(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday put new restrictions on presidential powers, limiting a president’s authority to staff certain top government posts in a case involving an appointment to the National Labor Relations Board.

The U.S. Supreme Court building seen in Washington May 20, 2009. REUTERS/Molly Riley

The court decided 6-2 to uphold a lower court’s ruling that then-President Barack Obama exceeded his legal authority with his temporary appointment of an NLRB general counsel in 2011.

In an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said that under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, a person cannot serve as the acting head of a federal agency once the president nominates him or her to permanently serve in the role if it is a position that requires U.S. Senate confirmation.

SW General Inc, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based private ambulance company and a subsidiary of Envision Healthcare Holdings Inc EVHC.N, had challenged the makeup of the NLRB as it sought to invalidate a board ruling that said it violated federal labor law by discontinuing bonus payments for longtime employees.

The NLRB had argued that the law’s restriction applied only to politically appointed “first assistants” who are first in line for acting positions when the heads of agencies leave office, and not to other officials.

The ruling will give President Donald Trump and future presidents less flexibility in filling jobs that require Senate confirmation.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, saying the court ignored the fact that since the law governing vacancies was adopted in 1998, more than 100 people have served in acting roles while the U.S. Senate considered their nominations for permanent jobs.

The case focused on Obama’s appointment of Lafe Solomon as the NLRB’s acting general counsel to fill a vacancy in the job. The position requires Senate confirmation.

Obama nominated Solomon to fill the position permanently but also named him to fill in for former general counsel Ronald Meisburg, who resigned in 2010, in the interim while awaiting Senate action. Obama eventually withdrew Solomon’s nomination after it stalled for more than two years. The Senate ultimately confirmed Richard Griffin to the post in 2013.

SW General argued that Solomon should not have continued to fill the position on a temporary basis pending Senate confirmation, and the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed.

The case is National Labor Relations Board v. SW General Inc, U.S. Supreme Court No. 15–1251. </s> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a blow to the rights of workers on Monday by allowing companies to require them to sign away their ability to bring class-action claims against management, agreements already in place for about 25 million employees.

The justices, in a 5-4 ruling with the court’s conservatives in the majority, endorsed the legality of the growing practice by companies to compel workers to sign arbitration agreements waiving their right to bring class-action claims on issues such as overtime wages or gender-based pay disparities either in court or before private arbitrators.

President Donald Trump’s administration last year reversed the government’s stance in the case, siding with the companies after former President Barack Obama’s administration had supported a U.S. National Labor Relations Board decision invalidating such employment agreements.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s appointee to the court, wrote the ruling, saying federal arbitration law takes precedence over the National Labor Relations Act.

“The policy may be debatable but the law is clear: Congress has instructed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced as written,” Gorsuch wrote.

Writing on behalf of the four liberal justices in dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the ruling was “egregiously wrong” and called for Congress to take action to protect workers’ rights.

“The court today holds enforceable these arm-twisted, take-it-or-leave it contracts — including the provisions requiring employees to litigate wages and hours claims only one-by-one. Federal labor law does not countenance such isolation of employees,” Ginsburg said in a statement she read in court.

The ruling came in the biggest business case of the court’s current term, which began in October runs through the end of June.

Growing numbers of employers have mandated that their employees sign waivers to guard against a rising tide of worker lawsuits on wage issues. Class-action litigation can result in large damages awards by juries and is harder for businesses to fight than cases brought by individual plaintiffs.

The NLRB argued that the waivers violate federal labor law and let companies evade their responsibilities under workplace statutes. Workers have fought back against the waivers, arguing that the cost of pursuing their cases individually in arbitration is prohibitively expensive.

About one in four private-sector non-union employees have signed arbitration agreements that include class-action waivers, according to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. Workers have fought back against the waivers, arguing that the cost of pursuing their cases individually in arbitration is prohibitively expensive.

