A unanimous decision handed down Friday by the District ofColumbia Circuit Appeals Court invalidates President Obama's recessappointments to the National Labor Relations Board, and put therecess appointment of CFPB Director Richard Cordray into jeopardy.

The three-judge panel said the appointments, made while theSenate was in a pro forma session in early January 2012, wereunconstitutional. The Obama Administration is expected to file anappeal to the Supreme Court.

“An interpretation of 'the recess' that permits the president todecide when the Senate is in recess would demolish the checks andbalances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving thepresident free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time hepleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when theSenate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction.This cannot be the law,” the judges wrote in the decision.

John Eastman, professor at Chapman University School of Law inOrange, Calif., said the decisions handed down by the NLRB over thepast year are now illegal. Eastman and attorney Noel Francisco, whorepresented the plaintiff in the NLRB suit, spoke to the pressduring a call sponsored by The Federalist Society, a conservativelegal think tank.

Francisco said as a result of the court decision, CFPB regulations could be challenged under the argument thatCordray's appointment was illegal.

Cordray was appointed on the same day as the NLRB officials andis the subject of a separate lawsuit challenging his appointment and theconstitutionality of the Dodd-Frank Act.