaint as a Law 54 complaint to

the patrol officers, as he did to Sergeant Orta. There is no

evidence that Flores intervened and talked to Rodriguez

because of a gender-discriminatory motive; rather, the

relationship between the two men provides a strong inference

that Flores believed his friendship could provide a basis to

resolve the matter. Sadly, he was wrong. That he was wrong

does not turn his action into one motivated by gender

discrimination.

2. Police Superintendent Betancourt-Lebron

Plaintiff asserts that Betancourt-Lebron, the

superintendant of police for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,

should be held responsible because he failed to provide

adequate training, and because that failure was due to

gender- discriminatory bias.14 This claim is based largely

14. We will assume arguendo, but do not decide, that there
was evidence of a causal link between lack of training and
the events at the precinct. The street level officers --
Flores and Carrasquillo -- both testified that they had not
received formal training on Law 54, and were not even given a
copy of the law. Both officers were left with understandings
of the law that were flatly wrong. Both erroneously believed
that the victim had to specifically request a Law 54 order,
and that the victim had to sign a closed report if she did
not wish to proceed to get a restraining order. Sergeant
Orta also testified that he did not receive comprehensive

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39

on Betancourt-Lebron's public statements. For example, when

Law 54 had been in effect for eight months, Betancourt-

Lebron, was quoted in the press as saying:

I don't believe that [Law 54] is solving
anything because it has not lessened the
fights between husbands and wives. On
the contrary, there is evidence that it
continues to increase.

He went on to say that domestic violence should not be

treated with laws that punish the aggressors, but with

psychologists and social workers. This statement of

disagreement with the law's decision to criminalize such

conduct is not, in itself, a statement of discriminatory

intent. Plaintiff posits that the statement in context

should be read as discriminatory.

Soto's expert witness, Mercedes Rodriguez, opined

that, because one of the most dramatic changes achieved by

Law 54 was the criminalization of domestic violence, this

statement by Betancourt-Lebron was "one of the most severe

blows, that a public official of [his] stature" could give to

the law. Rodriguez called these statements "a deviation on

the part of the institutional leadership." It was the

position of the Women's Affairs Commission that Betancourt's

public statements "would promote rank and file's negative

attitudes toward women victims and their rights under Law

training in Law 54 until 1993, two years after the incident
at issue here.

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40

54." The Superintendent's public statements, in opposition

to a law he was charged with enforcing, were widely

disseminated. It is reasonable to infer, as Soto's expert

and the Women's Affairs Commission suggest, that they

influenced many of the rank and file in the police. But that

the statements had influence does not mean that they were

motivated by discrimination.

Additionally, Betancourt-Lebron acknowledged that

he foresaw that police officers would have problems

implementing Law 54 because its procedures differed from

other laws, and because "of active resistance from some

members of the Force toward the law." There is no evidence,

however, that he was aware of discriminatory attitudes at the

Rio Grande precinct, much less that, in the face of such

knowledge, he failed to act to curb those attitudes. Nor is

there any comparative evidence as to what, if any, training

Betancourt-Lebron implemented when other new laws went into

effect. Evidence that Law 54, which was specifically

intended to assist abused women, was handled differently than

other new major law enforcement initiatives could, perhaps,

support an inference of discriminatory intent. But the

record is devoid of such evidence.

Somewhat more probative of Betancourt-Lebron's

intent is his relationship with the Women's Affairs

Commission. Betancourt-Lebron declined to meet, for a year

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41

after approval of Law 54, with the Women's Affairs

Commission. Law 54 directs the Commission to evaluate

implementation of the law and to promote the response of law

enforcement agencies to victims. See P.R. Laws ann. tit. 8,

651 (Supp. 1995). The initial report of the Commission,

covering the first year of implementation, noted:

"Coordination with the Police of Puerto Rico to train

personnel as to domestic violence problems and Law 54 has

been virtually impossible." In fact, Betancourt-Lebron

returned none of the numerous phone calls or letters to him

from the Executive Director of the Commission, who was

concerned about the Police Department's apparent lack of

interest in implementing the law.

In the end, this evidence, while painting an

unwholesome picture, is not enough to meet the strict

standards imposed by the Supreme Court for showing

discriminatory intent in equal protection claims. As Feeney

says, the intent to be shown must be more than an "awareness

of consequences." Feeney, 442 U.S. at 279. The defendant

must have "selected . . . a course of action at least in part

'because of' not merely 'in spite of' its adverse effects on

an identifiable group." Id. An expression of disagreement

with Law 54 and a failure to meet with the Women's Affairs

Commission, while some evidence of discriminatory intent on

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42

the part of Betancourt-Lebron, is too slender a stalk on

which to rest.

Thus, we conclude that plaintiff has fallen short

of her difficult burden of proving discriminatory intent

against these defendants as required to establish a

constitutional tort. In so saying, we do not of course

condone the actions and failures of duties we have described.

The deaths of children, which may have followed from risks

arguably created by the actions of public officials, are very

serious matters. Whether this deplorable scenario is

actionable under Puerto Rican law we leave, as we must, to

others.

Accordingly, the grant of summary judgment against

plaintiff is affirmed.

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43

TORRUELLA, Chief Judge (concurring). I concur with
TORRUELLA, Chief Judge (concurring).

the majority's opinion. I am of the view that the District

Court should be affirmed for substantially the same reasons

and grounds as are stated in the opinion of the District

Court.

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44