The showdown’s coming. The Supreme Court has announced it will take on the question of whether or not President Obama overstepped his powers when he appointed members to the National Labor Relations Board during a Senate break last year.
Last January, a federal appeals court in Washington, DC ruled that President Obama’s recent appointments to the National Labor Relations Board violated the Constitution.
The Obama administration claimed the president used his recess appointment powers to name two Democrats — DOL official Sharon Block and union attorney Richard Griffin — and Republican Terence Flynn during the holidays, when the Senate was supposedly not in session.
But the DC judge ruled that the Senate was in “pro-forma” session — so Obama’s NLRB appointments were unconstitutional.
The ruling came out of a case filed by Noel Canning, which was challenging an NLRB ruling that the company violated labor law during negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement with union employees.
The issue: The NLRB has continued to remain active while the issue has been winding its way through the court system. In fact, there have been over 600 board decisions made since Obama made the appointments.
Depending on how they rule, the justices may find that the NLRB has had no authority to be active this whole time — and those 600-plus rulings may be rescinded.
The court will hear the case next term, and a decision will likely come down during the summer of 2014.
Supreme Court to rule on Obama's NLRB recess appointments
