NLRB v. Noel Canning
| National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning | |
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| Argued January 13, 2014 Decided June 26, 2014 |
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| Full case name | National Labor Relations Board, Petitioner v. Noel Canning, et al. |
| Docket nos. | 12-1281 |
| Citations | 573 U.S. ___ (more) |
| Argument | Oral argument |
| Prior history | 705 F.3d 490 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (affirmed) |
| Holding | |
| For purposes of the Recess Appointment Clause, the Senate is in session when it says that it is if, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact business. DC Circuit affirmed. | |
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| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Breyer, joined by Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan |
| Concurrence | Scalia, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Alito |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const., Art. II, §2, cl. 3 | |
National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, 573 U.S. ___ (2014), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously ruled that the President of the United States cannot use his or her authority under the Recess Appointment Clause of the United States Constitution to appoint public officials unless the United States Senate is in recess and not able to transact Senate business. The Court held that the clause allows the president to make appointments during both intra-session and inter-session recesses but only if the recess is of sufficient length, and if the Senate is actually unavailable for deliberation. The Court also ruled that any vacancy in an office can be filled during the recess, regardless of when it arose. The case arose out of President Barack Obama's appointments of Sharon Block, Richard Griffin, and Terence Flynn to the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
In Federalist No. 67, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the appointment power was ordinarily confined jointly to the President and the Senate, but considering it unlikely that the Senate would remain continuously in session, the Constitution allowed the President to make temporary appointments when the Senate is in recess. Since the advent of air travel, the United States Senate has no longer needed to have long recesses. That has potentially changed the meaning of the Recess Appointment Clause of the Constitution, which has affected the way the Senate and the President interact.
NLRB v. Canning dealt specifically with Noel Canning, a Pepsi distributor affected by a ruling of the National Labor Relations Board, and it had potential implications on the executive branch's power to appoint officials without Senate approval. The NLRB had found that Noel refused to execute a collective bargaining agreement with a labor union, allegedly in violation of federal law. Noel appealed the board's ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit claiming that three of its five members were invalidly appointed, leaving the board without a quorum of lawfully appointed members. (The Court had previously held in New Process Steel, L. P. v. NLRB that the NLRB could not act without a quorum.) The D.C. Circuit vacated the NLRB's orders. In a similar case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the NLRB could not enforce its orders because of a lack of quorum caused by the ineffectiveness of recess appointments made by President Obama while the Senate was not in recess.
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