Presidential wives have wielded influence over their husbands and American politics in different ways. Eleanor Roosevelt actively advised her husband, wrote a daily newspaper column, gave her own press conferences and traveled as her husband's representatives. Rosalynn Carter sat in on cabinet meetings. Many have had special projects; in recent years, First Ladies have had taxpayer-funded offices and staff.
So what is the legal status of the First Lady? In 1993, Hillary Clinton was appointed by her husband, President Bill Clinton, to head the Task Force on Health Care Reform, a high visibility and controversial panel. Some citizens filed suit to require the group to make public all of its business. A 1972 law declared that federal advisory committees must conduct all meetings in public and make their papers publicly available, if there were members who were not government officials; bodies made up entirely of government officials and staff were exempt. Hillary Clinton maintained that as First Lady, she was not an ordinary citizen, but a defacto government official, and thus the task force itself was a staff function of the executive branch of the government.
A federal district judge ruled that the spouse of the president was not an official, officer or employee, and thus the task force fell under the rules for a federal advisory committee. The First Lady, that decision said, was not a government official. The case was appealed.
On June 22, 1993, a United States Court of Appeals backed up Hillary Clinton's assertion that the First Lady was a full-time government official, in a ruling which found that the task force was wholly composed of government officials, and thus could conduct its work in private. By the time the court ruled, that particular task force had been disbanded, its work completed.
The court ruled that, while such a designation was stretching the definition of "officer or employee," it avoided constitutional problems to do so. And, with laws such as those funding the First Lady's office and staff, the court said "Congress itself has recognized that the president's spouse acts as the functional equivalent of an assistant to the president."
Thus, the current legal status of the First Lady of the United States is as "a de facto officer or employee" of the United States government.