Lawyers representing businesses have said that resolving workplace disputes through arbitration with individual employees is a speedy and cost-effective alternative to class-action litigation.

The three consolidated cases that came before the court involved professional services firm Ernst & Young LLP[ERNY.UL], gas station operator Murphy Oil USA Inc[MOUI.UL] and healthcare software company Epic Systems Corporation. </s> The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, April 20, 2018. The Supreme Court says employers can prohibit their workers from banding together to complain about pay and conditions in the workplace. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) J. Scott Applewhite

Supreme Court rules that companies can require workers to accept individual arbitration

An ideologically divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that companies may require workers to settle employment disputes through individual arbitration rather than joining to press their complaints, a decision affecting as many as 25 million workers.

The court’s conservative majority said that the 5-4 ruling was a logical reading of federal law and Congress’s preference for using arbitration to avoid costly and time-consuming litigation.

But the decision, involving a wage dispute, was roundly criticized on the left, and advocates said it could make it harder to press other workplace complaints such as discrimination and sexual harassment.

“Employees may now be forced behind closed doors into an individual, costly – and often secret – arbitration process,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. “This will stack the deck in favor of the employer.”

The decision also underscored the importance of the 2016 presidential election on the judiciary. The Obama administration and the National Labor Relations Board had backed workers in the cases, but after President Donald Trump was elected, the Justice Department threw its support to the employers.

And the ruling was written by Trump’s nominee to the court, Justice Neil Gorsuch. It is far more likely that the 5-4 decision would have gone the other way if President Barack Obama’s nominee to the court, Judge Merrick Garland, had been confirmed.

The decision came in what is considered the most important business case of the term. It expands upon recent Supreme Court decisions that permit corporations to avoid class-action lawsuits from consumers by enforcing contracts that call for individual arbitration.

Gorsuch, writing for the conservative majority, outlined the question presented by this case: Should employers be allowed to insist that workplace disputes be handled in one-on-one arbitration, or should employees always have an option of bringing claims in collective actions?

“As a matter of policy these questions are surely debatable,” Gorsuch wrote. “But as a matter of law the answer is clear. In the Federal Arbitration Act, Congress has instructed federal courts to enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms – including terms providing for individualized proceedings.”

Gorsuch was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Workers had contended that another federal law, the National Labor Relations Act, makes illegal any contract that denies employees the right to engage in “concerted activities” for the purpose of “mutual aid and protection.” That means that some sort of collective action cannot be prohibited, the workers say.

That was the thrust of a forceful dissent from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who called the decision “egregiously wrong” and underlined her objections by reading part of her dissent from the bench.

“The court today holds enforceable these arm-twisted, take-it-or-leave-it contracts – including the provisions requiring employees to litigate wage and hours claims only one-by-one,” she said. “Federal labor law does not countenance such isolation of employees.”

Trying to arbitrate such claims individually would be too expensive to be worth it, she wrote, and “the risks of employer retaliation would likely dissuade most workers from seeking redress alone.”

She was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The cases involve non-unionized workers, but labor leaders said it was representative of how the court sides with business over workers.

“Five justices on the Supreme Court decided that it is acceptable for working people to have our legal rights taken away by corporations in order to keep our jobs,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said.

Unions are bracing for another Supreme Court case yet to be decided, which could forbid public employee unions from collecting fees from nonmembers to cover the cost of contract negotiations.

Arbitration contracts are a growing trend. Ginsburg wrote in her dissent that only 2.1 percent of non-ununionized companies imposed mandatory arbitration agreements on their employees in 1992, but nearly 54 percent do now.

She took exception to Gorsuch’s description that workers had “agreed” to abide by one-to-one arbitration.

One of the companies, Epic Systems Corp., emailed its employees the arbitration agreement and said that if they continued to work at the company, they would be “deemed” as having accepted the terms.

Hours after the decision, one law firm, Ogletree Deakins, announced an “automated tool that quickly prepares custom arbitration agreements with class action waivers based on employers’ requirements and preferences.”

