Anderson Clayton Makes an Endorsement, Anita Earls Launches Reelection Bid, and Wiley Nickel Acts the Gentleman

 

A. NC Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton has endorsed Ben Wikler to head the DNC:

B. NC Supreme Court Associate Justice Anita Earls has begun raising money for what is expected to be a fierce reelection fight in 2026. Her new website went live on January 9th.

C. Former NC Congressman Wiley Nickel, whose district was gerrymandered to guarantee a Republican would win, decided against running for his 13th CD seat (now occupied by Republican Brad Knott). Instead, he announced that he would run for Thom Tillis's U.S. Senate seat in 2026. On December 15, he filed a statement of candidacy with the FEC.

Ex-Governor Roy Cooper has pointedly told reporters that his own candidacy for Tillis's seat is definitely "on the table," though he hasn't announced anything concrete yet. But Wiley Nickel, knowing that the much better known Cooper would beat him in a primary, has told Bryan Anderson that he's "waiting in the wings and developing something of a contingency plan should Cooper decide not to run."

Wise move.

Some Justice For Earls

 

“The new members of our court very much see themselves as a conservative bloc. They talk about themselves as ‘the conservatives.’ Their allegiance is to their ideology, not to the institution.”

--Anita Earls, Assoc. Justice, NC Supreme Court

Not Paul Newby but the
authoritarian Savonarola

For saying such things, Justice Anita Earls has been put under investigation -- twice -- for impugning the integrity of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. The leader of "the conservatives," Chief Justice and Savonarola impersonator Paul Newby has had it in for her (a liberal who identifies as Black), and he led the court in promptly reversing decisions that Earl had a big hand in writing about ballot access and partisan gerrymandering -- after "the conservatives" took full power in 2020 and 2022.  In one part of an interview that Justice Earls gave Law 360, she said Newby had quietly disbanded the court’s Commission on Fairness and Equity and eliminated implicit bias training for judges. Newby didn't like it that she pointed that out, though he didn't dispute the accuracy. Even casual observers might note Newby's rigid plantation mind-set against an outspoken woman on the Court who founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in 2007, and whose civil rights advocacy is pure poison for a pious authoritarian. 

Newby had the Judicial Standards Commission under his thumb and could influence retaliation against Earls by threatening sanctions for "her mouth" (though Newby himself has spouted off his biases at more than one conservative rally). But, standby O brethren for a remarkable development -- Newby and the Standards Commission have pulled back their horns, stopped the investigation into Earls's freedom of speech, and dismissed the complaint against her.

Earls responded to this development by dropping the Federal lawsuit she filed six months ago to stop the Standards Commission's harassment. She had asked for an immediate injunction against the investigation as an infringement of her free speech rights, but a Federal judge denied the injunction. Before yesterday, the lawsuit was still pending. The capitulation of Newby's hench-people suggests something approaching a "settlement" between the two sides. And Earls was not the one to flinch.

Obliged to Michael Hewlett and The Assembly for the details. Subscribe to The Assembly!

Anita Earls Fights Back Against the Authoritarians

 

We have questions -- several unaswered questions -- about the news that WUNC broke yesterday afternoon about NC Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls ... that she is being investigated by the Judicial Standards Commission for comments she made to a legal news publication (what? where's a link?) that North Carolina's court system has a "poor track record on diversity and inclusion efforts." According to WUNC, she pointed out "a lack of diversity among judicial clerks and criticized the Supreme Court’s recent decision to disband its Commission on Fairness and Equity."

The Republicans on the Judicial Standards Commission, led by Court of Appeals judges Chris Dillon and Jeff Carpenter, have decided to be deeply offended by Earls' wholly accurate observations and have suggested that such comments by Earls is an unacceptable breach of judicial restraint. Dillon and Carpenter are looking into whether Earls violated confidentiality rules by making public comments "about matters before the court." They also question whether she violated a code of conduct that requires judges to promote "public confidence" in the integrity of the courts.

Apparently, the circus monkeys got on Earls' last nerve, for she has sued the commission to stop harassing her. "Her attorneys wrote that the commission is misinterpreting the code of conduct in an attempt to silence her." “The Commission’s actions in instituting the investigation indicate that it believes that ‘promot[ing] public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary,’ is best accomplished by threatening judges who speak out about what they view as imperfections or defects in the judicial system and who do so in a measured and nuanced manner,” the lawsuit said. “Nothing could be more inimical to the First Amendment.”

Now Acting as Partisan Hit-Men, the Supremes of NC

 

This news broke yesterday afternoon:

Chief Justice Paul Newby.
"You are feeling very sleepy."

RALEIGH -- The newly Republican-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday reversed two decisions made by the same court last year when it had a Democratic majority -- on redistricting and voter ID -- and issued a third ruling denying voting rights for some felons. 

The court under Democratic control had struck down districts drawn by the Republican-led General Assembly on the grounds that they were illegally gerrymandered for partisan reasons. 

The justices had also struck down a 2018 voter ID law, saying it was racially discriminatory. 

A lower court had restored voting rights to people convicted of felonies who were out of prison but remained under state supervision....

NOTE: The majority opinion in the redistricting (gerrymandering) case, Harper v. Hall, runs to 146 pages. The opinion in Holmes v. Moore (the voter ID case) runs to 54 pages. "Among several other decisions, the N.C. Supreme Court also ruled on Community Success Initiative v. Moore, deciding that people with felony convictions who are on parole, probation or post-release supervision are not allowed to vote under the state constitution" (Daily Tar Heel).

