NLRB v. Noel Canning

National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 13, 2014 Decided June 26, 2014
Full case name	National Labor Relations Board, Petitioner v. Noel Canning, et al.
Docket no.	12-1281
Citations	573 U.S. 513 (more) 134 S. Ct. 2550; 189 L. Ed. 2d 538; 2014 U.S. LEXIS 4500
Argument	Oral argument
Opinion announcement	Opinion announcement
Case history
Prior	705 F.3d 490 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (affirmed)
Questions presented
1. Whether the President's recess-appointment power may be exercised during a recess that occurs within a session of the Senate, or is instead limited to recesses that occur between enumerated sessions of the Senate. 2. Whether the President's recess-appointment power may be exercised to fill vacancies that exist during a recess, or is instead limited to vacancies that first arose during that recess. 3. Whether the President's recess-appointment power may be exercised when the Senate is convening every three days in pro forma sessions.
Holding
1. The Recess Appointments Clause empowers the President to fill any existing vacancy during any recess—intra-session or inter-session—of sufficient length. 2. 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. D.C. Circuit affirmed.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Case opinions
Majority	Breyer, joined by Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan
Concurrence	Scalia (in judgment), joined by Roberts, Thomas, and Alito
Laws applied
U.S. Const., Art. II, §2, cl. 3

National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, 573 U.S. 513 (2014), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously ruled that the President of the United States cannot use his 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, thereby limiting future recess appointments. The Court also ruled that any office vacancy can be filled during the recess, regardless of when it arose.^[1] 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.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]}