On Monday, a car supplier went to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the court to block a National Labor Relations Board proceeding against the company from beginning on Tuesday — the highest-profile action yet in a growing effort to get the courts to declare that the labor board is unconstitutional.

The move followed a Sunday decision from three Republican appointees on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejecting YAPP USA Automotive System's request to halt the proceeding while the company’s challenge to the constitutionality of the NLRB goes forward.

I covered this case at Law Dork in mid-September, highlighting this very possibility.

YAPP USA’s case is a big deal. It is part of an ongoing effort by business conservatives to get courts to expand past rulings about the scope of the president’s removal power — and the limits on the power of Congress to protect appointees from removal. In doing so, the lawyers’ aim is to hobble agencies across the federal government as part of their even broader efforts to take on the entirety of the federal regulatory state. (Recall last term’s Loper Bright decision ending Chevron deference, among other decisions.)

Following successful challenges to the set-up of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and in the midst of a case focused on the Securities and Exchange Commission — in which the Supreme Court dodged the removal questions — management-side lawyers began filing a series of challenges this year arguing that the NLRB’s administrative law judges and even the board members themselves are unconstitutionally appointed.