In a well deserved rebuke, the Obama administration was handed a defeat of yet to be determined proportions by the D.C. Court of Appeals in a case involving a top level appointment in the NLRB.
The tenure of the former acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board was invalid while his nomination to permanently fill the post was pending, a U.S. appeals court said on Friday, potentially upending dozens of cases.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that once President Barack Obama nominated Lafe Solomon as general counsel in early 2011, he was no longer eligible for the temporary post under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA).
A law school student seeing this fact situation on a test would surely have seen this temporary appointment as a conflict in law once the candidate had been nominated to the position by the White House. Obama fancies himself to be some kind of constitutional scholar and this lets the air out of that myth. When the White House can't get past understanding a simple legal barrier to their actions, a person has to wonder if it was a willful act to ignore the law in the face of an obvious attempt to commit an illegal act for political gain.
The repercussions of this decision are yet to be known, since they may impact many decisions of the NLRB, with the possible consequences of seeing some of those decisions being reversed by subsequent court order. Not a good day for the Obama administration and deservedly so. The administration has purposely tried to ignore and evade the law in this instance. Only time will tell how many actions by the NLRB will have to be reversed or reheard.
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