Acting at Big Labor's Behest, President Obama Violated the Constitution

On January 4, 2012, union-label President Barack Obama installed three new members on the five-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) through “recess appointments,” despite the fact that the U.S. Senate  was manifestly not in recess.  Top union bosses had urged Mr. Obama to make this move in order to get around the provision in the U.S. Constitution normally requiring the President to “appoint officers of the United States” only “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”  Big Labor preferred Mr. Obama to act unilaterally because it would be far easier for him to pack the NLRB with radical forced-unionism advocates this way.

The National Right to Work Committee immediately charged that the President’s phony “recess” appointments violated the Constitution.  A few months later, a National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation made the case the appointments were unconstitutional before a panel of federal judges.  And today, a different federal appeals court panel unanimously echoed the points Right to Work officers and attorneys had previously made.  USA Today reporter David Jackson has additional details:

[T]he decision invalidates hundreds of decisions made over the past year by the National Labor Relations Board.

Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation, released a statement calling the court’s decision “a victory for independent-minded workers.”

Appeals court strikes down Obama recess appointments