Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Former United States Secretary of Labor
Eugene Scalia is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, co-chair of the firm’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Group, and a senior member of the firm’s Labor and Employment Practice Group and Financial Institutions Practice Group. He returned to the firm after serving as U.S. Secretary of Labor from September 2019 to January 2021.
Mr. Scalia has a nationally-prominent practice in two areas: Labor and employment law, and advice and litigation regarding the regulatory obligations of federal administrative agencies. He also has extensive appellate experience. Federal regulatory actions he has challenged include the SEC’s “proxy access” rule; the CFTC’s “position limits’” rule; MetLife’s designation as “too big to fail” by the Financial Services Oversight Council; the Labor Department’s “fiduciary” rule; and OSHA’s “cooperative compliance program.”
As Labor Secretary, Mr. Scalia engaged at the highest level with national employment policy and matters affecting the financial services industry and international trade, overseeing the enforcement and administration of more than 180 federal employment laws covering more than 150 million workers and 10 million workplaces. He also served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. He was closely involved in the drafting and implementation of the CARES Act and other coronavirus-related legislation. Laws administered by the Labor Department also include the workplace safety requirements of OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, federal minimum wage and overtime protections, the anti-discrimination requirements applicable to federal contractors, and ERISA’s protection of the more than $11 trillion held in employee retirement plans and health plans.
Mr. Scalia served from 2002 to 2003 as Solicitor of the U.S. Department of Labor, with responsibility for all Labor Department litigation and legal advice on rulemakings and administrative law. He is the only person to have served as both Solicitor and Secretary of Labor.
He also served at the U.S. Department of Justice as a Special Assistant to the Attorney General, receiving the Department’s Edmund J. Randolph Award in 1993.
In private practice, Mr. Scalia has represented employers in high-profile matters under the National Labor Relations Act and in class actions and collective actions under Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, ERISA, and federal and state wage hour laws. He has extensive experience in federal district court, the courts of appeals, and in the arbitration of employment disputes. He has been a leading authority on “whistleblower” investigations and litigation since the 2002 enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Mr. Scalia also counsels employers on reductions-in-force and the proper conduct of harassment and discrimination investigations. He has provided pro bono representation to workers in discrimination matters, wrongful separation disputes, and other matters.
Mr. Scalia is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a federal agency that makes recommendations to Congress and the Executive Branch on ways to improve the administrative process. He is the author of more than 30 articles and papers on labor and employment law, administrative law, and other subjects. Among other accolades, he has been named an “Employment MVP,” a “Securities MVP,” and an “Appellate MVP” by Law360. The National Law Journal recognized Mr. Scalia as a “Visionary” for his litigation against financial regulatory agencies, and the Nation magazine has called him a “fearsome litigator.” He has been a Lecturer in labor and employment law at the University of Chicago Law School.
Mr. Scalia graduated cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. He graduated With Distinction from the University of Virginia in 1985 and was a speechwriter for Education Secretary William J. Bennett before attending law school. Mr. Scalia and his wife Trish have seven children.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Of Counsel, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
John focuses his practice on labor and employment litigation and counseling employers on mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, downsizing, plant relocations, union representation elections, labor negotiations, strikes and lockouts, NLRB unfair labor practices, arbitration, wage and hour, wrongful discharge and equal employment. John, a former NLRB General Counsel and Labor Department official, was selected as a global leader in the field of employment & labor law in The International Who's Who of Labor and Employment Lawyers by Law Business Research, The Best Lawyers in America, and Super Lawyers.
John earned his B.A. from Brown University and both his J.D. and LL.M. from Georgetown.
Attorney at Law
James P. Scanlan is an attorney specializing in the use of statistics in litigation. He has published about 60 articles on legal or public policy issues. About half have pertained to the use of statistics in the law and the social and medical sciences, especially regarding the patterns by which standard measures of differences between outcome rates tend to be systematically affected by the prevalence of an outcome. Most notably, the rarer an outcome the greater tends to be the relative difference in experiencing and the smaller tends to be the relative difference in avoiding it, a pattern termed “Scanlan’s Rule” by scholars in the UK. Thus, for example, improvements in health or healthcare tend to decrease relative differences in favorable health outcomes, while increasing relative differences in the corresponding adverse outcomes; increasing loan approval rates tends to decrease relative differences in approval rates while increasing relative differences in rejection rates. Without recognizing this and related patterns it is not possible to soundly interpret data on group differences in outcome rates.
