A law aimed at checking the executive branch’s ability to install temporary leaders at federal agencies would have prevented Jessica Looman from continuing to lead the US Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division as “acting” administrator when she was tapped to head the division permanently.
So when the White House officially nominated Looman July 27 to serve as administrator of the DOL’s wage arm, the Biden administration dropped that “acting” name and “delegated” the duties of the position to her under a new title, allowing her to lead the agency while her nomination is pending in the Senate.
The maneuver, while legal, dances around the intent of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, which was passed to give the president some time to install acting leadership while nominations go through the at-times lengthy Senate confirmation process, lawyers and academics said.
“Just because something is legal doesn’t make it desirable,” Anne Joseph O’Connell, a law professor at Stanford Law School, said of the arrangement, adding that it couldn’t have been Congress’ intention at the time “that delegation would serve such a large workaround to the constraints on acting officials.”
A DOL spokesperson said after Looman’s nomination to be administrator, “she will continue to serve in the capacity of Principal Deputy Administrator at the Wage and Hour Division, in which role she may perform all...
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