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14 

FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT BD. FOR 
PUERTO RICO v. AURELIUS INVESTMENT, LLC 
Opinion of the Court 

satisfy the Appointments Clause, other times it has speci-
fied  methods  that  would  not  satisfy  the  Appointments
Clause,  including  elections  and  appointment  by  local  offi-
cials.  Officials with primarily local duties have often fallen
into the latter categories.  We know of no case endorsing an 
Appointments  Clause  based  challenge  to  such  selection
methods.  Indeed, to read Appointments Clause constraints
as binding Puerto Rican officials with primarily local duties
would  work  havoc  with  Puerto  Rico’s  (federally  ratified)
democratic methods for selecting many of its officials.

We  thus  conclude  that  while  the  Appointments  Clause 
does  restrict  the  appointment  of  “Officers  of  the  United 
States” with duties in or related to the District of Columbia 
or an Article IV entity, it does not restrict the appointment
of local officers that Congress vests with primarily local du-
ties under Article IV, §3, or Article I, §8, cl. 17. 

B 
The question remains whether the Board members have
primarily local powers and duties.  We note that the Clause 
qualifies the phrase “Officers of the United States” with the 
words  “whose  Appointments  . . .  shall  be  established  by
Law.”  And  we  also  note  that  PROMESA  says  that  the 
Board is “an entity within the territorial government” and 
“shall  not  be  considered  a  department,  agency,  establish-
ment,  or  instrumentality  of  the  Federal  Government.”
§101(c), 130 Stat. 553.  But the most these words show is 
that Congress did not intend to make the Board members
“Officers of the United States.”  It does not prove that, inso-
far as the Constitution is concerned, they succeeded. 

But we think they have.  Congress did not simply state
that the Board is part of the local Puerto Rican government.
Rather, Congress also gave the Board a structure, a set of
duties, and related powers all of which are consistent with
this statement.