The U.S. Senate has approved five presidential nominations to the National Labor Relations Board, according to an AHA News Now report.
The new members of the board are Mark Gaston Pearce, whose current term as board chair expires in August, Harry Johnson III, Philip Miscimarra, Kent Hirozawa and Nancy Schiffer. With the approval of these newest appointments, the NLRB now has a full board in place.
Since the beginning of the year, the NLRB has been at the center of a controversy regarding the validity of three prior appointments made by President Obama in January 2012. The Court of Appeals, in a unanimous decision, held that the president did not validly use his recess appointment authority to appoint the three members.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals also invalidated an NLRB decision regarding a collective bargaining agreement violation that it made when the three presidential appointments were a part of the board, saying that the board did not have legally required quorum when it made the decision.
In March, the NLRB said that it intended to ask the Supreme Court to review the Court of Appeals ruling. If the ruling stands, it could invalidate all NLRB decisions made since the appointees joined the board due to lack of a legally required quorum.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the January ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
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