Affirming a decision of the D.C Circuit Court of Appeals, the
United States Supreme Court held in NLRB v. Noel Canning
that President Obama's January 2012 recess appointments to the
National Labor Relations Board ("NLRB") were
unconstitutional and thus the Board had no power to act.
Noel Canning challenged an order of the NLRB that required it to
execute a collective bargaining agreement, claiming that the NLRB
lacked a quorum because three of the five members were invalidly
appointed through recess appointments when the Senate was not
actually in recess. The Supreme Court agreed that the recess
appointments—which were made by President Obama on January 4,
2012, in between January 3 and January 6 pro forma Senate
sessions—were not properly within the scope of the Recess
Appointments Clause (which gives the President the power to make
appointments during a recess of the Senate).