CEO, Sharf & Associates
As EEOC's Chief Psychologist in the mid-1970s, Jim drafted the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures He subsequently returned to government to serve as Special Assistant to EEOC's Chairman for whom he drafted the "race norming" prohibition in the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
Jim has successfully defended the validity generalization (VG) of measures of cognitive ability (Taylor v. James River Corp., 1989 WL 165953 (S.D. Ala. 1989; McCoy v. Willamette Industries, Inc. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Savannah Dicision, Civil Action No. CV401-075 (2001)) - his VG reasoning having been affirmed by the Fifth Circuit (Bernard v. Gulf Oil Corp., 890 F.2d. 735, 744 (5th Cir. 1989). Jim has also successfully defended validity generalization challenged by OFCCP (TIMKEN) and EEOC (SMECO).
For four years, Jim was industrial psychology's expert writing the licensing exam required of all psychologists in the U.S. and Canada. Jim was awarded the M. Scott Myers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace by the Society for Industrial/ Organizational Psychology for developing the valid, legally defensible employment tests used by TSA to hire fifty-thousand airport security screeners.
With Metrics Reporting, Inc., Jim and the Competency Validation Center team are now partnering with the Hope Street Group nonprofit network both to document and to assess legally defensible, job-related competencies in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors. GOALS: Employers will be able to communicate Talent Supply Chain competencies; Individuals will accumulate stackable credentials documenting their competencies; and Talent Suppliers will align competency-based education with employer requirements.
Senior Legal Counsel, Pacific Legal Foundation
Before becoming an attorney, James had been a productive member of society working as an exploration geologist in the late 1970s throughout the southwestern United States. However, after several years of dealing with irrational government bureaucrats and environmental policies untethered from reality, James decided that what the world needs is more lawyers — if they are willing to fight for rationality in regulatory regimes, property rights, and liberty.
James attended the University of Arizona College of Law in Tucson, where he served as an editor for the Law Review and received a J.D. degree in 1983. He had previously received a Masters degree in geological sciences from Brown University and an undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in New York. James received the Professional Achievement Award from the University of Arizona Alumni Association in 2018.
James has worked with Pacific Legal Foundation since 1983, litigating cases from Alaska to Florida. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group’s Executive Committee, a member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, and an honorary member of Owners Counsel of America, an organization comprised of eminent domain attorneys who represent property owners. The Owners Counsel awarded James its Crystal Eagle award in 2013. In 2022, James was awarded the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize at the William & Mary College of Law. The prize is awarded annually to an individual whose work has advanced the cause of property rights and has contributed to the overall awareness of the important role property rights occupy in the broader scheme of individual liberty.
In 2001, James successfully argued a major property rights case, Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, before the United States Supreme Court, a case which affirmed that rights in regulated property do not disappear when land is bought and sold. He has written extensively on all aspects of property rights and environmental law and frequently speaks on these subjects throughout the nation.
When James is not suing the government he enjoys skiing faster than he should, bicycling, hiking, swimming, and spending quality time with his wife, family, and grandchild.
Mr. Burling’s book Nowhere to Live: The Hidden Story of America’s Housing Crisis is available now on Amazon.
James is a member of the bar only in the states of Alaska and California.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Of Counsel, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
John focuses his practice on labor and employment litigation and counseling employers on mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, downsizing, plant relocations, union representation elections, labor negotiations, strikes and lockouts, NLRB unfair labor practices, arbitration, wage and hour, wrongful discharge and equal employment. John, a former NLRB General Counsel and Labor Department official, was selected as a global leader in the field of employment & labor law in The International Who's Who of Labor and Employment Lawyers by Law Business Research, The Best Lawyers in America, and Super Lawyers.
