Maybe we have a Constitution after all

A federal appeals court has found that when the Constitution says the President can make recess appointments, that means he actually has to wait until a recess to do it.  He can't just act during what feels like a recess to him, on the ground that the appointment is really important and Republicans aren't being nice to him.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

And the NLRB has said that it will ignore the Court's ruling by arguing that the ruling only applies to the single instance in the suit and not the Board's entire tenure. This is going to get messy, I fear.

LittleRed1

Grim said...

Messier the better. We've got no friends in the line of fire on this one.

E Hines said...

...NLRB has said that it will ignore the Court's ruling by arguing that the ruling only applies to the single instance in the suit and not the Board's entire tenure.

The NLRB isn't far wrong, although they do overstate their case. The ruling only applies in the DC circuit's jurisdiction. How many cases that includes I don't know. Contaminating my lack of knowledge is that the DC circuit got the case only because they're the designated appellate court for NLRB rules. Which may make their jurisdiction for this ruling nationwide. Which would undercut NLRB's authority to ignore.

The case must go to the Supremes, too, IMNSHO: the 11th Circuit in Evans v Stephens had already ruled in favor of the NLRB on a substantially similar case. Although the DC circuit dismantled the 11th's reasoning, it's still one appellate court's opinion vs another's, and the SCOTUS should step in to resolve.

It's also entirely possible that there'll be a SCOTUS injunction staying any impact the DC ruling has on NLRB rules. That's a lot of disruption to be done and then undone should the SCOTUS reverse DC.

Texan99 said...

No ruling ever solves problems all by itself, but this one is a powerful tool in the hands of litigants like Boeing, whose counsel probably know just what to do with it and are rubbing their hands with glee. I hope the White House is spending some time wondering whether it was a good idea to overreach itself so far as to get some of these issues presented to the Supreme Court. The D.C. court's opinion not only undercut the White House's new tactics but shed doubt on ones that previously had been let slide. I look forward to what the S. Ct. will do with it.

To think it was an unanimous opinion, and from the D.C. court no less: not a bastion of conservative thinking.

douglas said...

In the recent past, it's always been over-reach by the left that held them back. They've cultivated more fertile ground, and gotten away with much recently, but at some point Americans realize they're still American, and hold some regard for our core values, and when the left over-reaches, the pendulum swings back. It's just that over the last few swings, it seems like the whole thing has been tilted so the center of the swing has been moved further left. Perhaps we can see some stabilization start to occur.

When over-reach isn't reacted to by the average citizen, then we have problems- the kind you'd really prefer not to have.