[Washington National and Dulles International are the only two major commercial airports owned by the U.S. Government. Because of its location near the center of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, National is far more convenient and heavily used than Dulles. Flight paths over densely populated areas around these airports have caused many local residents to become concerned about aircraft safety, noise, and air pollution. In 1986, Congress passed a law transferring control of National and Dulles from the Department of Transportation to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA). This entity, created by a compact between Virginia and the District of Columbia, was established to facilitate the financing and capital improvements at both airports through the sale of tax-exempt bonds. The MWAA as to be governed by an 11-member Board of Directors. Fearing that the relinquishment of federal control would result in the transfer of many commercial routes from National to Dulles, Congress added provisions to the 1986 act calling for the creation of a 9-member Board of Review consisting of Members of Congress who purportedly would serve on the Board in their "individual capacities." Among the powers vested in the Board of Review was the authority to veto decisions of the MWAA Board of Directors. In due course, the Board of Directors adopted a master plan providing for extensive new facilities at National. The Board of Review decided not to veto the plan. Local residents, including Citizens for the Abatement of Aircraft Noise (CAAN) brought suit in Federal court, alleging that the Board of Review’s veto power was unconstitutional. The District Court ruled against CAAN, but the Court of Appeals reversed. The Supreme Court granted MWAA’s Petition for Certiorari.]

Justice Stevens delivered the Opinion of the Court.

* * * [T]here is no question about federal power to operate airports. The question is whether the maintenance of the federal control over the airports by means of the Board of Review, which is allegedly a federal instrumentality, is invalid, not because it invades any state power, but because Congress’ continued control violated the separation of powers principle. … We must therefore consider whether the powers of the Board of Review may, consistent with the separation of powers, be exercised by an agent of Congress.

Because National and Dulles are the property of the Federal Government and their operations directly affect interstate commerce, there is no doubt concerning the ultimate power of Congress to enact legislation defining the policies that govern those operations. Congress itself can formulate the details, or it can enact general standards and assign to the Executive Branch the responsibility for making necessary managerial decisions in conformance with those standards. The question presented is only whether the Legislature has followed a constitutionally acceptably procedure in delegating decisionmaking authority to the Board of Review.

The structure of our Government as conceived by the Framers of our Constitution disperses the federal power among the three branches — the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial — placing both substantive and procedural limitations on each. The ultimate purpose of this separation of powers is to protect the liberty and security of the governed.

Violations of the separation-of-powers principle have been uncommon because each branch has traditionally respected the prerogatives of the other two. Nevertheless, the Court has been sensitive to its responsibility to enforce the principle when necessary. [The Court now quotes from its decision in Morrison v. Olson (1988)]:

It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.

The founders of our republic … seem never for a moment to have turned their eyes from the danger to liberty from the overgrown and all-grasping prerogative of an hereditary magistrate, supported and fortified by an hereditary branch of the legislative authority. They seem never for a moment to have recollected the danger from legislative usurpations; which by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpation. … [I]t is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.

The legislative department derives a superiority in our governments from other circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more extensive and less susceptible of precise limits, it can with the greater facility, mask under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments which it makes on the coordinate departments. It is not infrequently a question of real necessity in legislative bodies, whether the operation of a particular measure will, or will not extend beyond the legislative sphere. * * *

To forestall the danger of encroachment "beyond the legislative sphere," the Constitution imposes two basic and related constraints on the Congress. It may not "invest itself or its Members with either executive or judicial power." * * * And, when it exercises its legislative power, it must follow the "single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedures" specified in Article I.
* * *

The first constraint is illustrated by the Court’s holdings in Springer v. Philippine Islands … (1928) and Bowsher v. Synar * * * (1986). Springer involved the validity of acts of the Philippine legislature that authorized a committee of three — two legislators and one executive — to vote corporate stock owned by the Philippine Government. Because the Organic Act of the Philippine Islands incorporated the separation-of-powers principle, and because the challenged statute authorized two legislators to perform the executive function of controlling the management of the government-owned corporations, the Court held the statutes invalid. Our more recent decision in Bowsher involved a delegation of authority to the Comptroller General to revise the federal budget. After concluding that the Comptroller General was in effect an agent of Congress, the Court held that he could not exercise executive powers. * * *

The second constraint is illustrated by our decision in [INS v]. Chadha. This case involved the validity of a statute that authorized either House of Congress by resolution to invalidate a decision by the Attorney General to allow a deportable alien to remain in the United States. Congress had the power to achieve that result through legislation, but the statute was nevertheless invalid because Congress cannot exercise its legislative power to enact laws without following the bicameral and presentment procedures specified in Article I. For the same reason, an attempt to characterize the budgetary action of the Comptroller General in Bowsher as legislative action would not have saved its constitutionality because Congress many not delegate the power to legislate to its own agents or to its own Members.