John earned his B.A. from Brown University and both his J.D. and LL.M. from Georgetown.
Attorney at Law
James P. Scanlan is an attorney specializing in the use of statistics in litigation. He has published about 60 articles on legal or public policy issues. About half have pertained to the use of statistics in the law and the social and medical sciences, especially regarding the patterns by which standard measures of differences between outcome rates tend to be systematically affected by the prevalence of an outcome. Most notably, the rarer an outcome the greater tends to be the relative difference in experiencing and the smaller tends to be the relative difference in avoiding it, a pattern termed “Scanlan’s Rule” by scholars in the UK. Thus, for example, improvements in health or healthcare tend to decrease relative differences in favorable health outcomes, while increasing relative differences in the corresponding adverse outcomes; increasing loan approval rates tends to decrease relative differences in approval rates while increasing relative differences in rejection rates. Without recognizing this and related patterns it is not possible to soundly interpret data on group differences in outcome rates.
CEO, Sharf & Associates
As EEOC's Chief Psychologist in the mid-1970s, Jim drafted the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures He subsequently returned to government to serve as Special Assistant to EEOC's Chairman for whom he drafted the "race norming" prohibition in the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
Jim has successfully defended the validity generalization (VG) of measures of cognitive ability (Taylor v. James River Corp., 1989 WL 165953 (S.D. Ala. 1989; McCoy v. Willamette Industries, Inc. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Savannah Dicision, Civil Action No. CV401-075 (2001)) - his VG reasoning having been affirmed by the Fifth Circuit (Bernard v. Gulf Oil Corp., 890 F.2d. 735, 744 (5th Cir. 1989). Jim has also successfully defended validity generalization challenged by OFCCP (TIMKEN) and EEOC (SMECO).
For four years, Jim was industrial psychology's expert writing the licensing exam required of all psychologists in the U.S. and Canada. Jim was awarded the M. Scott Myers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace by the Society for Industrial/ Organizational Psychology for developing the valid, legally defensible employment tests used by TSA to hire fifty-thousand airport security screeners.
With Metrics Reporting, Inc., Jim and the Competency Validation Center team are now partnering with the Hope Street Group nonprofit network both to document and to assess legally defensible, job-related competencies in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors. GOALS: Employers will be able to communicate Talent Supply Chain competencies; Individuals will accumulate stackable credentials documenting their competencies; and Talent Suppliers will align competency-based education with employer requirements.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Of Counsel, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
John focuses his practice on labor and employment litigation and counseling employers on mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, downsizing, plant relocations, union representation elections, labor negotiations, strikes and lockouts, NLRB unfair labor practices, arbitration, wage and hour, wrongful discharge and equal employment. John, a former NLRB General Counsel and Labor Department official, was selected as a global leader in the field of employment & labor law in The International Who's Who of Labor and Employment Lawyers by Law Business Research, The Best Lawyers in America, and Super Lawyers.
John earned his B.A. from Brown University and both his J.D. and LL.M. from Georgetown.
Attorney at Law
James P. Scanlan is an attorney specializing in the use of statistics in litigation. He has published about 60 articles on legal or public policy issues. About half have pertained to the use of statistics in the law and the social and medical sciences, especially regarding the patterns by which standard measures of differences between outcome rates tend to be systematically affected by the prevalence of an outcome. Most notably, the rarer an outcome the greater tends to be the relative difference in experiencing and the smaller tends to be the relative difference in avoiding it, a pattern termed “Scanlan’s Rule” by scholars in the UK. Thus, for example, improvements in health or healthcare tend to decrease relative differences in favorable health outcomes, while increasing relative differences in the corresponding adverse outcomes; increasing loan approval rates tends to decrease relative differences in approval rates while increasing relative differences in rejection rates. Without recognizing this and related patterns it is not possible to soundly interpret data on group differences in outcome rates.
