Columbus, OH (August 17, 2012) – A Columbus-area Center City International Trucks mechanic is challenging in federal court President Barack Obama’s recent purported recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
With free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, Kyle Chilton filed his legal challenge with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on Friday.
Chilton’s case stems from a battle over a petition he and his coworkers signed asking for a vote to remove the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union from his workplace. A three-member panel of the NLRB dismissed Chilton’s petition. The decision means that Chilton and his coworkers cannot submit another petition for at least three years. Two of Obama’s three purported recess appointments to the Board participated on the panel.
Foundation staff attorneys argue in their complaint that the recess appointments are unconstitutional because the U.S. Senate was still in session per the body’s rules. Therefore the President could not make the appointments to the NLRB without Senate confirmation.
If Foundation attorneys’ argument that the Obama’s NLRB appointments are unconstitutional prevails, then the Board has only two valid members. The Board would then lack a quorum to enact rules or enforce federal labor law under a U.S. Supreme Court precedent established in 2010.
Foundation attorneys also filed a brief on Monday in the case Center for Social Change, Inc. v. NLRB, pending now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Another important legal challenge to the Obama recess appointments is a Foundation case pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. That case is among the first in the nation to reach the appellate courts challenging the Obama recess appointments and will help set the standard for all further challenges.
“Barack Obama’s so-called recess appointments to the Labor Board clearly violate the U.S. Constitution,” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Because the Board does not have a legitimate quorum, it must cease handing down rulings until a legitimate quorum is established.”
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.
