Eugene Scalia, son of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, has been nominated by President Trump to be the new Secretary of Labor. Scalia served as Solicitor General in the Department of Labor from 2002 to 2003 under George Bush. He is a partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher and a member of its Labor and Employment Practice Group. He has represented employers in a number of high profile cases: he argued against ergonomics rules, litigated various Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) cases, and successfully argued against the DOL’s proposed fiduciary rules for investment advisors to 401(k) plans.

As Acting Solicitor, in 2001 Scalia was one of the DOL attorneys submitting a brief opposing Supreme Court reconsideration of an improper ESOP valuation case, Reich v. Hall Holding Co., 990 F. Supp. 955 (6th Cir. 1998). The case involved a company not using an independent appraisal and not providing accurate information for the valuation. The court did not choose to review it. In 2007, he was one of many lawyers defending EDS in a stock drop case, Langbecker et al. v. Electronic Data Systems, 476 F.3d 299 (5th Cir. 2007). These are the only two cases he appears to have been directly involved in concerning ESOPs.