Worker Advocate Challenges Obama Recess Appointments in Federal Court

Attorneys argue purported recess appointments are invalid because Senate was not in actual recess

Washington, DC (August 13, 2012) – National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys filed a brief in the high-profile legal battle over President Barack Obama's recent purported recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Foundation attorneys filed the amicus curiae brief on Monday in the case Center for Social Change, Inc. v. NLRB, pending now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Another direct legal challenge to the Obama recess appointments is a Foundation case pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. That case is among the first in the nation to reach the appellate courts challenging the Obama recess appointments and will help set the standard for all further challenges.

Foundation staff attorneys argue in their brief that the recess appointments are unconstitutional because the U.S. Senate was still in session per the body's rules. Therefore the President could not make the appointments to the NLRB without Senate confirmation.

If Foundation attorneys' argument that the Obama's NLRB appointments are unconstitutional prevails, then the Board has only two valid members. The Board would then have lacked a quorum since December 2011 to enact rules or enforce federal labor law under a U.S. Supreme Court precedent established in 2010.

"Barack Obama's so-called recess appointments to the Labor Board clearly violate the U.S. Constitution," said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. "Because the Board does not have a legitimate quorum, it must cease handing down rulings in Foundation-supported cases, and all other cases, until a legitimate quorum is established."