{"id":386863,"date":"2023-03-08T06:03:11","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T20:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=386863"},"modified":"2023-03-08T06:03:11","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T20:03:11","slug":"mafnas-complaint-vs-castro-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/mafnas-complaint-vs-castro-dismissed\/","title":{"rendered":"Mafnas\u2019 complaint vs Castro dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. District Court for the NMI has granted former chief of staff to Gov. Ralph DLG Torres William Castro\u2019s request to dismiss Custom\u2019s director Jose Mafnas\u2019 suit against him.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona granted Castro\u2019s request last Friday to dismiss the lawsuit of Division of Customs and Bio-Security director Mafnas against him and former Finance secretary David DLG Atalig.<\/p>\n

The suit was dismissed without prejudice; Mafnas was given 14 days to amend his complaint.<\/p>\n

In her order last March 3, Manglona granted Castro\u2019s motion to dismiss regarding the political coercion claim because the plaintiff did not sufficiently allege a demotion.<\/p>\n

Manglona also granted the defendants\u2019 motion to dismiss as to Mafnas\u2019 claim for a procedural due process violation because the plaintiff did not identify the legal basis for his protected property interest or adequately pleaded a deprivation of that property interest.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jose Mafnas and William Castro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She also granted the CNMI government\u2019s motion as to Mafnas\u2019 claim of retaliation, because the plaintiff has failed to adequately plead an adverse employment action or causation.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the court denied the CNMI Office of the Attorney General\u2019s motion for substitution based on substitution and sovereign immunity.<\/p>\n

Back in July 2022, Mafnas sued Atalig, Castro, and the CNMI government to prevent them\u00a0from removing Mafnas from his position as Customs director or to reinstate him pending a decision on the merits of his complaint.<\/p>\n

In his lawsuit, Mafnas, a civil service employee, said he was transferred to a non-existent position in the Department of Commerce because he was supporting the independent gubernatorial candidacy of then-lieutenant governor Arnold I. Palacios.<\/p>\n

Mafnas, through attorney Charity Hodson, also requested the court to issue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the defendants.<\/p>\n

In August 2022, Manglona issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Mafnas to preserve the status quo based on the parties\u2019 stipulation.<\/p>\n

Mafnas has since been reinstated pending decision on the merits of his case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. District Court for the NMI has granted former chief of staff to Gov….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":386864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}