By Mark Sherman?
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday limited the president’s power to fill high-level vacancies with temporary appointments, ruling in favor of Senate Republicans in their partisan clash with President Barack Obama.
The court also struck down a 35-foot (10 meter) protest-free zone outside abortion clinics in the state of Massachusetts.
The justices were unanimous in ruling that extending a buffer zone that far from clinic entrances violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment rights of protesters.
The high court’s first case involving the Constitution’s recess appointments clause ended in a unanimous decision holding that Obama’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board in 2012 without Senate confirmation were illegal. Obama invoked the Constitution’s provision giving the president the power to make temporary appointments when the Senate is in recess.
Problem is, the court said, the Senate was not actually in a formal recess when Obama acted.
Obama had argued that the Senate was on an extended holiday break and that the brief sessions it held every three days — what lawmakers call “pro forma” — were a sham that was intended to prevent him from filling seats on the NLRB.
The justices rejected that argument Thursday.
Justice Stephen Breyer said in his majority opinion that a congressional break has to last at least 10 days to be considered a recess under the Constitution.
Neither house of Congress can take more than a three-day break without the consent of the other.
The issue of recess appointments receded in importance after the Senate’s Democratic majority changed the rules to make it harder for Republicans to block confirmation of most Obama appointees.
But the ruling’s impact may be keenly felt by the White House next year if Republicans capture control of the Senate in the November election. The potential importance of the ruling lies in the Senate’s ability to block the confirmation of judges and the leaders of independent agencies like the NLRB. A federal law gives the president the power to appoint acting heads of Cabinet-level departments to keep the government running.
Republican leaders in both houses, House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell, praised the court for rejecting what they described as Obama’s unconstitutional power grab. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the decision underscores the importance of the Senate rule change to make sure that a small number of senators cannot block qualified nominees.
Still, the outcome was the least significant loss possible for the administration. The justices, by a 5-4 vote, rejected a sweeping lower court ruling against the administration that would have made it virtually impossible for any future president to make recess appointments.
The lower court held that the only recess recognized by the Constitution is the once-a-year break between sessions of Congress. It also said that only vacancies that arise in that recess could be filled. So the high court has left open the possibility that a president, with a compliant Congress, could make recess appointments in the future.
Obama has made relatively few recess appointments, 32 in his five-plus years in office, according to the Congressional Research Service. But Obama was the first president to try to make recess appointments when Congress explicitly said it was not in recess.
The justices were unanimous in ruling that extending a buffer zone that far from clinic entrances violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment rights of protesters.
Chief Justice John Roberts said authorities have less intrusive ways to deal with problems outside clinics and noted that most of the problems reported by police and the clinics occurred outside one Planned Parenthood facility in Boston, and only on Saturdays when the largest crowds typically gather.
“For a problem shown to arise only once a week in one city at one clinic, creating 35-foot buffer zones at every clinic across the Commonwealth is hardly a narrowly tailored solution,” Roberts said.
In general officials at these clinics said they are most concerned about safety because of past incidents of violence. In 1994, a gunman killed two receptionists and wounded five employees and volunteers at a Planned Parenthood facility and another abortion clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts. The most recent killing was in 2009, when Dr. George Tiller, who performed abortions, was shot in a church in Wichita, Kansas.High court rules on recess
appointments and abortions
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