Ralph Neas

Neas is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post. Several weeks before the 2016 presidential election, for example, he warned in "The Supreme Court Really Matters" that "If Donald Trump becomes president and names justices in the mold of Clarence Thomas, as he has said he would, a solid right-wing majority on the Court would turn back the constitutional clock nearly 80 years, overturning dozens of well-established Supreme Court decisions protecting fundamental constitutional rights and liberties and upholding the constitutionality of landmark laws based on the Court's interpretation of the Constitution's Commerce Clause. And conversely, several recent Court decisions that allow unlimited money into the electoral process, limit gun safety, and undermine the Voting Rights Act, could be enshrined for decades."

On September 12, 2011, Neas became President and CEO of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) which represents the manufacturers and distributors of finished generic pharmaceuticals. As stated by GPhA's Board Chairman in 2013, GPhA's mission is "to be on the forefront of increasing access to affordable medicines for all consumers". Neas and GPhA played a leadership role in protecting the Hatch-Waxman Act; enacting the Generic Drug User Fees Act; promoting and defending biosimilars at the national and state levels; and making sure that international trade agreements did not favor manufacturers of brand medicines and biologics;

Neas has made more than 50 appearances on C-SPAN. In 2009, along with Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Ver) and Arlen Specter (R and then D-Pa), and conservative activist Manny Miranda Neas was the subject of a film documentary entitled Advise and Dissent; In 2014-2016, Neas was featured in a play by Anthony Giardina, "City of Conversation", at the Lincoln Center in New York, the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C, and in theaters in other parts of the United States.

In late 2007, Neas became active in the resurgent health care reform movement, becoming senior advisor to the president of the National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC), a non-partisan coalition of more than 80 national organizations (representing consumer groups, medical societies, civil rights groups, small and large businesses, civil right groups, pension funds, disability senior citizens unions and senior citizen and good government organizations) In February 2009, Neas became the CEO of NCHC to help lead the final push for the Affordable Care Act, focusing on system-wide reform, quality health care, cost containment, and the need for bipartisanship. Neas also worked closely with the generic pharmaceutical industry to convey the importance of promoting generics as a critical cost saving and pro-consumer strategy to ensure a sustainable health care system.

William T. Taylor, former General Counsel and Staff Director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and then an LCCR executive committee member, notes in his memoirs, The Passion of My Times: An Advocate's Fifty-Year Journey in the Civil Rights Movement (2004), that Neas "seemed an unlikely choice [because] he was a white male Catholic Republican who had gone to Notre Dame, where he devoted himself to becoming an officer in the ROTC."

In addition, Neas helped put together civic engagement partnerships to recruit and manage 25,000 volunteers in 2004 for the non-partisan and nationally recognized Election Protection program (to help ensure every vote counts), to direct non-partisan programs that registered 525,000 African and Latino voters in three years, and to establish youth leadership development programs across the country (Young People For and Young Elected Officials).

Neas was named in 2004 one of Vanity Fair magazine's "Best Stewards of the Environment." In May 2008, the national Legal Times designated Neas one of the 30 "Champions of the Law" over the past three decades.

In late 1999, Neas was named the President and CEO of People For the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation. For eight years, Neas helped lead national efforts to preserve an independent and fair judiciary; to protect civil rights and civil liberties; and to defend and reform our public schools.

In 1998, Neas ran against incumbent Republican Representative Connie Morella in Maryland's 8th Congressional District (composed primarily of the suburbs northwest of Washington, D.C.). Morella defeated Neas 60% to 40%.

Neas served as executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; president and CEO of People For the American Way (PFAW) and the PFAW Foundation; president and CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care; and president and CEO of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA). He served for eight years as chief legislative assistant to Republican Senators Edward Brooke of Massachusetts and David Durenberger of Minnesota. He remained a member of the Republican Party until October 1996.

Neas pointed out during July 11, 1996 testimony before the House Democratic Caucus, Committee on Organization Study and Review regarding Bipartisan Cooperation in Congress, "the average final passage vote on these laws was 85%" in both the House and Senate—"a landmark [to] bipartisan coalition building."

