Amid a spiraling economic crisis in Puerto Rico, Congress established a control board to impose outside discipline. The Supreme Court on Tuesday will consider the board’s constitutionality in a case that ostensibly pits Congress’s plenary authority over U.S. territories against the Appointments Clause. Congress in 2016 enacted a law known as Promesa establishing a seven-member board modeled on Washington, D.C.’s financial control board of the 1990s. The Court has long held that the Constitution’s structural safeguards including the Appointments Clause do not apply to territories. Congress in effect reorganized Puerto Rico’s government and vested the board with litigation and budgetary power held by local politicians.

Source: Wall Street Journal October 14, 2019 23:15 UTC