Respondents [CAAN] rely on both of these constraints in their challenge to the Board of Review. The Court of Appeals found it unnecessary to discuss the second constraint because the court was satisfied that the power exercised by the Board of Review over "key operational decisions is quintessentially executive." * * * We need not agree or disagree with this characterization by the Court of Appeals to conclude that the Board of Review’s power is constitutionally impermissible. If the power is executive, the Constitution does not permit an agent of Congress to exercise it. If the power is legislative, Congress must exercise it in conformity with the bicameralism and presentment requirements of Art. I, § 7. In short, when Congress "[takes] action that ha[s] the purpose and effect of altering the legal rights, duties, and relations of persons … outside the Legislative Branch," it must take that action by the procedures authorized in the Constitution. * * *

One might argue that the provision for a Board of Review is the kind of practical accommodation between the Legislature and the Executive that should be permitted in a "workable government." Admittedly, Congress imposed its will on the regional authority created by the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Virginia by means that are unique and that might prove to be innocuous. However, the statutory scheme challenged today provides a blue-print for extensive expansion of the legislative power beyond its constitutionally confined role. Given the scope of the federal power to dispense benefits to the States in a variety of forms and subject to a host of statutory conditions, Congress could, if this Board of Review were valid, use similar expedients to enable its Members or its agents to retain control, outside the ordinary legislative process, of the activities of state grant recipients charged with executing virtually every aspect of national policy. As James Madison presciently observed, the legislature "can with greater facility, mask under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments which it makes on the co-ordinate departments." Heeding his warning that legislative "power is of an encroaching nature," we conclude that the Board of Review is an impermissible encroachment.

The Judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

Justice White, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Marshall join, dissenting.

Today the Court strikes down yet another innovative and otherwise lawful governmental experiment in the name of separation of powers. To reach this result, the majority must strain to bring state enactments within the ambit of a doctrine hitherto applicable only to the Federal Government and strain again to extend the doctrine even though both Congress and the Executive argue for the constitutionality of the arrangement which the Court invalidates. These efforts are untenable because they violate the "’cardinal principle that this Court will first ascertain whether a construction of [a] statute is fairly possible by which the [constitutional] question may be avoided.’" * * * They are also untenable because the Court’s separation-of-powers cases in no way compel the decision the majority reaches.

I

For the first time in its history, the Court employs separation-of-powers doctrine to invalidate a body created under state law. The majority justifies this unprecedented step on the ground that the Board of Review "exercises sufficient federal power … to mandate separation-of-powers scrutiny." This conclusion follows, it is claimed, because the Board, as presently constituted, would not exist but for the conditions set by Congress in the Metropolitan Washington Airports Act of 1986. * * * This unprecedented rationale is insufficient on at least two counts. The Court’s reasoning fails first because it ignores the plain terms of every instrument relevant to this case. The Court further errs because it also misapprehends the nature of the Transfer Act as a lawful exercise of congressional authority under the Property Clause, U.S. Const. Art IV, sec. 3, cl. 2. …

II

Even assuming that separation-of-powers principles apply, the Court can hold the Board to be unconstitutional only by extending those principles in an unwarranted fashion. The majority contends otherwise, reasoning that the Constitution requires today’s result whether the Board exercises executive or legislative power. * * * Yet never before has the Court struck down a body on separation-of-powers grounds that neither Congress nor the Executive oppose. It is absurd to suggest that the Board’s power represents the type of "legislative usurpation … which, by assembling all power in the same hands … must lead to the same tyranny" than concerned the Framers. * * * More to the point, it is clear that the Board does not offend separation-of-powers principles either under our cases dealing with executive power or our decisions concerning legislative authority. * * *

III

The majority claims not to retreat from our settled rule that "’[w]hen this Court is asked to invalidate statutory provision that has been approved by both Houses of the congress and signed by the President, … it should only do so for the most compelling constitutional reasons.’" * * * This rule should apply with even greater force when the arrangement under challenge has also been approved by what are functionally two state legislatures and two state executives.

Since the "compelling constitutional reasons" on which we have relied in our past separation-of-powers decisions are insufficient to strike down the board, the Court has had to inflate those reasons needlessly to defend today’s decision. I cannot follow along this course. The Board violates none of the principles set forth in our cases. Still less does it provide a "blueprint for extensive expansion of the legislative power beyond its constitutionally confined role." * * * This view utterly ignores the Executive’s ability to protect itself through, among other things, the ample power of the veto. Should Congress ever undertake such improbable projects as transferring national parklands to the States on the condition that its agents control oversight … there is little doubt that the President would be equal to the task of safeguarding his or her interests. Least of all, finally, can it be said that the Boar reflects "[t]he propensity of the legislative department to intrude upon the rights, and to absorb the powers, of the other department," that the Framers feared. * * * According, I dissent.