But Gregory Jacob, a Washington lawyer who previously served in the Labor Department, said the business community was not waiting on a go-ahead from the Supreme Court.

“Most employers expected this decision, and did not hesitate where desired to insert individualized arbitration provisions into employment agreements,” he said in a statement. “This decision thus will not see a huge increase in the use of such provisions, but it does protect employers’ settled expectations and avoids placing our nation’s job providers under the threat of additional burdensome litigation drain.”

The decision was one of the most impactful of Gorsuch’s fledgling career on the court. Gorsuch, 50, engaged in a point-by-point debate with Ginsburg, 85, who wore the collar she has said she favors when delivering a meaningful dissent.

“As I see it, in relatively recent years, the court’s Arbitration Act decisions have taken many wrong turns,” Ginsburg wrote. “Yet, even accepting the court’s decisions as they are, nothing compels the destructive result the court reaches today.”

Suits to enforce workplace rights collectively “fit comfortably” under the National Labor Relations Act promises, she said.

Without them, the “inevitable result” of the decision “will be the underenforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well-being of vulnerable workers,” she wrote.

Gorsuch said Ginsburg’s dissent “even suggests we have resurrected the long-dead ‘yellow dog’ contract,” in which employers attempted to forbid employees from joining unions.

“But like most apocalyptic warning, this one proves a false alarm,” Gorsuch wrote.

Ginsburg’s objections are to policy, he said, but those are not decisions for judges to make but the policymakers in the political branches where those questions remain hotly contested,” Gorsuch said.

While the decision was largely supported by the business community, some Democrats in Congress said the ruling was a call for action.

The combined cases are EPIC Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Ernst & Young v. Morris and NLRB v. Murphy Oil. </s> In a victory for employers and the Trump administration, the Supreme Court on Monday said that employers could block employees from banding together as a class to fight legal disputes in employment arbitration agreements.

Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the opinion for the 5-4 majority, his first major opinion since joining the court last spring and a demonstration of how the Senate Republicans’ move to keep liberal nominee Merrick Garland from being confirmed in 2016 has helped cement a conservative court.

“This is the Justice Gorsuch that I think most everyone expected,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN contributor and professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law. “Not only is he endorsing the conservative justices’ controversial approach to arbitration clauses, but he’s taking it an important step further by extending that reasoning to employment agreements, as well.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took the rare step of reading her dissent from the bench, calling the majority opinion in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis “egregiously wrong.”

“The court today holds enforceable these arm-twisted, take-it-or-leave-it contracts — including the provisions requiring employees to litigate wage and hours claims only one-by-one. Federal labor law does not countenance such isolation of employees,” she said.

In the majority opinion, Gorsuch maintained the “decision does nothing to override” what Congress has done.

“Congress has instructed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced as written,” he said.

As the dissent recognizes, the legislative policy embodied in the (National Labor Relations Act) is aimed at ‘safeguard[ing], first and foremost, workers’ rights to join unions and to engage in collective bargaining,” he wrote. “Those rights stand every bit as strong today as they did yesterday.”

Gorusch, responding to Ginsburg’s claim that the court’s decision would resurrect so-called “yellow dog” contracts which barred an employee from joining a union, said that “like most apocalyptic warnings, this one proves a false alarm.”

The case was the biggest business case of the term, and represented a clash between employers who prefer to handle disputes through arbitration against employees who want to be able to band together to bring their challenges and not be required to sign class action bans.

It also pitted two federal laws against each other.

One, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), gives employees the right to self organization to “engage in concerted activities for the purpose of mutual aid or protection” the other, the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) allows employers to “settle by arbitration.”

Lawyers for employers, who have long backed arbitration as a means of resolving disputes, argued that class action waivers are permissible under the 1925 law. They say the NLRA does not contain a congressional command precluding enforcement of the waivers.

The Trump administration supported the employers in the case, a switch from the Obama administration’s position.

