President DONALD JOHN TRUMP has nominated to the Supreme Court a man who actually DI$$ENTED from a 2-1 Court of Appeals decision upholding a modest OSHA fine against Sea World over a killer whale killing three (3) employees.
BRETT KAVANAUGH's miserable attitude toward environmental, health and safety protection legislation threatens to restore the Lochner era of right-wing jurisprudence, which repeatedly overruled government protections of the people until 1937.
Sea World was represented by Eugene Scalia, son of then Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In 2001, I investigated and filed written testimony that opposed Young Scalia's nomination by President George W. Bush as the Solicitor of Labor, as chief lawyer for the U.S. Department of Labor; he was never confirmed, thanks to the efforts of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, then chaired by my first boss, Sen. Ted. Kennedy.
Young Scalia never once represented a worker in private practice and took extremist positions on OSHA in litigation and his writings.
At an ABA convention in Washington, D.C., I questioned Young Scalia about the spirit of non enforcement or desuetude haunting the U.S. Department of Labor.
To his credit, as Acting Solicitor of Labor (NEVER confirmed) Young Scalia rapidly reckoned USDOL was not using all legal tools to help fired safety, health, environmental, nuclear and trucking whistleblowers, and ordered DOL lawyers to use injunctive relief to get workers reinstated years earlier than they would be if DOL proceeded like a herd of turtles on its usual torpor and desuetude,
Young Scalia returned to corporate practice, where he won only one (1) vote on the appellate court for Sea World: BRETT KAVANAUGH.
Opinion column from The Washington Post:
Brett Kavanaugh is out of step with how most Americans believe government regulation should work
