Supreme Court Strikes Down Obama Recess Appointments

Politico reports:

In a rebuke to President Barack Obama, the Supreme Court struck down three of his recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board as unconstitutional.

The decision gives the Senate broad power to thwart future recess appointments, but did not go as far as some conservatives hoped to undercut the president’s ability to fill vacant executive branch posts and judicial slots.

The court ruled 9-0 that Obama’s appointments were unconstitutional because the Senate was not truly in recess when he made them during a three-day break in pro forma meetings of the Senate.

Four of the justices would have gone further, ruling that the president exceeded his authority because the vacancies did not arise during that break and because the president’s recess appointment power only occurs during breaks between usually year-long sessions of the Senate, but five justices would not accept those arguments.

The case before the court was brought by a Pepsi bottler in Washington state, Noel Canning, and addressed the constitutionality of Obama’s decision to bypass the Senate by making politically sensitive recess appointments of three individuals to the NLRB and another to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The appointments came during a period when the Senate claimed to be in session, even though it was on a 20-day break. The chamber was gaveled in briefly every three days, apparently in an attempt to stymie recess appointments, and a Senate resolution said no business was to be conducted.

The Supreme Court’s decision Monday does not upset any current appointments. Obama has not exercised his recess appointment power since he named the three individuals to the labor panel and Richard Cordray to head the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2012.

But the ruling’s impact at the moment could be less sweeping than when the current legal fight was set in motion two years ago. That’s because last November, Senate Democrats exercised the so-called nuclear option — doing away with the Republican minority’s power to use the filibuster to block action on most nominees with fewer than 60 votes. . . .