“Today’s ruling is a major blow for the rights of employees, who almost never have enough of an interest, by themselves, to take the time and resources to litigate claims against their employers — especially claims concerning underpayment of wages,” Vladeck said.

The court has approved some collective action bans in consumer contracts, and employers hoped for the same fate when it comes to employer contracts.

One of the three consolidated cases before the court concerned a grievance claim brought by an employee of a healthcare software company called Epic Systems Corporation. The employee, Jacob Lewis, sought to sue Epic in federal court on behalf of a group of employees who claimed the company had denied them overtime pay. Epic sought to dismiss the complaint arguing that Lewis had waived his right to pursue joint legal claims.

Neal Katyal, a lawyer for Epic, argued in court papers,” like other contracts, employment contracts may require that arbitration be conducted on an individual basis.” Lawyers for the employees, on the other hand, said the NLRA precludes such waivers.

Workers don’t like the waivers because it’s much more expensive — and at times intimidating — to bring individual claims.

The employees have the support of the National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency that protects the rights of private sector employees to join together to improve working conditions.

At oral arguments, the justices seemed closely divided along ideological lines. Justice Stephen Breyer worried that if the employers were to prevail they would be “overturning labor law that goes back to, for FDR at least, the entire heart of the New Deal.”

At one point, Chief Justice John Roberts asked Ortiz, a lawyer for the workers, whether a decision in his favor would “invalidate agreements covering 25 million employees”

Ortiz said it would. </s> WASHINGTON -- Nearly 200 Democratic members of Congress agreed to file a lawsuit Wednesday against President Donald Trump alleging that by retaining interests in a global business empire, he has violated constitutional restrictions on taking gifts and benefits from foreign leaders.

The lead senator filing the complaint in federal district court, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Tuesday that the lawsuit has already drawn more congressional plaintiffs -- 196 -- than any legal action previously taken against a president.

No Republicans have yet joined in the lawsuit, although they will be invited to do so, Blumenthal said.

An advance copy of the legal complaint argues that those in Congress have special standing because the Constitution's "foreign emoluments clause" requires the president to obtain "the consent of Congress" before accepting any gifts.

[PRESIDENT TRUMP: Timeline, appointments, executive orders + guide to actions in first 100 days]

The legal effort is led in the House by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich. At least five congressional committees are investigating various issues related to the Trump administration.

News of the lawsuit emerged less than 24 hours after attorneys general in the District and Maryland, both Democrats, filed suit alleging that payments to Trump violated the Constitution's anti-corruption clauses. In another lawsuit filed against Trump by business competitors, the Justice Department recently defended Trump's actions, arguing that he violated no restrictions by accepting fair-market payments for services.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday night, but on Monday, spokesman Sean Spicer criticized the lawsuit filed by the two state attorneys general, saying it's "not hard to conclude that partisan politics may be one of the motivations."

The 37-page congressional complaint contends that the nation's founders were concerned that foreign powers could interfere with American affairs. The suit says the founders were particularly worried that "foreign states would give benefits and rewards to the nation's chief executive to subvert his loyalty."

As a result, they wrote the emoluments clause of the Constitution with language "both sweeping and unqualified," the lawmakers' lawsuit says.

In a response to the initial lawsuit, Justice Department lawyers argued that the framers of the Constitution never intended to prevent a president from owning a business or to ban ordinary, arms-length commercial transactions. They also contended that even if the president had violated the Constitution as his opponents allege, it is up to Congress to take action.

The obscure clause in Article I of the Constitution says that "no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." The language is interpreted as prohibiting any officeholder -- including the president -- from accepting a gift, payment or other benefit from a foreign state without the consent of Congress.

A memo prepared by the Senate plaintiff states that "these benefits include any compensation for services rendered in a private capacity such as when a foreign government throws a party at a hotel owned by a federal official."

Blumenthal, a former Connecticut attorney general, said the president's companies did business in about 20 countries but were shrouded in secrecy.

