# New Process Steel v. NLRB **New Process Steel, L.P. v. National Labor Relations Board**, 560 U.S. 674, decided 17 June 2010 by a vote of 5 to 4, Justice Stevens writing for the Court and Justice Kennedy dissenting. The question was what a board may do once it can no longer assemble a quorum. In December 2007 the [[NLRB]] had four members sitting and expected to drop to two. It responded by delegating all of its powers to a named three-member group, one of whose members was a recess appointee whose commission was about to expire, on the understanding that two members would then constitute a quorum of the group. From January 2008 the two remaining members decided cases on that basis. The Court held that 29 U.S.C. § 153(b) "requires that a delegee group maintain a membership of three," so the group ceased to exist when the third member left and "two remaining Board members cannot exercise such authority." The opinion calls the arrangement a "Rube Goldberg-style delegation mechanism" and says the statute "does not authorize the Board to create a tail that would not only wag the dog." By the government's own account, two members had decided almost 600 cases over the intervening 27 months. The decision's most consequential passage is a footnote. The holding reaches only the delegation to a group of Board members; it expressly does not disturb delegations the Board had earlier made to officials who were not members of that group, including its regional directors and its General Counsel. That distinction — a power handed sideways to fewer of the same officers fails with the seats, while a power handed downward to staff survives them — is the organising rule of [[Quorum Loss and Delegated Authority Crosswalk]]. ## See also - [[Quorum Loss and Delegated Authority Crosswalk]] - [[NLRB]] · [[Delegation of Authority]] · [[Removal Power]] - [[Trump v. Wilcox]] · [[Trump v. Slaughter]]