Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1334_8m58.pdf
Page Number: 3

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

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Syllabus 

creates local offices using these two unique powers, the officers exer-
cise power of the local government, not the Federal Government.  His-
torical practice indicates that a federal law’s creation of an office does 
not automatically make its holder an officer of the United States.  Con-
gress has for more than two centuries created local offices for the Ter-
ritories  and  District  of  Columbia  that  are  filled  through  election  or
local executive appointment.  And the history of Puerto Rico—whose
public officials with important local responsibilities have been selected
in ways that the Appointments Clause does not describe—is consistent 
with the history of other entities that fall within Article IV’s scope and 
with the history of the District of Columbia.  This historical practice 
indicates  that  when  an  officer  of  one  of  these  local  governments  has 
primarily local duties, he is not an officer of the United States within
the meaning of the Appointments Clause.  Pp. 9–14.

(b) The Board members here have primarily local powers and du-
ties.  PROMESA says that the Board is “an entity within the territorial 
government” that “shall not be considered a department, agency, es-
tablishment, or instrumentality of the Federal Government,” §101(c), 
130 Stat. 553, and Congress gave the Board a structure, duties, and 
related powers that are consistent with this statement.  The Board’s 
broad investigatory powers—administering oaths, issuing subpoenas,
taking evidence, and demanding data from governments and creditors 
alike—are  backed  by  Puerto  Rican,  not  federal,  law.    Its  powers  to 
oversee  the  development  of  Puerto  Rico’s  fiscal  and  budgetary  plans 
are also quintessentially local.  And in exercising its power to initiate
bankruptcy proceedings, the Board acts on behalf of, and in the inter-
ests of, Puerto Rico.  Pp. 14–17.

(c) Buckley  v.  Valeo,  424  U. S.  1,  Freytag  v.  Commissioner,  501 
U. S. 868, and Lucia v. SEC, 585 U. S. ___, do not provide the relevant 
legal test here, for each considered an Appointments Clause problem
concerning the importance or significance of duties that were indisput-
ably federal or national in nature.  Nor do Lebron v. National Railroad 
Passenger Corporation, 513 U. S. 374, or MWAA, 501 U. S. 252, help. 
Lebron considered whether Amtrak was a governmental or a private 
entity,  but  the  fact  that  the  Board  is  a  Government  entity  does  not 
answer the “primarily local  versus primarily federal” question.  And 
the MWAA Court expressly declined to address Appointments Clause 
questions.  However,  the  Court’s  analysis  in  O’Donoghue  v.  United 
States, 289 U. S. 516, and Palmore v. United States, 411 U. S. 389, does 
provide a rough analogy.  In O’Donoghue, the Court found that Article 
III’s tenure and salary protections applied to judges of the District of 
Columbia courts because those courts exercised the judicial power of 
the United States.  But the Court reached the seemingly opposite con-