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Cleveland
Plain Dealer
Appeals
court strikes down Obama's
recess appointments
By Stephen Koff, Plain Dealer
Washington Bureau Chief
January 25, 2013
Washington
-- A federal appeals
court this morning ruled that President Barack Obama exceeded the
Constitution's bounds by making recess appointments to a federal labor
panel
last January, side-stepping the Senate when it was not formally in
recess.
The
case concerned Obama's
appointments on Jan. 4, 2012, to the National Labor Relations Board, or
NLRB.
But the same circumstances were at play that day when Obama also made a
recess
appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to direct
the new
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Cordray's
appointment has been challenged
in a different case, on similar grounds. Some Republican lawmakers see
today's
case as having potential to invalidate Cordray's ability to be on the
job
without Senate confirmation.
The
decision by a three-judge panel
today "casts serious doubt on whether the president’s ‘recess’
appointment
of Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which
the
president announced at the same time, is constitutional,” Senate
Republican
Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement.
The
Obama administration will
probably appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, likely noting that
today's
ruling appears at odds with a yet another case in a different federal
circuit.
In
the case decided today, a
Washington state soft drink bottler challenged a ruling against it by
the NLRB,
saying that the labor panel lacked standing to make the decision
because three
NLRB members had not been confirmed by the Senate.
As
in the case of Cordray, Senate
Republicans had blocked confirmation of the appointees in 2011. Obama,
saying
the jobs of these nominees should not have to wait, then used what he
said was
his right under the Constitution to install them temporarily, making
recess
appointments while the Senate was on a winter break. That allowed the
appointees
to serve through 2013…
Read
the rest of the article at the Cleveland
Plain Dealer
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