North Carolina’s Supreme Court currently has a 5-to-2 Republican majority, and just one of those seats will be on the ballot this November. Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, faces former N.C. Rep. Sarah Stevens, a Republican who stepped down from the legislature earlier this year.
Democrats hope that keeping Earls in her seat will make it easier to flip the court majority when three more seats are up for grabs in 2028.
Earls is a former civil rights attorney who founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. She’s seeking her second eight-year term on the state’s highest court.
She told the WUNC Politics Podcast she’s concerned that the court’s GOP majority has revisited and overturned previous rulings on issues like partisan redistricting, voter ID and the Leandro education funding case.
"It hadn't happened in our court in over the 200-year history of the North Carolina Supreme Court that the mere change in the personnel would then lead the court to rehear a case, the same case that it had already decided," she said.
But Stevens says it’s the court’s previous Democratic majority — including Earls — who went too far in overturning actions by the legislature. She argues that Earls has been an "activist" judge.
Stevens recently stepped down from the state House after 17 years, including several terms as speaker pro tem.
"If you have one person or a group of five or six uber-liberals who've decided they don't like that law and they're going to make it something different, that's wrong," she told the WUNC Politics Podcast. "That's not their lane. It's not what they're supposed to be doing."
Stevens hasn’t served as a judge before in her 40-year career as an attorney based in Mount Airy. Earls argues that Stevens would be more likely to side with the legislature when its actions are challenged in court.
"The court's function is to make sure that both the executive and the legislature are held accountable to the guarantees in the state constitution, and I think that's a different view than my opponent, and certainly than the chief justice (Republican Paul Newby), who posit their view is that the legislature is supreme," Earls said.
WUNC asked Stevens how she’d handle any potential conflicts of interest if the legislature’s actions come before the Supreme Court.
"I think if it's something I personally did, I would recuse myself," she said. "If it's something I simply voted for or voted against, I would consider both sides of the argument."
Fundraising advantages, dark money ads
Stevens’ campaign has struggled to keep up with Earls in fundraising. As of July, the Democrat had raised more than $4 million, while Stevens had raised about $300,000.
And this month, a left-leaning dark money group called N.C. Families First launched what it says will be a multi-million-dollar ad campaign against Stevens. One of the ads claims that Stevens "actually fought against legislation to protect children from sexual predators."
The ad references a 2019 bill that expanded the statute of limitations for sexual abuse crimes against children. Stevens was among several Republicans and Democrats who voted against an early version of the bill in the House, but she voted yes during the final unanimous vote.
She says the ads are inaccurate. "They didn't either understand the process of the General Assembly or they didn't find where the bills, in fact, were done," she said.
One of the ads also points out that Stevens represented a high-school teacher who pleaded guilty in 2003 to sexual misconduct involving teenagers. But Stevens says it's unfair to attack a candidate based on who they represented as a criminal defense attorney.
"Everyone who is charged with a crime is entitled to representation," she said. "My idea of representing criminal defendants is: Did they get a fair hearing? Did they get fair procedure followed? Did they meet all the requirements of the statute?"
N.C. Families First describes itself as "a 527 nonprofit organization that believes in making North Carolina the greatest state in the nation." It has previously backed Democrats in other races and has ties to groups like the N.C. Association of Educators.
Stevens blasts 'racial equity' recommendations
Stevens is critical of Earls’ work as co-chair of former Gov. Roy Cooper’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice. The group recommended eliminating cash bail for misdemeanors and replacing school resource officers with mental health professionals.
"There's like a 20-some page report to try to deal with racial equity in the court system, which should be policy decisions of the General Assembly, not even of the governor," Stevens said, adding that Chief Justice Paul Newby discouraged Earls from participating in the executive branch project.
But Earls defends her work on equity issues in the court system, which she says is an important part of being a judge.
"In my view, part of that responsibility is to ensure that we are addressing questions of equity, and those may be along racial lines," she said. "They may be along gender lines. There may be inequities based on income and resources."
Listen to the WUNC News' full interviews with Earls and Stevens on the WUNC Politics Podcast.
Three other judicial seats on statewide ballots
In addition to the Supreme Court race, voters will choose three judges for the state Court of Appeals.
Republican wins in those races would mean GOP judges holding all 15 seats on that court. All three of the appeals court seats are currently held by Democrats, and two of the incumbents are seeking re-election.
Here's who's running in those races:
- Judge John Arrowood, a Democrat, faces Republican Michael Byrne, an administrative law judge from Cary.
- Incumbent Judge Toby Hampson, a Democrat, faces Republican George Bell, a Superior Court judge from Charlotte.
- There’s no incumbent running for Seat 3 (currently held by Democratic Judge Allegra Collins); voters will choose between Republican Craig Collins, a Superior Court judge from Gaston County, and Democrat Christine Walczyk, a District Court judge from Wake County.
