Most court injunctions seeking to halt construction projects are filed by the Government of Puerto Rico, not by communities or organizations, according to an investigation by the Rincón Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation and the Paseo Responsable coalition.
Those findings contradict the narrative that environmental groups arbitrarily and excessively seek to halt construction, an argument repeated by Rep. Jorge “Georgie” Navarro Suárez during the approval of Act 82 of 2026, which now requires a bond to stop any government-authorized project.
For the analysis, the organizations reviewed 924 injunctions filed in Superior Court between January 2025 and May 2026. An injunction is an extraordinary legal remedy that seeks a court order requiring a specific action to be taken or stopped.
The review aimed to determine whether communities and organizations have, in fact, abused this extraordinary remedy to halt construction projects, as lawmakers claimed during the approval of Act 82 of 2026, which would make it harder to challenge and stop projects.
The investigation found that 73% of the 295 injunctions related to permits and land use identified during that period were filed by the Government of Puerto Rico. Of those, most were filed by agencies, not municipalities. Citizens and community organizations filed 23%. Developers filed the remaining 4%.
After the approval of the measure he co-authored, now Act 82 of 2026, Navarro Suárez, of the New Progressive Party, said it was intended to “benefit economic development, job security and ensure Puerto Rico keeps moving forward, without third parties coming in — people who treat this like a national sport, protesting whatever they feel like, without having an interest that truly affects them.”
“This is meant to end frivolous lawsuits filed just because someone wants to challenge something,” the representative said in one of his many media appearances defending the measure.
Navarro Suárez changed his position when the CPI pressed him about the findings in the environmental groups’ report. The lawmaker said the report validated the rationale for his measure: that agencies were a “thorn in the side” of developers in Puerto Rico. In his public appearances, however, his defense of the bill had been aimed at environmental groups.
The representative acknowledged that he was unaware of the statistics when he filed his bill, even though he could have gathered the data through the judiciary.
When asked why he blamed environmental organizations for abusing the permitting system, the representative replied: “That is what I have seen.”
“You have to look at each case because when you see a development, what I know is that you see the same environmentalists in Ponce, Mayagüez and Arecibo,” he said in a phone interview with the CPI.
Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz and House Speaker Carlos “Johnny” Méndez Núñez expressed similar views about the bill.
“There are people who abuse the right,” Rivera Schatz told Noticentro. “There are people who, without really being harmed and without having a legitimate interest that is being affected, abuse the processes.”
Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González Colón also justified signing the bill with similar arguments.
“It incorporates several measures involving municipalities, so people can carry out projects and, in this way, avoid slowing economic development,” she said.
In addition to the traditional injunction, there is also a statutory injunction under Article 14.1 of Act 161 of 2009, the remedy provided to enforce Puerto Rico’s permitting system. This remedy applies when it is shown that a project or use lacks the required authorizations and permits, or that it was carried out in violation of the terms of the permit granted. In a 2024 ruling, the Puerto Rico Supreme Court clarified that although the statutory remedy has some affinity with a classic injunction, it is not subject to the same level of rigor.
Of the 295 injunctions, 44 were filed under Article 14.1 of Act 161 of 2009, meaning they were statutory injunctions.
Government agencies filed 64% of those statutory injunctions, with the Puerto Rico Planning Board alone accounting for 45%. Companies, limited liability companies or commercial property owners filed 11%. Communities, homeowners’ associations and organizations filed the remaining 25%, which “reinforces that the mechanism does not operate primarily as a citizen tool against construction, but as a judicial enforcement mechanism used by the state itself,” the report says.
“In the public debate over the permitting system reform, it has been claimed that Article 14.1 of Act 161-2009 — which provides the statutory injunction mechanism — is being used frivolously or abusively by citizens and communities to halt construction projects. Under that premise, the need to restrict or limit that remedy has been suggested,” the investigation states. “The conclusion of the analysis is clear: the data does not support that narrative.”
After Act 82 of 2026 was approved, a bond of no less than 10% of the proposed value of any project someone seeks to stop was imposed, applying to all pending judicial or administrative proceedings.
The law states that any legal action to stop a project must show “clearly and specifically” that the person has a property or personal interest in the controversy and is also susceptible to imminent harm resulting from the challenged action. The statute also establishes that these changes apply only to natural persons and private entities, not to the Planning Board or certain autonomous municipalities, whose powers would be curtailed if the Planning and Permits Code is approved.
