A federal appeals court has upheld modifications to teachers’ pensions under Puerto Rico’s debt adjustment plan, despite arguments from teachers’ associations that the changes violate the U.S. territory’s law.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday said that the federal law that authorized the commonwealth’s debt restructuring allowed a federally appointed oversight board to modify the pension obligations. The changes were part of the board’s wide-ranging restructuring for Puerto Rico, which was approved by a lower court in January after nearly five years in a bankruptcy-like process known as Title III.

The Title III cases were filed to address the commonwealth’s $135 billion in liabilities, which included $55 billion in underfunded pension obligations.

An attorney for the teachers associations, Jessica Méndez Colberg of Bufete Emmanuelli, called the decision “unfortunate.”

“The case reinforces the powers of the oversight board over the government of Puerto Rico and the people of Puerto Rico and highlights, yet again, the consequences of Puerto Rico being a colony of the Unites States,” she said.

Under the plan, which went into effect in March, government retirees’ existing pension benefits that had already accrued remain intact. But teachers’ associations in Puerto Rico opposed the plan on the grounds that it freezes defined-benefit retirement programs that cover active teachers and judges and replaces them with defined-contribution plans and enrollment in social security.

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