The lawsuit asks the court to enjoin the president from "accepting any benefits from foreign states without first obtaining Congressional consent."

Information for this article was contributed by Tom Hamburger and Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post and by Sharon LaFraniere of The New York Times. </s> Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump speaks during the opening ceremony for the Trump International Hotel, Old Post Office, in Washington, USA on October 26, 2016.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging the legality of payments to President Donald Trump's hotels by foreigners during his tenure in the White House.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit unanimously ruled that the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia do not have legal standing to sue under a claim that Trump violated the so-called emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution.

That clause, contained in Article 1 of the Constitution, bars government officeholders from accepting gifts from foreign officials.

Trump still faces a similar lawsuit in Washington federal court filed by Democratic members of Congress.

On Monday, the Justice Department urged the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss that second suit.

In its ruling, the 4th Circuit appeals panel said that Washington and Maryland's interest in enforcing that clause "is so attenuated and abstract" that it raises the question of whether their lawsuit is an appropriate use of the court system.

The suit was the first ever to claim a president violated the emoluments clause, and the appeals panel said "not only is this suit extraordinary, it also has national significance and is of special consequence."

The panel ordered a federal district court judge in Maryland to dismiss the suit against Trump with prejudice, which would bar the plaintiffs from relaunching the case.

That judge had earlier denied Trump's bids to toss out the case, which led the president to appeal his decision to the 4th Circuit.

Trump quickly crowed about the 4th Circuit's decision on Twitter.

The president's lawyer, Jay Sekulow, called the ruling "a complete victory."

The attorneys general for Washington and Maryland issued a joint statement saying they believed the appellate judges "got it wrong."

"Although the court described a litany of ways in which this case is unique, it failed to acknowledge the most extraordinary circumstance of all: President Trump is brazenly profiting from the Office of the President in ways that no other President in history ever imagined and that the founders expressly sought—in the Constitution—to prohibit," said Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine.

The two said they will "pursue our legal options," but did not name specific next steps.

They can ask the entire 4th Circuit to review the panel's ruling, or can escalate the matter to the Supreme Court, which has discretion over which cases it hears.

There is a good chance that they will ask the full court to review the decision, according to Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond Law School and an expert on federal judicial selection.

"I think a majority of the court is more moderate, or even liberal, compared to this panel, which is the most conservative panel you could draw of those 15 judges on this court," Tobias said. "I guess we will see something different out of the D.C. Circuit, but who knows."

The judges on the 4th Circuit panel that heard the case were Paul Niemeyer, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, Dennis Shedd, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, and Trump appointee A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. </s> U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Friday that the Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court to block a judge’s ruling that prevented President Donald Trump’s travel ban from being applied to grandparents of U.S. citizens and refugees already being processed by resettlement agencies.

Sessions said in a statement that the administration would “reluctantly return directly to the Supreme Court” in a bid to overturn Thursday’s decision by a U.S. district judge in Hawaii, which limited the scope of the administration’s temporary ban on refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.

“By this decision, the district court has improperly substituted its policy preferences for the national security judgments of the executive branch in a time of grave threats, defying both the lawful prerogatives of the executive branch and the directive of the Supreme Court,” Sessions Said.

The Supreme Court last month said the ban could take effect, but that people with a “bona fide relationship” to a U.S. person or entity could not be barred.

The administration had narrowly interpreted that language, saying the ban would apply to grandparents and other family members, prompting the state of Hawaii to ask Hawaii-based U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson to expand the definition of who could be admitted.

The conservative-leaning Supreme Court is not currently in session, but the justices can handle emergency requests. The administration’s application could be directed either to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has responsibility for emergency requests from western states, or to the nine justices as a whole. If the court as a whole is asked to weigh in, five votes are needed to grant such a request.

Separately, the Justice Department filed papers in Hawaii federal court saying it would appeal Watson’s ruling to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It was not immediately clear whether that is a separate appeal.

