Government Seeks Supreme Court Review of Recess Appointment Power

The Obama Administration filed its Petition for Writ of Certiorari yesterday in NLRB v. Noel Canning, the case testing whether President Obama's recess appointments of three NLRB members satisfied the Recess Appointments Clause.

Recall that the D.C. Circuit ruled that they didn't.  (Here's our coverage of the lower court ruling, with links to resources.)  That court held that the Recess Appointments Clause permits a recess appointment only during an inter-session recess of Congress (i.e., a recess that occurs between one enumerated session of Congress and the beginning of the next), not an intra-session recess (i.e., a recess that occurs during the course of a session), and that it permits a recess appointment only for vacancies that arise during an inter-session recess.  The court said that because President Obama made the appointments during an intra-session recess of Congress, and because the vacancies did not arise during an inter-session recess of Congress, the appointments were invalid. 

The government seeks review of both issues--whether the President can exercise the recess-appointment power during an intra-session recess, and whether the President can fill a vacancy that existed (even if not arose) during a recess. 

It's a good bet the Court will take this.  There's a circuit split, and the stakes are high.  As the government explains:

[The decision below] would deem invalid hundreds of recess appointments made by Presidents since early in the Nation's history.  It potentially calls into question every order issued by the National Labor Relations Board since January 4, 2012, and similar reasoning could threaten past and future decisions of other federal agencies.

Petition at 11-12.

SDS