If you’re a private equity fund and you don’t like to be regulated, what do you do? You hire late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s son Eugene Scalia, a former Trump labor secretary who’s now the go-to litigator for the $17 trillion private equity industry.

Rather than litigate on behalf of these clients in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which normally has jurisdiction over the financial industry, Scalia has helped several private equity fund managers create a nonprofit with an address in Austin, Texas. The organization’s main purpose is to bring any litigation on behalf of its private equity members to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, the court most hostile to financial regulation.

The plan was a classic case of forum shopping, and it has paid off for Scalia and his new client. Earlier this month, a three-judge 5th Circuit panel made up entirely of Republican appointees overturned the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new anti-fraud regulations in their entirety and set forth principles that could eventually lead to the gutting of financial and other regulations from the SEC. With little discussion, the court held that it was the proper venue because the plaintiff association was incorporated in Texas and has an office in Austin.

The agency initiated the overturned rule under the leadership of Biden-appointed Chair Gary Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs partner who, in a........

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