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A federal appeals court has overturned President Obama’s controversial recess appointments from last year, arguing he abused his powers and acted when the Senate was not actually in a recess. The three-judge panel’s ruling is a major blow to Mr. Obama. The judges ruled that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board are illegal, and the board no longer has a quorum to operate. But the ruling has even broader constitutional significance, with the judges arguing that the president’s recess appointment powers don’t apply to “intrasession” appointments — those made when Congress has left town for...

President Obama exceeded his constitutional authority when he named three members of the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was on a break last year, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that allowing the president to make such appointments as a way around Senate opposition “would wholly defeat the purpose of the Framers in the careful separation of powers structure” they created. The decision flatly rejected the administration’s rationale for appointing the board members, and jeopardizes the separate recess appointment of former Ohio attorney general...

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Friday blasted a court decision that nixed three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board as “novel and unprecedented,” but said that he did not expect any broader application of the ruling. “It’s one court, one case, one company,” Carney said. Carney said there has been “enormous frustration” at the White House with the Senate’s refusal to approve nominees. But the ruling Friday “contradicts 150 year of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations. … So we respectfully but strongly disagree with the ruling.” Carney declined to say if the administration planned to...

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled today that if the word “the” in the U.S. Constitution carries its customary meaning—which the court forcefully affirmed it does—than President Barack Obama violated the Constitution and usurped power from Congress by appointing persons to federal office without securing the constitutionally required consent of the Senate. On Jan. 4, 2012, Obama unilaterally named three people to the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB). The Senate—by a unanimous agreement of all 100 senators—had said that it was in fact still in session that day and not in the recess....

A three judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today adopted arguments advanced by Landmark Legal Foundation to overturn appointments made by President Obama to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Landmark argued in its amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief that the President's use of the Constitution's "recess appointments" clause violated the restrictions placed by the Constitution on that power.

The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) Summary of Operations for fiscal year 2012, released last week, shows an agency that is significantly over-funded. In 2010, the Obama Administration increased the agency’s budget even though it previously operated with a fiscal year-end surplus. Now, the operating report reveals that the agency’s business continues to erode with the decline of unionization in the private sector making its increased appropriation even more unnecessary than it was in 2010. According to the report, issued by Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon, total case intake decreased by three percent; unfair labor practice case intake decreased by...

Labor insiders expect a federal appeals court to rule in the near future on a landmark case challenging President Barack Obama’s controversial recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in December in Noel Canning v. NLRB. At issue is the legitimacy of three NLRB board members appointed by Obama while the Senate remained in pro-forma session in an attempt to block the president from making a recess appointments. Insiders expect the court to expedite the proceedings. “Given the importance of this case, the decision should come out in the next...

Christmas came early for Big Labor last week when the National Labor Relations Board handed down a pair of decisions that overturned longstanding precedent and will deliver a windfall to union finances. On Wednesday, the NLRB voted 3-to-1 to gut protections for workers who don't want their money spent on politics. In states without right-to-work laws, employees of unionized companies are coerced into paying dues as a condition of employment. But under the Supreme Court's 1988 Beck decision, workers are allowed to withhold the portion of their dues that unions spend on political activity. Unions must also maintain independently verified...

What does it mean for the Senate to be in recess? Today, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was challenged to figure that out. This stems from President Obama bypassing the Senate in appointing three nominees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The Wall Street Journal sets it up: [I]n January Mr. Obama named three new members of the National Labor Relations Board along with Richard Cordray as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when the Senate wasn't in recess. While Congress was conducting pro forma sessions, Mr. Obama pulled this end run around the Senate's advice...

Palermo Villa Inc. said Wednesday’s National Labor Relations Board decision on its labor dispute “vindicates” the company. Palermo properly followed immigration law in firing 75 workers earlier this year for not having proper documentation, the NLRB said Wednesday. The investigation into allegations of unfair labor practices against the Milwaukee pizza manufacturer found no evidence Palermo fired the workers in retaliation for union-organizing efforts, Irv Gottschalk, NLRB regional director in Milwaukee, told The Business Journal Wednesday.“It looks like they properly followed immigration procedures, but I’m no immigration expert,” Gottschalk said. “Under the (National Labor Relations Act) that I enforce, there’s no...

