North Carolina Supreme Court Election
What you need to know about the North Carolina Supreme Court election
It’s the most important election on your ballot!
North Carolina Supreme Court Election
North Carolina elects their state supreme court justices by partisan election for eight-year terms. This means candidates appear with a party affiliation next to their name on the ballot. On November 3, one seat on the state supreme court is up for election. There are two candidates, one Democrat and one Republican, running for the seat. These justices will be in the partisan section of your ballot.
Vote for Justice Anita Earls by Tuesday, November 3
While serving on the court for the last eight years, Justice Anita Earls has protected every individual’s constitutional rights. She has been a fierce, lifelong advocate for civil rights and equal treatment under the law and a powerful voice of dissent for the people on the bench. Justice Earls is North Carolina’s best chance at justice for all and at building a North Carolina that is for the people, not corporate or wealthy and powerful interests.
Justice Anita Earls is the right choice to defend your constitutional rights and keep communities safe in North Carolina!
Justice Anita Earls is a principled jurist who has protected North Carolinians’ constitutional rights throughout her legal career, including her time on the supreme court since her election in 2018. Before joining the bench, Justice Earls advocated for the people and advanced civil rights throughout her legal career. She began her career as a civil rights attorney at Ferguson, Chambers & Sumter, the firm founded by civil rights leader Julius Chambers. She then worked at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she led a division of the Civil Rights Division and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. After a brief time in Washington, D.C., she returned to North Carolina, worked at the Center for Civil Rights at UNC School of Law, and then founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, where she fought for every North Carolinian’s access to the ballot and for underrepresented communities.
As a civil rights attorney, Earls fought to protect every North Carolinian’s right to vote and challenged laws that sought to restrict access to the ballot. Earls fought against restrictive voter ID laws that would have negatively impacted some of North Carolina’s most vulnerable residents, like Alberta Currie, who was born at home and did not have a birth certificate. Because of this, Currie was ineligible to obtain a driver’s license and could not vote under North Carolina’s voter ID law. Earls and Currie successfully challenged the law. While at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Earls also challenged racially gerrymandered voter maps in North Carolina. The groups contesting the maps ultimately prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court, securing fair representation.
On the court, Justice Earls has been a critical voice of dissent against the Republican majority’s dramatic rollback of constitutional rights. Earlier this year, the Republican majority rolled back decades of precedent that underpinned the remedy for disparities in public education funding across the state by revisiting the Leandro case, which ordered that over $1.75 billion be distributed across the state to alleviate the disparate public education funding between counties. In its decision revisiting Leandro, the Republican majority capitulated on the court’s order requiring that every North Carolina child have equal access to a sound and basic public education. Justice Earls and Justice Allison Riggs dissented from the majority, finding that the reversal of the funding plan “threatens constitutional rights of all stripes.” In May of this year, the Republicans on the court rubber-stamped a decision to raise electric rates for customers in the state’s western and central regions. Justice Earls argued that the decision and the rate hike itself were “quite plainly unlawful and arbitrary.”
Justice Earls’ experience as a civil rights advocate shone when she authored Holmes v. Moore, a 2022 decision from the court that struck down a voter ID law, finding it racially discriminatory. However, shortly after the court flipped control in 2023, the new conservative majority revisited the case and another, Harper v. Hall (I), which struck down an extreme partisan gerrymander. When the court reheard the cases, it shockingly reversed its decisions in both Holmes and Harper (III), thus overturning precedent. In one of her dissents, Justice Earls called out the conservative majority’s attack on the rule of law as an “unconvincing façade that only parrots democratic values in an attempt to defend its decision.”
Justice Earls’ opponent is former state representative and speaker pro tempore Sarah Stevens. Serving nine terms in the legislature, Stevens has been either the architect of or connected to every attack on voting rights and personal freedoms in North Carolina for nearly two decades. Stevens’ most pervasive attacks have been on access to the ballot. She is responsible for legislation that created more restrictive ID requirements, reduced early voting periods, and limited the state board’s ability to regulate how elections should be held. Stevens also voted to support a 12-week abortion ban in the state and make it easier for insurance companies to deny coverage.
It is critical that all eligible voters vote and support Justice Earls. Her opponent, Sarah Stevens, has worked to take away North Carolina’s rights at every single level. Justice Earls, however, defended your rights every day as a civil rights attorney and throughout her time on the bench as a supreme court justice.
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Paid for by Alliance for Justice Action Campaign, www.afjactioncampaign.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
