High Court Limits Presidential Power, Triggers Turmoil At NLRB
From the National Law Journal
A major separation-of-powers decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday may prevent President Barack Obama from making recess appointments for the rest of his tenure, and will trigger uncertainty for months or years to come at the National Labor Relations Board.
Ruling in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, the court invalidated three recess appointments Obama made to the board during a brief Senate recess in January 2012. The three-day recess, the court agreed, was too short to trigger the president’s power under the Constitution to “fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate.”
A recess lasting less than 10 days is “presumptively too short to fall within the clause,” wrote Justice Stephen Breyer in an opinion joined by justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The decision thwarted Obama’s first-term tactic for making appointments in the face of resistance from Senate Republicans. They had initiated a series of very brief “pro forma” sessions every Tuesday and Friday during longer recesses, with the goal of preventing recess appointments. Obama regarded those short breaks as true recesses that allowed him to make recess appointments.
The high court said those pro forma sessions deserved recognition. “The Senate is in session when it says it is,” Breyer wrote, “provided that, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact Senate business.”
Read more in our daily News Update...
From the National Law Journal
A major separation-of-powers decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday may prevent President Barack Obama from making recess appointments for the rest of his tenure, and will trigger uncertainty for months or years to come at the National Labor Relations Board.
Ruling in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, the court invalidated three recess appointments Obama made to the board during a brief Senate recess in January 2012. The three-day recess, the court agreed, was too short to trigger the president’s power under the Constitution to “fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate.”
A recess lasting less than 10 days is “presumptively too short to fall within the clause,” wrote Justice Stephen Breyer in an opinion joined by justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The decision thwarted Obama’s first-term tactic for making appointments in the face of resistance from Senate Republicans. They had initiated a series of very brief “pro forma” sessions every Tuesday and Friday during longer recesses, with the goal of preventing recess appointments. Obama regarded those short breaks as true recesses that allowed him to make recess appointments.
The high court said those pro forma sessions deserved recognition. “The Senate is in session when it says it is,” Breyer wrote, “provided that, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact Senate business.”
Read more in our daily News Update...