About
Scott Shepard, general counsel at the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), directs the center’s Free Enterprise Project. He was previously a policy director with the Yankee Institute—a member of the right-wing State Policy Network—and manager of the Water Law Project at the Pacific Legal Foundation, which focuses on maintaining private property water rights.
Shepard has held a number of visiting lecturer positions at law schools, including at the University of Illinois–Chicago, Wake Forest, and Vanderbilt. At Vanderbilt, he was an Olin-Searle Fellow, a fellowship funded by the ultra-conservative and libertarian Federalist Society. Earlier in his career, he clerked for a federal circuit court judge and in 2004 worked as an attorney advisor in the Civil Rights Office at the U.S. Department of Education.
Shepard is a columnist at RealClearMarkets and has written legal articles commissioned by Law & Economics and Mercatus centers at George Mason University. Shepard holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Richmond, a master’s from Vanderbilt, and a law degree from the University of Virginia.
Actions
- Signed anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) letter to Fortune 1000 businesses (10/25/24)
- Spoke on the “The Power of the Anti-Woke Right: How Americans Put Radical Companies on the Run” panel at the 2024 Pray Vote Stand Summit alongside Consumers’ Research Senior Fellow Stephen Soukup and Strive Asset Management Executive Vice President Justin Danhof (10/4/24)
- Signed an SFOF-organized letter in support of the Texas Board of Education’s decision to divest $8.5 billion from Blackrock (4/9/24)
- Signed an Advancing American Freedom coalition letter to Congress asking it to “overturn the Biden administration’s dangerous ESG rule through the Congressional Review Act” (2/7/23)
- Spoke on a panel titled “Shareholder Proposals and Voting Your Proxies” at the SFOF 2022 Fall National Meeting led by Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks on “how shareholder proposals are being used to advance a social agenda and what states can do to stop it.” Jerry Bowyer, president of Boyer Research, and Steve Milloy, a senior fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, were also panelists (6/15/22)
- Met with the Idaho legislature’s Joint Interim Committee on Federalism to “discuss” the ESG issue (6/7/22)
- Spoke about “Fighting Woke Inc.” at the CPAC 2022: the Conservative Political Action Conference (2/24/22)
- Presented to SFOF members on a weekly call about NCPPR’s Investor Value Voter Guide 2022 and Balancing the Boardroom Guide (2/2/22)
- Signed an open letter to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink demanding that the asset management firm not take ESG factors into consideration when making investments (4/15/20)