Charles D. Ferris

Charles Daniel Ferris (April 9, 1933 – February 16, 2024) was an American lawyer and government official. A longtime staffer for Majority Leader Mike Mansfield on the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, he played a key role in the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation.

Following Mansfield's retirement, Ferris briefly worked for House Speaker Tip O'Neill before being nominated by President Jimmy Carter to chair the Federal Communications Commission in 1977. He would serve for the remainder of Carter's term. During his tenure, the agency initiated a program of nationwide telecommunications deregulation, which was later continued during the Reagan administration.

Early life and education Ferris was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts to Henry Joseph and Mildred Mary (née MacDonald) Ferris. His father worked for Boston's metropolitan transit authority and his mother as a telegrapher for Western Union. He attended Boston College High School and Boston College, leaving the latter in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts in physics.

Legislative work From 1963 to 1977 he served as associate general counsel and later general counsel to the United States Senate Democratic Policy Committee. While most scholars look the term of Reagan appointee Mark S. Fowler as the beginning of telecommunications deregulation, deregulation actually began with Ferris. The most significant effect Ferris had on the FCC was shifting the commission's reasoning from legal and technical to an economic one. He retired in 2013.