Page:Ohio Adjutant General's Department v. FLRA.pdf/20

6 the Department of the Interior is disqualified from hearing a case, that officer must report that information “to the Secretary of the Interior or such officer as he may designate.” 43 U. S. C. §101 (emphasis added). The designated officer does not become the Secretary by virtue of having been designated to carry out a duty or exercise authority that would otherwise rest with the Secretary.

The same is true here. The designation of petitioners by the Departments of the Army and Air Force to perform some of those departments’ duties and to exercise some of their authority does not turn petitioners into agencies or necessarily have any effect beyond assigning them those duties and responsibilities. 32 U. S. C. §709(d).

The Court’s related and highly functionalist argument that petitioners must be subject to the FLRA because they “exercise the authority of” an agency in supervising the technicians similarly fails. One entity may augment the power of another by delegating to it certain authority. See, e.g., Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 635–638 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring). That delegation of authority, however, does not turn the latter entity into the former one. That petitioners exercise authority that federal agencies would otherwise hold does not make them agencies any more than the President is Congress when he exercises authority pursuant to congressional authorization. See ibid.

To be sure, the official who makes the designation cannot delegate authority that he or she does not have. If the FSLMRS constrains the Departments of the Army and Air Force in their relationship with the technicians, it stands to reason that those Departments cannot delegate to adjutants general the power to supervise the technicians free from such constraints. As I have explained, though, this case turns not on whether petitioners have obligations to bargain with the technicians, but on whether those obligations may be enforced against petitioners as if they are