Senator Edward Kennedy, in 1995, in a Senate floor statement, called Neas "the 101st Senator for Civil Rights." That same week, Senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-Il)—the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate—called Neas "one of our nation's foremost civil rights leaders."

Senator Edward Kennedy, in a 1995 Senate floor statement, described Neas as the "101st Senator for Civil Rights." Neas was, award-winning historian Gary May points out in Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy (2013), the LCCR's "first full-time Executive Director."

In addition, Neas was named one of the nation's most influential advocates by the National Journal ("150 Americans Who Make a Difference", June, 1986), Regardie's Magazine (1990), and U.S. News & World Report ("The New American Establishment", February 8, 1988). On October 9, 1987, Neas was named ABC World News' "Person of the Week" for his leadership role opposing the Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination

Neas married Katherine Beh in 1988, and their daughter Maria was born in 1999.

He was chair of the Block Bork Coalition in 1987. "Ralph Neas assembled and led an extraordinary nationwide coalition which successfully opposed the nomination because of Judge Bork's hostility to protecting the constitutional rights and liberties of all Americans," Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) later told the U.S. Senate.

From 1981 through 1995, Neas served as Executive Director of the nonpartisan Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the legislative arm of the civil rights movement. Neas coordinated successful national campaigns that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1991; the Americans with Disabilities Act; the Civil Rights Restoration Act; the Fair Housing Act Amendments of 1988; the Japanese American Civil Liberties Act; the preservation of the Executive Order on Affirmative Action (1985–1986 and 1995–1996); and the 1982 Voting Right Act Extension. Final passage on all these laws averaged 85% in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; in addition, another 15 Leadership Conference on Civil Rights legislative priorities were enacted into law in the 1981–1995 period.

Between 1979 and 2016, both the New York Times and the Washington Post cited Neas several hundred times. The Wall Street editorial pages have discussed Neas in more than 45 editorials and op-eds.

In early 1979, Neas received last rites from a Roman Catholic priest after the onset of near-total paralysis which was caused by Guillain–Barré syndrome (also known as "French Polio.") After nearly five months in the hospital, much of it on a respirator in the intensive care unit, he recovered, and cofounded the Guillain Barre Syndrome Foundation, whose primary focus is on families affected by the disease—which in 2016 was linked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Zika virus.

Neas' work in the U.S. Senate spanned eight years, during which he focused primarily on civil rights, including the 1975 extension and expansion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the protection of Title IX, reproduction rights, and Title VI and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Neas also worked on the Watergate scandal, health care, and ethics reform. While with Senator Durenberger, in 1979–1980 he conceived and drafted the "Women's Economic Equity Act," parts of which were enacted during the Reagan and Bush Administrations.

Neas was, active duty and reserve, in the US Army (1968–1976). In late 1971, he joined the Congressional Research Service's American Law Division at the Library of Congress as a legislative attorney on civil rights. In January 1973, he was hired as a legislative assistant to Republican Senator Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts, eventually becoming the Senator's chief legislative assistant. He stayed with Senator Brooke until his defeat in 1978, at which time he accepted a job as chief legislative assistant to Senator David Durenberger of Minnesota—also a Republican.

Neas graduated from Marmion Military Academy (Aurora, Illinois) in 1964. He earned a B.A. with honors from the University of Notre Dame in 1968; and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1971.

Ralph G. Neas (born May 17, 1946) is an American civil rights activist and executive. He is best known for directing a series of national campaigns to strengthen and protect civil rights laws during the Reagan and Bush presidencies. He is also known for chairing the national coalition that helped defeat the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork.

Neas was born on May 17, 1946, in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1955, the Neas family moved from New England to St. Charles, Illinois where Neas' father, Ralph, Sr., began a career as a salesman for the American Brass Company. Growing up in St. Charles, a town of approximately 12,000 people 40 miles west of Chicago, with one African American family, and attending Marmion Military Academy, a high school run by Benedictine monks and U.S. Army personnel, Neas had little direct contact with a rapidly changing political world.