President Trump confirmed Tuesday that he plans to nominate Eugene Scalia — son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — to head up the Department of Labor.
The 56-year-old Virginia resident is a partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and from 1992 to 1993 served under then- and current Attorney General Bill Barr.
Scalia has a decades-long record of challenging Labor Department and other federal regulations, winning praise from business interests but condemnation from unions and other labor advocates.
Trump first floated his name in mid-July less than a week after his previous secretary, Alexander Acosta, said he would resign amid renewed criticism of how he handled a 2008 secret plea deal with wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein as a federal prosecutor in Florida.
Scalia, 55, served for a year as the Labor Department’s top lawyer, its solicitor, during George W. Bush’s administration.
But most of his career has been spent as a partner in the Washington office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he has run up a string of victories in court cases on behalf of business interests challenging labor and financial regulations.
“Suing the Government? Call Scalia!” was the headline on a 2012 profile by Bloomberg.
When Bush nominated Scalia as the Labor Department solicitor, unions howled in protest and Senate Democrats refused to hold a confirmation vote.
Bush gave him a temporary, recess appointment to the job.
Even with strong Democratic opposition again, he has a clear path to confirmation in a Senate controlled by Republicans and stripped of the procedural requirement that nominees need 60 votes to proceed.
Scalia received his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review.
With Post wires