Washington (CNN) -- The Supreme Court sided with Congress on Thursday in the high-stakes power struggle over presidential recess appointments, in which officials are placed in top government jobs temporarily without Senate approval.

The unanimous ruling by the court against the Obama administration could invalidate hundreds of decisions by the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency at the center of this legal fight.

At issue is whether three people named by President Barack Obama to the board were ineligible to serve because their appointments were made while the Senate was technically in a "pro forma" session during the 2011-12 winter holiday break.

The Constitution allows a president to fill temporary appointments during a recess, without congressional approval. But more recently, lawmakers have sought to thwart certain appointments by never technically shutting down the Senate.

The closely watched constitutional and political confrontation over the practice has accelerated because of partisan gridlock in Congress.

The court's opinion will not have an immediate effect, since Democrats controlling the Senate imposed rules making it harder for Republicans to block Obama's nominees. But a change in Senate control after November's midterm elections could renew the disagreements.

 Easy E wrote:
Wow, unanimous. I did not expect that.

That seriously restores the power of the Legislative Branch.

.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I wonder is this the start of a trend of restoring the checks and balances system that has been undermined these past few Administrations

 Easy E wrote:
Wow, unanimous. I did not expect that.

That seriously undermines the power of the Executive Branch. I predict that the Senate and Congress will never be out of session going forward.*




Note: This is not an endorsement or attack on the decision it is simply an observation.

 daedalus wrote:
I had this mental image of the Justices taking over the country because Congress was fighting like school children during a recess.

I'm glad to see that I was pretty close.

Did you know the Obama administration’s position has been defeated in at least 13 – thirteen — cases before the Supreme Court since January 2012 that were unanimous decisions? It continued its abysmal record before the Supreme Court today with the announcement of two unanimous opinions against arguments the administration had supported. First, the Court rejected the administration’s power grab on recess appointments by making clear it could not decide when the Senate was in recess. Then it unanimously tossed out a law establishing abortion-clinic “buffer zones” against pro-life protests that the administration supported (though the case was argued by Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley).

The tenure of both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder has been marked by a dangerous push to legitimize a vast expansion of the power of the federal government that endangers the liberty and freedom of Americans. They have taken such extreme position on key issues that the Court has uncharacteristically slapped them down time and time again. Historically, the Justice Department has won about 70 percent of its cases before the high court. But in each of the last three terms, the Court has ruled against the administration a majority of the time.

So even the liberal justices on the Court, including the two justices appointed by President Barack Obama — Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — have disagreed with the DOJ’s positions. As George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin told the Washington Times last year, “When the administration loses significant cases in unanimous decisions and cannot even hold the votes of its own appointees . . . it is an indication that they adopted such an extreme position on the scope of federal power that even generally sympathetic judges could not even support it.”

Those decisions are very revealing about the views of President Obama and Eric Holder: Their vision is one of unchecked federal power on immigration and environmental issues, on presidential prerogatives, and the taking of private property by the government; hostility to First Amendment freedoms that don’t meet the politically correct norms; and disregard of Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless government intrusion. These are positions that should alarm all Americans regardless of their political views, political-party affiliations, or background.

While yesterday’s Supreme Court decision unanimously rejecting the administration’s argument that a search warrant wasn’t required for the government to look at cell-phone records and data got a lot of attention, it’s not the first time the Obama administration has taken an anti–civil liberties stance. In last year’s case of U.S. v. Jones, the Justice Department essentially tried to convince the Supreme Court that the Fourth Amendment’s protections against search and seizure should not prevent the government from tracking any American at any time without any reason.

Justice argued that the police should be able to attach a GPS device to your car without a search warrant or even any reason to believe you committed a crime. Fortunately for those who fear the ever-growing power of the federal government, particularly its abuse of new technology, all nine justices agreed that the Fourth Amendment prevents the government from attaching a GPS to your car without getting a warrant.

Even Justice Sotomayor, President Obama’s own nominee to the Court, agreed that the government had invaded “privacy interests long afforded, and undoubtedly entitled to, Fourth Amendment protection.” But Eric Holder wanted to ignore the Bill of Rights and believed that his agents should be able to track all of your movements in public by attaching a GPS device to your car without permission from a judge. This is a frightening view of government power enhanced by new surveillance technology that would have directly threatened our liberty. When will liberals wake up to the fact that this administration takes positions on executive power that would make Richard Nixon and John Mitchell, his attorney general, blush?

 whembly wrote:
I'm looking for information if previous administrations were rebuked this much as well...

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Must sting for someone trained as a Constitutional lawyer

 Frazzled wrote:
Well, this is not jujst an Obama loss. This is a rebuke to many presidents who were doing recess appointments.

 d-usa wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Well, this is not jujst an Obama loss. This is a rebuke to many presidents who were doing recess appointments.

It's not. And recess appointments are still constitutional.

 Ouze wrote:

 whembly wrote:
I'm looking for information if previous administrations were rebuked this much as well...

Your quoted article has kind of a dumb premise. It's a "loss" for the Obama administration that, in the given example, they struck down the abortion buffer zone law? Yeah, that's a good sign of Obama's overreaching idea of federal power, a state law that was passed 2 years before he was elected. The GPS law was a case from 2005, and so on, that only reached the court in 2012. Should every president cease defending any case before the high court from a previous term, so it doesn't count as a "loss"?

 whembly wrote:
Wouldn't you say that the current administration has an obligation to defend duly passed laws in front of the SC?

 Ouze wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Wouldn't you say that the current administration has an obligation to defend duly passed laws in front of the SC?

Of course it does.

I'm just pointing out the utter stupidity of pointing at a sitting administration, doing exactly that - defending duly passed laws in front of the SC - and then being scolded for trying to overreach on executive power when they lose some of them despite the fact that many of the cases precede the administration by years, the way the article did.

Tell me more about how dangerous Obama's power grab was by demanding the FBI attempt to track vehicles via GPS warrantlessly, in 2005, FFS.

 whembly wrote:
Don't be so sensitive yo.

 whembly wrote:
I will give you that Obama shouldn't be ding'ed for laws passed prior to his administration..

The National Review wrote:The tenure of both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder has been marked by a dangerous push to legitimize a vast expansion of the power of the federal government that endangers the liberty and freedom of Americans. They have taken such extreme position on key issues that the Court has uncharacteristically slapped them down time and time again.

 Ouze wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Don't be so sensitive yo.

I'm hardly butthurt, but a lot of the stories you post here really, really stretch things to prove the points that their readership expects them to make. I feel compelled... obligated, even, to poke some holes in such tortured logic.

 Frazzled wrote:
Well, this is not jujst an Obama loss. This is a rebuke to many presidents who were doing recess appointments.

 Ouze wrote:

If you agree with that, doesn't this premise:

The National Review wrote:The tenure of both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder has been marked by a dangerous push to legitimize a vast expansion of the power of the federal government that endangers the liberty and freedom of Americans. They have taken such extreme position on key issues that the Court has uncharacteristically slapped them down time and time again.

strike you as kind of a stupid one?

 Kanluwen wrote:
Because the NSA, PRISM, and drone kills were clearly not established in the previous administration.

Nope. All Obama...