President Barack Obama's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is considering a rule that would force private businesses to turn over their workers' personal information -- such as phone numbers, email addresses, and work schedules -- to union organizers. While this rule would be intended to make it easier for union bosses to organize workers at businesses that do not have a union presence, it would also have the unintended effect of making workers vulnerable to harassment. The Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk argued this will allow union organizers to bother workers even after the worker tells an organizer "no" by bombarding...

If authentic, CNN’s memo explaining why Candy Crowley permitted President Obama to speak four minutes more than Mitt Romney during Tuesday’s presidential debate is devastating to that network: On why Obama got more time to speak, it should be noted that Candy and her commission producers tried to keep it even but that Obama went on longer largely because he speaks more slowly. We’re going to do a word count to see whether, as in Denver, Romney actually got more words in even if he talked for a shorter period of time. One of Crowley’s main jobs as moderator was...

Under the Obama Administration, Big Labor has seized control of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) to drive its self-interested agenda – a truly unprecedented development in the history of the NLRB. In the past, Board law has changed when control moved from one political party to another. But never before has a Board majority conducted itself in such unprincipled partisan manner, ramming through an extremist agenda and dissembling about it. Three examples demonstrate the point: The NLRB stripped workers of their right to a secret ballot election to challenge their employer’s recognition of a union by card...

Republican senators on Wednesday joined a lawsuit arguing President Obama violated the Constitution when he used his recess appointment powers earlier this year to fill several controversial jobs. The move elevates the stakes in what has been a simmering constitutional battle. The senators, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have long argued the Senate was still in session, not in recess, when Mr. Obama made his move in January. They said the picks — to the National Labor Relations Board and to a top consumer advocacy post — are therefore illegal. “The Constitution empowers the Senate, not the president, to...

Phoenix—In a strong rebuke to the Obama Administration Wednesday, federal district court Judge Frederick J. Martone ruled that the Secret Ballot Amendment, which protects workers’ right to secret ballot in union-organizing elections, is constitutional. Drafted by the Goldwater Institute in 2009, the Save Our Secret Ballot amendment was added in 2010 to state constitutions in Arizona, South Dakota, South Carolina, and Utah, by voter majorities ranging from 60 to 86 percent. The constitutional amendment was sought after President Obama and congressional Democrats attempted to end the use of secret ballots in union-organizing elections and force workers into a system called...

Emigrant Bank was recently identified to receive a waiver that would allow the bank to opt out of rigorous Dodd-Frank requirements. These of course are the same new rules and regulations that Barack deems essential to the nation. Yet when the bank’s owner, Howard Milstein, who is a close friend and was a bundler for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, protested that the new rules would seriously crimp operations of his bank, the Obama Administration worked with members of congress to grant him a waiver from the new rules. Other financial institutions and banks have consistently and vehemently argued that...

The rap sheet for members of the International Union of Operating Engineers reads like something out of "Goodfellas." Embezzlement. Wire fraud. Bribery. That's just scratching the surface of crimes committed by the IUOE ranks. And it is from this union that President Obama earlier this year picked one of his latest appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency tasked with resolving labor disputes between unions and management. That recess appointee, Richard Griffin, was former general counsel for the 400,000-member union of heavy equipment operators -- a union tainted over the years by mob connections and a history...

Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker said the federal government needs to “reign in” the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because they have “run amok,” in remarks at a Jobs Summit hosted by the Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. "[W]e need to reign in, particularly two key areas, the National Labor Relations Board and the EPA so that our employers have certainty as to know exactly what’s going to happen in the future in those two critical areas,” Walker said during a press conference at the event.

“If I had a world of my own … [n]othing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t,” said Alice in Alice in Wonderland. Well, so it is at President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The board is making sea-changes in law and procedure, but it characterizes them merely as “modest” and “routine.” Consider three cases in point – the Boeing complaint, the “ambush election” rule and Specialty Healthcare or micro-union decision – in which the board made radical departures from past policy and described them not by what they are but by what they...

The Democrats have picked a curious and potentially very costly fight this election year. President Obama came into office promising Big Labor that its agenda is his agenda, and he wasted little time using the National Labor Relations Board to make good on that promise. That board is supposed to be a fair arbiter of labor disputes, but the president packed the NLRB with Big Labor activists, and the board tried to ram a union-favoring “ambush rule” through to implementation. The rule would slash the amount of time employees and employers have to consider unionization in non-unionized work places from...