The National Labor Relations Board says it will continue to press forward in deciding new cases even in the wake of a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that invalidated three recess appointments to the board in January 2012.
A three-judge panel from the federal appeals court ruled on Jan. 25 that President Obama’s recess appointments of Democrats Sharon Block and Richard Griffin and Republican Terence Flynn were invalid because they were not made during a true congressional recess. The ruling, if upheld, should nullify all rulings made since the president made the appointments.
“Considering the text, history and structure of the Constitution, these appointments were invalid from their inception,” the panel concluded. “Because the Board lacked a quorum of three members when it issued its decision in this case on Feb. 8 2012, its decision must be vacated.”
But in a statement, NLRB Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce, a Democrat, said, the board will ignore the Court and continue to issue decisions.
Nevertheless, pro-business groups cheered the ruling. Geoff Burr, Chairman of The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) said, “The president’s decision to bypass the U.S. Senate and appoint pro-union activist members to the NLRB was a political, partisan act that had to be challenged.”
The CDW is a coalition of business organizations that include IEC (Independent Electrical Contractors) and ABC (Associated Builders and Contractors) that legally challenged the recess appointments. The ruling “will invalidate decisions unlawfully made over the past year by the NLRB and allow them to be heard by an unbiased panel,” Burr said. Read More
Although he often talks as if Congress is an inconvenient distraction, the president has been reminded that he does not reign supreme and must actually share power with the legislature. The decision throws into doubt the validity of a slew of egregiously pro-union decisions by the board. Read more
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