The US Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in the consolidated cases referred to as Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment over whether the Constitution’s appointments clause governs the appointment of members of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico.

In 2016 Congress passed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, otherwise known as PROMESA, which created a Financial Oversight and Management Board tasked with helping Puerto Rico secure greater financial stability. Six of the Board’s seven voting members are selected from a list by Congress, and the seventh is selected by the President of the United States. The appointments clause provides that the president nominates and the Senate must confirm principal “Officers of the United States,” and that Congress may also give the president power to appoint “inferior Officers.” The question before the court is whether the selection of each of the board members must comply with the appointments clause or if they are instead territorial officers who do not have to be selected in that manner.

The Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico argued Tuesday that the PROMESA statute answers the issue in “a straightforward way” because it sets up an “entity within the territorial government,” and it “gives the Board only territory-specific authority and instructs the Board to pursue only territory-specific objectives.”

Counsel for the Board noted that Congress intentionally built in “protections to guarantee the Board’s independence. Congress did that because it concluded that Puerto Rico’s staggering financial and humanitarian crisis could not be solved unless the Board was insulated from the political pressures that caused that crisis in the first place.”

Counsel for the US also argued in favor of the Board’s current structure because it acts in the territory under a territory-specific statute.

Aurelius Investment argued that because Puerto Rico is within the United States and concerns US citizens and US currency, PROMESA’s Board powers are in fact national in scope:

It presides over the largest municipal bankruptcy proceeding in United States history, managing over $100 billion in indebtedness, 165,000 claims, including over 200 claw-back actions, lawsuits against major financial institutions, in a proceeding in an Article III district court designated by the Chief Justice of the United States. … They [the board] brings cases in federal court against US citizens. They conduct an extensive investigation of oversight.