Earlier on Friday, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert told reporters that the ruling appeared to be “fairly broad and something that would trouble me if it was as broad as reported.”

Bossert, speaking aboard Air Force One as the president returned from a trip to Paris, focused his remarks on the part of the ruling that would allow more refugees to enter the country, saying the ruling could be interpreted as “so expansive as to cover every refugee.”

In his decision, Watson harshly criticized the government’s definition of close family relations as “the antithesis of common sense.”

Watson also ruled that the assurance by a resettlement agency to provide basic services to a newly arrived refugee constitutes an adequate connection to the United States because it is a sufficiently formal and documented agreement that triggers responsibilities and compensation.

The ruling, if left in place, means refugees can continue to be resettled in the United States, beyond a cap of 50,000 set by the executive order. That limit was reached this week.

The Supreme Court’s decision last month revived parts of Trump’s March 6 executive order banning travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, as well as refugees for 120 days. The court also agreed to hear oral arguments in the fall over whether the ban violates the U.S. Constitution. </s> The court issued a one-paragraph statement granting the administration's request for a stay of the latest legal maneuvering involving the president's executive order on immigration. There were no recorded dissents to the decision.

At issue is whether the president can block a group of about 24,000 refugees, who have assurances from sponsors, from entering the United States. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had interpreted a Supreme Court directive this summer to mean that such refugees should be allowed in, but the government objected.

The latest court actions are part of a complicated legal battle that began in January when President Donald Trump issued his first version of an entry ban. The Supreme Court is to consider the merits of his actions at a hearing Oct. 10.

The current case grows out of a Supreme Court decision in June that approved a limited version of a presidential order that temporarily blocked refugees and citizens of six majority-Muslim countries.

The justices said Trump could impose a limited version of the measure, but not on a person with a "bona fide" connection to the United States, such as having family members here, a job offer or a place in a U.S. university.

It is the interpretation of a "bona fide" connection to the United States that is being debated.

The government initially declined to include grandparents and other members of the extended family as meeting that standard, as well as refugees with formal assurances. A federal district judge said the government's reading was too broad and stopped it.

The Supreme Court largely upheld that ruling in July, although it put on hold the portion dealing with refugees.

Last week, a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in, deciding that the administration could block neither grandparents nor refugees with assurances.

The Justice Department this week asked the Supreme Court to step in again - although only to block refugees, not grandparents and other relatives beyond the nuclear family. Even those refugees with formal assurances from a resettlement agency lack the sort of connection that should exempt them from the ban, the Justice Department argued in its new filing to the Supreme Court.

"The absence of a formal connection between a resettlement agency and a refugee subject to an assurance stands in stark contrast to the sort of relationships this court identified as sufficient in its June 26 stay ruling," Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall wrote in his filing.

"Unlike students who have been admitted to study at an American university, workers who have accepted jobs at an American company, and lecturers who come to speak to an American audience, refugees do not have any free-standing connection to resettlement agencies, separate and apart from the refugee-admissions process itself, by virtue of the agencies' assurance agreement with the government," the filing said.

In response, the state of Hawaii, which is challenging the travel ban, told the Supreme Court that the government's argument made no sense.

"Refugees with formal assurances are the category of foreign nationals least likely to implicate the national security rationales the government has pointed to in the past," wrote Washington lawyer Neal Katyal, who is representing Hawaii.

"By the government's own admission, these refugees have already been approved by the Department of Homeland Security. It is therefore exceedingly unlikely that they represent a security threat."

Time is beginning to become a factor in the broader fight over Trump's travel ban. The measure was supposed to have been temporary - lasting 90 days for citizens of the six affected countries, and 120 days for refugees. If the measure is considered to have taken effect when the Supreme Court allowed partial implementation, the 90 days will have passed by the time the justices hear arguments Oct. 10, and the 120 days are very likely to have passed by the time they issue a decision.

