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Tag: recess appointments
Supreme Court Limits Presidents’ Recess Appointment Powers

Supreme Court Limits Presidents’ Recess Appointment Powers

By Michael Doyle, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday modestly curtailed a president’s power to unilaterally appoint officials during a Senate recess.

In a limited defeat for President Barack Obama and his White House successors, the court unanimously ruled that Obama improperly appointed several members to the National Labor Relations Board during a brief Senate recess.

The Senate’s three-day recess, a scheme to thwart presidential appointments, was “too short a time” to trigger the presidential recess appointment powers, the court agreed. The Constitution allows recess appointments without Senate approval, making them a popular tool for presidents facing a recalcitrant Congress.

“A recess lasting less than 10 days is presumptively too short,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote.

The decision Thursday has been among the court’s most highly anticipated because of its potential to tilt the delicate balance of power between Congress and the White House. In essence, the Senate wins, because it gets to decide when it’s in recess. The White House, though, also wins because the court didn’t go as far as it might have.

“The president dodged a bullet today,” noted John Cooney, former assistant to the U.S. solicitor general.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president “was deeply disappointed” in the Supreme Court decision.

“We are, however, pleased that the court recognized the president’s executive authority as exercised by presidents going all the way back to George Washington,” Earnest said.

The case decided Thursday deals with a constitutional provision that authorizes presidents to make such appointments “during the Recess of the Senate, which shall expire at the end of their next session.”

In the NLRB case, a family-owned Washington state company called Noel Canning ran afoul of the labor board in February 2012, when it upheld an administrative judge’s ruling against the company in a contract dispute with Teamsters Local 760.

Two of the three labor board members ruling against Noel Canning, Democrat Sharon Block, and Republican Terence Flynn, had been appointed by Obama in January 2012. They had not, however, been confirmed by the Senate.

Practically speaking, the ruling will undermine NLRB decisions made by the challenged appointees.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated the ruling could invalidate hundreds of NLRB decisions, while the National Right to Work Foundation went further, calculating that “over 1,500” board decisions made between April 2011 and August 2013 may be invalid.

The Noel Canning win also could undercut actions taken at the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by Richard Cordray, who was initially given a recess appointment to head the agency many Republicans oppose. Politically, the decision reinforces the congressional Republicans who contend Obama has run amok with his executive powers.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called it “the Supreme Court’s biggest rebuke to any president since 1974, when it ordered President Nixon to produce the Watergate tapes.”

House Republicans who are going sue Obama over his executive actions were similarly emboldened.

“Today’s decision should put wind in the sail of the lawsuit Speaker John Boehner is proposing,” noted Todd Gaziano, executive director of the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation’s Washington center.

But beyond the labor board decisions and the political ammo, the decision Thursday will be limited in its reach, for several reasons.
While all nine justices agreed the specific NLRB appointments were improper, the court by a narrower 5-4 margin upheld the president’s ability to make recess appointments during both an intra-session as well as an inter-session recess. This rejected more sweeping arguments pushed by conservatives.

Every Congress is divided into two, one-year sessions. The inter-session recess usually occurs around late December and January, between the conclusion of one session and the start of another.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

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Supreme Court Rules Against Obama On Recess Appointments

Supreme Court Rules Against Obama On Recess Appointments

By David G. Savage and Timothy M. Phelps, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Barack Obama exceeded his power under the Constitution by filling three federal positions when the Senate was on a brief break, but justices upheld the right of the president to make recess appointments during longer breaks.

While the president is authorized to fill vacancies while the Senate is on recess, the justices decided in a 9-0 ruling that the Senate was not on a true recess in January 2012 when Obama filled three seats on the National Labor Relations Board.

The decision is a rebuke to the president, but its short-term impact on Obama could be muted because last year the Democratic-controlled Senate scrapped a long-standing filibuster rule that had allowed the current Republican minority to block a vote on many of his nominees.
Before that change was made, Republicans effectively blocked many of Obama appointments, prompting the president to turn to recess appointments as a way to fill vacant posts.

The limited scope of the court’s ruling was criticized by Justice Antonin Scalia, who agreed with the majority but said the court should have gone much further.

Justice Anthony Kennedy and the court’s most liberal members also signed onto the opinion, written by Justice Stephen Breyer.

“A Senate recess that is so short that it does not require the consent of the House is not long enough to trigger the President’s recess appointment power,” Breyer wrote.

But the court was split 5-4 on the broader question of whether the modern presidency should retain the right to make recess appointments.
Scalia, in an opinion that read more like a dissent than a concurrence, blasted the Breyer opinion from the bench, a highly unusual move.
“The Court’s decision transforms the recess-appointment power from a tool carefully designed to fill a narrow and specific need into a weapon to be wielded by future Presidents against future Senates,” Scalia wrote.

“To reach that result, the majority casts aside the plain, original meaning of the constitutional text in deference to late-arising historical practices that are ambiguous at best.”

He was joined by fellow conservatives Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

But Breyer wrote for the court that a broader reading of the recess clause “is reinforced by centuries of history, which we are hesitant to disturb. We thus hold that the Constitution empowers the President to fill any existing vacancy during any recess — intra-session or inter-session — of sufficient length.”

He indicated that a sufficient length might be a break of 11 days.

The Senate subsequently confirmed appointments to the three posts, so the decision will not displace any officials. If Republicans succeed in taking back control of the Senate this fall, the court’s ruling could carry more weight next year.

The ruling will bind future presidents as well, limiting the chief executive’s authority to go around the Senate. In the early years of the nation, presidents used “recess” appointments because members of Congress left the capital for several months at a time.

In their absence, the chief executive could make temporary appointments to the government. In more recent times, presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have used temporary appointment power to bypass a Senate that was slow to confirm his nominees.

This story has been updated

AFP Photo/Karen Bleier