Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander announced Tuesday that the panel will vote on President Trump’s pick to head the Labor Department, private sector lawyer Eugene Scalia, on Sept. 24, less than one week after his first nomination hearing.
Scalia, son of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, has been criticized by Democrats and organized labor as too close to big business. The quick pace of the nomination and vote suggest the administration and its GOP allies don’t want to give critics a chance to build up opposition to the nominee.
The committee’s GOP majority on Tuesday defended setting his final confirmation vote for the Scalia for next week. “Holding Mr. Scalia’s committee vote on September 24 is consistent with the way this committee has treated other nominees,” the committee said in a statement to reporters.
Scalia, 55, previously served as the Labor Department’s top solicitor during the George W. Bush administration. He has had an extensive career in the private sector as a management-side lawyer and has been involved in some of the most prominent cases involving labor law of the last two decades. Scalia has worked with the private sector management-side firm Gibson Dunn, where he led the Labor and Employment Practice Group for the past 12 years.
He was one of the attorneys retained by the Chamber of Commerce when it challenged the Labor Department’s 2016 “fiduciary rule,” which would have required all advisers managing tax-privileged retirement accounts to act in their clients’ best interests. The Obama administration sought the new standard to crack down on conflicts of interest. Business groups challenged the rule, arguing it broadened the definition of fiduciary too far, clashed with existing regulations, and involved a regulatory change that only Congress could approve. A federal court agreed, and vacated the rule last year.
Scalia also represented the Retail Industry Leader Association in a 2007 case that challenged a Maryland law, Fair Share Health Care Fund Act, that required increased expenditures for employee health programs. The court ruled that the Maryland law, which was tailored to only affect Walmart, was preempted by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, slammed the nomination Tuesday. It accused Scalia of “spending a lifetime attacking the rights and dignity of working people” and argued his specialties were “eroding labor rights, unraveling consumer protections, endangering Americans’ retirement security and blaming workers for their own deaths.”
Senate Democrats have demanded a slower pace on Scalia’s nomination, stating that they need more time to evaluate his record. “It is critical that our committee has the time we need to thoroughly vet this nominee, just like any other. I believe holding a confirmation hearing next week would significantly undermine our ability to meet our committee’s responsibilities,” said Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the HELP committee.
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