U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. said he expects to rule soon on two motions for dismissal filed by Cameron County Sheriff Eric Garza in a civil rights lawsuit against him and Executive Chief Deputy Robert Gracia.
Sgt. Rodrigo Almanza filed the suit in April alleging that Garza and Gracia violated his rights to free political speech after he supported then-Sheriff Omar Lucio in the 2020 election.
At a pretrial conference Tuesday afternoon, Rodriguez said the motions for dismissal were filed Monday and that he expected to review them later Tuesday.
Rodriguez took the motions under advisement, saying that if he feels a hearing would be helpful in the matter he will schedule one, but at this time he is not ordering the parties to mediation.
In his lawsuit, Almanza contends Garza and Gracia retaliated against him because he openly and publicly supported Lucio for sheriff by taking these retaliatory actions:
>>Transferring him to the Transport Division from the prestigious Criminal Investigations Division, where he handled major crimes and also served as a liaison to the CCSO’s counterpart in Mexico
>>stripping him of all subordinates and of supervisory duties
>>assigning him to shift schedules and working conditions not given to the other CCSO supervisors
>>having him report to a person not certified as a peace officer, and
>>requiring him to perform menial and pointless tasks like distributing inmate meal carts and physically manning a perfectly operational gate.
According to the lawsuit, Almanza has been employed with the sheriff’s department for eight years. He was promoted to sergeant in December 2019. He had worked in the Criminal Investigations Division since 2015, according to the lawsuit.
In January, Almanza was reassigned to the Jail Division’s Transport Division where he worked the graveyard shift and was to be supervised by a jailer, according to the lawsuit.
Almanza claims that Garza and Gracia violated his right to freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Almanza seeks compensation and punitive damages, attorneys fees, declaratory relief, and “injunctive relief that requires Sheriff Garza and Chief Deputy Gracia to assign Sgt. Almanza to a position that exercises supervisory authority, with all of the customary benefits and privileges customarily granted to supervisors of the CCSO, and prohibiting them from subsequently reassigning him from there based on his protected activity of supporting Omar Lucio’s political campaign.”