The report also found that none of the cases dismissed for perjury had been filed by communities or community groups. Only 25% of statutory injunctions were dismissed, the organizations found, which “is incompatible with the allegation that citizens and communities are abusing Article 14.1 through frivolous cases.”
In May, Navarro Suárez filed House Bill 1286 to amend the recently approved Act 82 of 2026 so that imposing a bond of no less than 10% would be left to the court’s discretion. Méndez Núñez, however, said he would not allow any amendments to move forward.
The House speaker said that “many of those who argue they are being denied access to the courts because they must post a bond had already raised those same objections in administrative proceedings. And if they did not prevail there, why should a project be stopped capriciously and arbitrarily through the courts?”
The CPI requested a response from the legislative leader regarding the report’s findings, but none had been provided by the time this story was published.
Meanwhile, Navarro Suárez said his amendments to Act 82 of 2026 will be incorporated into the Planning and Permits Code.
The Alleged Bottleneck Is False
The organizations also noted in their report that the 295 injunction cases related to permits and land use represent only 3.4% of the 8,595 construction permits filed in 2025 and about 3.7% of the 7,950 permits adjudicated during that period. The data was obtained from the Single Business Portal, the Permit Management Office’s permitting platform.
They said the data does not correspond to the same period and falls under categories that are not necessarily equivalent. “The comparison shows that the volume of private or community litigation is marginal compared with the universe of permits adjudicated,” they said in their report.
Exposing the Real Agenda
According to Carola Acum Quiñones, president of Surfrider’s Rincón Chapter and spokesperson for Paseo Responsable, the finding is important because it reveals “a clear agenda” by the Puerto Rico Legislature to prevent citizen participation, especially in the analysis and discussion of projects, actions and decisions with environmental impacts.
“They are shooting from the hip,” she told the CPI. “They are taking measures without any kind of analysis.”
The spokesperson said the measure wrongly and baselessly bars communities and organizations from intervening in the permitting process to safeguard compliance with regulations and permits.
“These are serious matters, measures that have a grave impact on the island, on the island’s economic development,” the environmental leader said of Act 82 of 2026. “They aren’t studying the situation in depth. They aren’t studying the implications it has.”
The Puerto Rico Bar Association opposed the measure because it obstructs “access to justice, citizen participation and the rule of law” by modifying provisions in the law “that until now allowed citizens and communities to file extraordinary remedies to address irregularities in permitting processes, including requests to halt projects for violations of the law or regulations.”
The organization said, “the amendments introduced establish additional procedural requirements that, in practice, represent significant barriers to access to the courts and administrative agencies.”
It also opposed the bond equivalent to no less than 10% of a project’s value, which, “because of its amount, places challenges to large-scale projects beyond the financial reach of most citizens and community-based organizations.”
“The right to citizen participation in planning and permitting processes is an essential component of social peace and democratic order,” the association said in writing.
No Safeguards Against Unfounded Measures
Attorney, professor and former legislative adviser Víctor García San Inocencio told the CPI there are no safeguards to prevent the filing and approval of bills that are not based on empirical data. He said legislative committees are supposed to validate the content and structure of legislative measures. However, that process has been disrupted in recent years by the approval of measures through discharge motions or by the submission of pro forma reports.
“There are legislators who introduce bills without knowing the background or without really knowing what they are signing,” said the former representative for the Puerto Rican Independence Party. “That is legislating blindly and being at the mercy of the highest bidder or the best friend, who can insert whatever legislative language they want and secure a change in the rule of law that is very beneficial to them, at the expense of the common good and the people,” he added.
In an interview with the CPI, attorney and former representative for the Citizens’ Victory Movement Mariana Nogales Molinelli recommended creating an office to ensure that legislative measures, especially those with environmental impacts, have a scientific basis, given the lack of specific safeguards to prevent lawmakers from basing them on falsehoods. Although public hearings could satisfy that need, none were held for Act 82 of 2026, preventing a rigorous citizen evaluation of the bill.
Therefore, the claims that communities and organizations abuse the legal system to stop projects are false when weighed against Surfrider’s analysis in Rincón and Paseo Responsable.
This translation was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and clarity.
