Court: Obama appointments to labor panel are unconstitutional

[Stan In FL]

of COURSE they are.  and our "constitutional scholar" president should have known that.

Court: Obama appointments to labor panel are unconstitutional

WASHINGTON –  President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board.

The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions.

The ruling also throws into question Obama's recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray's appointment, also made under the recess circumstance, has been challenged in a separate case.

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[Stan In FL]

constitutionality aside, it is absurd to think that the president has more authority to determine when the senate is in session than the senate does.

[apples]

I wonder if he will follow the law?

[apples]

NLRB: We will continue to act despite the Appeals Court decision

Mark Gaston Pearce, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, issued the following statement in reaction to today’s DC Appeals Court decision that President Obama use of recess appointments to install three people on the NLRB last year was unconstitutional. The action renders the board without a quorum to act and potentially invalidates a year’s worth of actions and rulings by it. Pearce indicated that the NLRB will attempt to continue on regardless:

The Board respectfully disagrees with today’s decision and believes that the President’s position in the matter will ultimately be upheld. It should be noted that this order applies to only one specific case, Noel Canning, and that similar questions have been raised in more than a dozen cases pending in other courts of appeals.

In the meantime, the Board has important work to do. The parties who come to us seek and expect careful consideration and resolution of their cases, and for that reason, we will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.

Pearce, in short, is indicating that the NLRB’s strategy is to act as if the court’s ruling that the appointments were unconstitutional somehow only applies only to the particular case that went before the Appeals

http://washingtonexaminer.com/nlrb-we-will-continue-to-act-despite-the-appeals-court-decision/article/2519736#.UQMHq0fcVYw

[apples]

White House: Court’s recess appointment ruling has ‘no impact’ on NLRB operations

President Obama’s spokesman denounced the invalidation of the so-called ‘recess’ appointments as a “novel and unprecedented ruling,” adding that the decision has “no impact on the ongoing operations of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“The decision is novel and unprecedented,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during the press briefing. “It contradicts 150 years of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations. so, we respectfully but strongly disagree with the ruling.” Carney said that over 280 intrasession recess appointments have been made since 1867.

Obama made the appointments at a time when, by Senate rules, Congress was in session. “An interpretation of ‘the Recess’ that permits the President to decide when the Senate is in recess would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction,” the D.C. Circuit Court ruled. “This cannot be the law.”

Carney said that the ruling would not impede the NLRB’s work. “It does not have any impact, as I think the NLRB has already pointed, out on their operations or functions,” he said, adding that “it has no bearing on Richard Cordray . . . It simply doesn’t as a legal matter. I’m not going to predict what happens in the future, but in terms of this case, it does not bear on Mr. Cordray.”

Cordray was ‘recess appointed’ to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on the same day as the NLRB appointees. “It’s one court, one case, one company,” Carney said.

Senate Republicans joined the lawsuit in this case to oppose the NLRB appointments. “This decision now casts serious doubt  on whether the President’s ‘recess’ appointment of Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which the President announced at the same time, is constitutional,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

http://washingtonexaminer.com/nlrb-we-will-continue-to-act-despite-the-appeals-court-decision/article/2519736#.UQMHq0fcVYw

[Stan In FL]

He lost big.  the court also ruled that to qualify for a recess appointment, the vacancy must also occur during a senate recess.  He just cost every president that follows him a great deal of authority because he couldn't control himself.