CEO, Sharf & Associates
As EEOC's Chief Psychologist in the mid-1970s, Jim drafted the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures He subsequently returned to government to serve as Special Assistant to EEOC's Chairman for whom he drafted the "race norming" prohibition in the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
Jim has successfully defended the validity generalization (VG) of measures of cognitive ability (Taylor v. James River Corp., 1989 WL 165953 (S.D. Ala. 1989; McCoy v. Willamette Industries, Inc. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Savannah Dicision, Civil Action No. CV401-075 (2001)) - his VG reasoning having been affirmed by the Fifth Circuit (Bernard v. Gulf Oil Corp., 890 F.2d. 735, 744 (5th Cir. 1989). Jim has also successfully defended validity generalization challenged by OFCCP (TIMKEN) and EEOC (SMECO).
For four years, Jim was industrial psychology's expert writing the licensing exam required of all psychologists in the U.S. and Canada. Jim was awarded the M. Scott Myers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace by the Society for Industrial/ Organizational Psychology for developing the valid, legally defensible employment tests used by TSA to hire fifty-thousand airport security screeners.
With Metrics Reporting, Inc., Jim and the Competency Validation Center team are now partnering with the Hope Street Group nonprofit network both to document and to assess legally defensible, job-related competencies in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors. GOALS: Employers will be able to communicate Talent Supply Chain competencies; Individuals will accumulate stackable credentials documenting their competencies; and Talent Suppliers will align competency-based education with employer requirements.
Counsel, Ford & Harrison LLP
Frank has successfully represented national retailers, health care providers, and various other public and private employers in matters arising under Title VII, the ADA, FMLA, ADEA, USERRA, and various other federal and state statutes.
He has extensive litigation experience in many different forums, and he has helped many clients prevail on summary judgment and at trial. Frank frequently serves as a faculty member at employment law seminars, and he has published articles in the ABA Employment Law Newsletter, the Tennessee Bar Journal, and the University of Memphis Law Review. He graduated from the University of Memphis School of Law with honors where he also received special recognition for his performance in moot court and mock trial competitions.
Of Counsel, Fisher & Phillips, LLP
Greg Grisham has over 25 years of successful experience counseling and representing employers in all aspects of workplace law in Tennessee and across the United States.
He has helped employers avoid claims, charges and lawsuits with a focus on preventative practices. Preventative practices include counseling in situations involving discipline, termination, demotion, promotion and other workplace changes in the terms and conditions of employment, harassment investigations, wage and hour compliance, FMLA Compliance, Reasonable Accommodation assessment, supervisor training and the review of employment policies and procedures. In addition, Greg's practice includes the representation of business entities subject to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act in Public Accommodation cases.
Greg has successfully litigated hundreds of administrative charges, employment lawsuits, and arbitration demands on behalf of employers, including federal and state law claims alleging discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, defamation, invasion of privacy, breach of contract, wage and hour violations and ERISA violations, among others. He also represents employers before the National Labor Relations Board in unfair labor practice proceedings. He represents employers in the enforcement of post-employment restrictive covenants such as non-compete, non-solicitation and non-disclosure agreements and related trade secret litigation. Greg's practice also includes the defense of property owners and property management companies in federal and state Housing Discrimination charges and litigation. He also advises Tennessee Public Charter Schools on education law and workplace compliance matters.
Greg has extensive experience working with insurance carriers and their insureds in the defense of EPLI claims. He is a regular speaker at public seminars on workplace law issues and has authored numerous articles on a variety of labor and employment law related topics.
Greg holds an AV Preeminent Peer Review rating from Martindale-Hubbell and has been selected for inclusion in Mid-South Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers in America for Employment Litigation-Management side. Greg was elected as a 2016 Fellow to the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and has been selected to the “Top 20 Lawyers in Traditional Labor & Employment Law” list in conjunction with Human Resource Executive Magazine and LawDragon’s 2017 and 2018 “Most Powerful Employment Attorneys” lists and specialty guides. Greg was also named a Fellow in the American Bar Foundation in 2017.
Small Dinner Event Featuring Eugene Scalia
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