Some deadlines for reports have also seemingly passed. The Department of Homeland Security secretary was - within 20 days of the order taking effect - to have given Trump the results of a worldwide review determining what information was necessary from other countries to vet travelers. The countries that were not supplying adequate information were then to be given 50 days to begin doing so, and after that, top U.S. officials were to give Trump a list of countries whose citizens would be recommended for inclusion in a more permanent travel ban.

A Homeland Security spokesman said that a report was delivered to the White House in early July on the results of the review and that officials then went about assessing each country on the information it provided

He said Homeland Security officials were "evaluating the information received and will provide a report to the president in the coming weeks." </s> WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Friday that the Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court to block a judge's ruling that prevented President Donald Trump's travel ban from being applied to grandparents of U.S. citizens and refugees already being processed by resettlement agencies.

Sessions said in a statement that the administration would "reluctantly return directly to the Supreme Court" in a bid to overturn Thursday's decision by a U.S. district judge in Hawaii, which limited the scope of the administration's temporary ban on refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries. The Justice Department could file papers with the high court as soon as Friday.

"By this decision, the district court has improperly substituted its policy preferences for the national security judgments of the executive branch in a time of grave threats, defying both the lawful prerogatives of the executive branch and the directive of the Supreme Court," Sessions Said.

The Supreme Court last month said the ban could take effect, but that people with a "bona fide relationship" to a U.S. person or entity could not be barred.

The administration had narrowly interpreted that language, saying the ban would apply to grandparents and other family members, prompting the state of Hawaii to ask Hawaii-based U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson to expand the definition of who could be admitted.

"The truth here is that the government´s interpretation of the Supreme Court´s stay order defies common sense," said Omar Jadwat, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union involved in challenging the ban. "That´s what the district court correctly found, and the attorney general´s misleading attacks on its decision can´t change that fact."

The conservative-leaning Supreme Court is not currently in session, but the justices can handle emergency requests. The administration's application could be directed either to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has responsibility for emergency requests from western states, or to the nine justices as a whole. If the court as a whole is asked to weigh in, five votes are needed to grant such a request.

Separately, the Justice Department filed papers in Hawaii federal court saying it would appeal Watson's ruling to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That would give the government a second route to the Supreme Court.

Earlier on Friday, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert told reporters that the ruling appeared to be "fairly broad and something that would trouble me if it was as broad as reported."

Bossert, speaking aboard Air Force One as the president returned from a trip to Paris, focused his remarks on the part of the ruling that would allow more refugees to enter the country, saying the ruling could be interpreted as "so expansive as to cover every refugee."

In his decision, Watson harshly criticized the government's definition of close family relations as "the antithesis of common sense."

Watson also ruled that the assurance by a resettlement agency to provide basic services to a newly arrived refugee constitutes an adequate connection to the United States because it is a sufficiently formal and documented agreement that triggers responsibilities and compensation.

The ruling, if left in place, means refugees can continue to be resettled in the United States, beyond a cap of 50,000 set by the executive order. That limit was reached this week.

The Supreme Court's decision last month revived parts of Trump's March 6 executive order banning travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, as well as refugees for 120 days. The court also agreed to hear oral arguments in the fall over whether the ban violates the U.S. Constitution. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe, Yeganeh Torbati and Dan Levine; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
In a 6–2 decision (NLRB v. SW General, Inc), the U.S. Supreme Court puts new restrictions on presidential powers, limiting a president's authority to staff certain top government posts in a case involving an appointment to the National Labor Relations Board saying that under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, a person cannot serve as the acting head of a federal agency once the president nominates him or her to permanently serve in the role if it is a position that requires U.S. Senate confirmation. The court upholds a lower court's ruling that then-President Barack Obama exceeded his legal authority with his temporary appointment of an NLRB general counsel in 2011. The ruling will give President Donald Trump and future presidents less flexibility in filling jobs that require Senate confirmation.