By Bob Walsh
Vanita Gupta is the ACTING head of the Justice Department’s. Civil Rights Division. That ACTING designation is very important indeed. In order to keep presidents from getting around the "advise and consent" requirement of the U.S. Constitution the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 limits the time of these acting appointments to 210 days. Ms. Gupta has been the acting head of this division for something like 500 days.
One of the more interesting points of this law is that, once the 210 day time limit is hit, no official acting taken by that person has any force of either administrative or statute law. Specifically the law says that actions taken by that person "shall have no force or effect."
Ms. Gupta has never actually been nominated to her position or been appointed as a recess appointment. That would seem to mean that any official action taken by her after 05-13-15 has no legal validity. It seems that Ms. Gupta has been trying to get around this by signing as "principle deputy" however since she was officially designated as the "acting assistant attorney general" that seems to be a difference without a distinction.
There is already one very solid recent piece of case law on this general subject concerning Lafe Solomon, formerly the acting general counsel of the NLRB. The D.C. Circuit Court nullified at least one significant action he took when he was over his time limit based purely on this act.
So, it looks like Barry and his road puppies might have to eat 18 months of bullshit. Wouldn't break my heart a bit, just on general principles.
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