Judicial Watch and AEF File High Court Brief in Support of Challenge to Obama NLRB Recess Appointments -- Judicial Watch

From the moment he took his oath of office, President Obama realized something very important with respect to imposing his agenda: Personnel is policy. If he was going to “fundamentally transform” America, as he promised, he was going to need to surround himself with the most radically leftwing allies he could find.

Of course, when it comes to appointing high level officials with great power and responsibility, the Constitution has a process designed to make certain that the U.S. Senate can act as a check on the Executive Branch by requiring Senate confirmation for these powerful government positions.

But Obama knows full well his radical friends did not have a shot of making it through the Senate vetting process. So he simply ignored the law and the U.S. Constitution and appointed them without bothering to wait for Senate approval.

Case in point: The unconstitutional “recess appointments” used to install three individuals to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling in the case of National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning that held unconstitutional President Obama’s January 4, 2012, recess appointments of Sharon Block (D), Terence F. Flynn (R), and Richard F. Griffin (D) to the National Labor Relations Board.

The Appeals Court held that the NLRB lacked a quorum to decide an unfair labor practice case because two of the three members on the board panel deciding the case (Block and Flynn) had received recess appointments in violation of the Constitution’s Recess Appointment Clause.

Although the Recess Appointments Clause allows a president to fill vacancies occurring while Congress is in recess, the Senate met in pro forma meetings every three business days. The Appeals Court, therefore, determined that the Senate was not in recess on the days the Senate did not meet because for the purpose of the Recess Appointments Clause “recess” is defined as the time between, rather than within, sessions of Congress.

Though previous presidents have made intrasession recess appointments “if they are of substantial length,” the Obama administration was the first to make such appointments during pro forma sessions of the Senate.

So the Senate says it was not in recess. The appellate court says the Senate was not in recess. And the president says he’ll decide when the Senate is in recess or not. Talk about arrogant defiance of the law.

JW has been critical of these appointments from the get-go (as we have of the many unaccountable czars installed by the president). And on November 25, Judicial Watch officially registered its objections once again, by jointly filing an amici curiae brief with the United States Supreme Court with our friends, the Allied Educational Fund (AEF). Our brief supports the U.S. Court of Appeals decision that the Obama NLRB appointments of January 2012 violated the Constitution’s Recess Appointments Clause.

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