Justice Anita Earls' dissent in Harper v. Hall (the gerrymandering case):

Justice Earls

Today, the majority strips the people of this right [their “fundamental right to vote on equal terms”]; it tells North Carolinians that the state constitution and the courts cannot protect their basic human right to self-governance and self-determination. In so doing, the majority ignores the uncontested truths about the intentions behind partisan gerrymandering and erects an unconvincing façade that only parrots democratic values in an attempt to defend its decision. Despite its lofty prose about the need for principled adherence to the state constitution, the majority follows none of these principles today. Nor does the majority even pay passing reference to the anti-democratic nature of extreme partisan gerrymandering. These efforts to downplay the practice do not erase its consequences and the public will not be gaslighted. Our constitution provides that“[a]ll political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of rightoriginates from the people, is founded upon their will only.” N.C. Const. art. I, § 2.But when Republican lawmakers are free to gerrymander redistricting plans withoutconstitutional guardrails to ensure their party’s indefinite political domination, thisconstitutional requirement is abandoned.

What Happened at the NC Supreme Court RE the Voter ID Amendment?

 

Justice Anita Earls

No, the North Carolina Supreme Court did not overturn the voter ID amendment to the state's constitution (which has never been enforced anyway, because of legal challenges). The Court, voting 4-3 along partisan lines, suspended a final decision on the legality of not one but two amendments -- voter ID and an income tax cap -- and sent the case back to the original Wake Superior Court judge who heard it (and who had found the voter ID amendment was unconstitutional because some 28 legislators who wrote it and passed it had been racially gerrymandered into their districts, which were guaranteed to elect them and then to keep them in Raleigh 'til the ending of time). 

The original Superior Court judge has now been ordered to find more facts:

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” the amendment should be invalidated:

Does the voter ID amendment immunize legislators from democratic accountability?

Does the voter ID amendment perpetuate the ongoing exclusion of a category of voters from the political process?

Does the voter ID amendment intentionally discriminate against a particular category of citizens who were also discriminated against in the political process leading to the legislators’ election (redistricting of House and Senate seats)?

If the answer to all the questions is “no,” or if there were not enough legislators elected in unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts to make a difference in getting proposed changes to voters, the amendment must stand. (Lynn Bonner)

In other words, the Democratic majority on the NC Supreme Court, led by Associate Justice Anita Earls, is perfectly prepared to make a new, shattering precedent.

According to law professor Rick Pildes, the Court held that the House and Senate legislators in office due to racial gerrymandering (already identified by district in the Federal law suit against voter ID that went to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020), they absolutely can enact legislation, anything they want to dream up, any repugnant insult to basic human decency. They can also propose constitutional amendments (as the Republican super-majority did in 2018, proposing a total of six constitutional amendments). The one thing they cannot do, according to the Court, is propose amendments that earn a "yes" on the three questions above.

Unprecedented Court action? (if the voter ID amendment ends up invalidated by this court, as seems likely), a big Yes. Professor Nick Stepanopoulos, 'nother law school professor: "This [Earls' opinion] is the remedy that redistricting violations have always logically required — but that courts have been too timid, until now, to impose. An unlawfully constituted legislature shouldn’t be able to make law (at least not law that depends on that illegal composition)."

“We now have a North Carolina Supreme Court decision declaring that our legislature does not have unlimited authority to amend the constitution,” Kym Meyer, a lawyer representing the NAACP, said in an interview. “It’s a huge win on that point.”

So, yeah, it's important what came out of the NC Supreme Court this week, but it ain't over. (And the Republicans are going ape-shite. BergerMoore will manage to get the case in front of the conservatives on the US Supreme Court, you watch!)

NOTE: The case is NAACP v. Moore/Berger. You might remember that the NAACP wanted Justice Phil Berger Jr., defendant Phil Berger’s son, and Justice Tamara Barringer, who voted to approve the constitutional amendments when she was a member of the state Senate, to recuse themselves or be disqualified from hearing the case (see "The Berger Dominion"). In the end, all seven justices participated.

We Have Our Own Roy Moore in North Carolina

Judge Paul Newby,
a partisan Republican

Some Supreme Court justices in some Southern states swing high and swing wide. Roy Moore as chief justice of the Alabama Supremes decided he was God's gift, defied a federal court's order to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments in the state's judiciary building that he placed there because God told him to and then defied the US Supreme Court over same-sex marriage. Because when you have the One True Truth, you don't have to follow the law.

He was legally removed from the Supreme Court of Alabama. He's been in a political snit ever since, running (unsuccessfully) in a US Senate special election last year. He says he'll run again in 2020. He'll run until God Almighty puts him where he knows he deserves to be, in the marble halls of the US Senate.

North Carolina Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Paul Newby is also in a snit ever since Governor Roy Cooper did not appoint him Chief Justice, appointing a black woman in Cheri Beasley instead. Now, through the hilariously inept machinations of Phil Berger and the Republican majority in the General Assembly, Newby is the last remaining Republican on the seven-member state Supreme Court, and boy, is he ever pissed.

He made a campaign speech last Saturday in which he dissed all six of his fellow justices, comparing them to the current Democratic demon-du-jour, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), especially Anita Earls who was elected to the court in last fall's campaign. "Imagine seven 'AOCs' on the state Supreme Court," Newby told the Republican crowd. "Well, folks, we got six," he said to laughs. "It's six to one."

So Newby is running against Chief Justice Cheri Beasley in next year's election. He has the One True Truth behind him, and all those brown women are not going to stop him from bringing Republican partisanship to the high court.

This May Be the Greatest Legacy of North Carolina's 2018 Blue Wave

Democrats Swept All State-Wide Judicial Races in North Carolina

Anita Earls Won Her Seat on the NC Supreme Court!

Anita Earls is a legal rock star. She founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and served as its executive director and became a major warrior against voter suppression and the evils of gerrymandering. She was the lead attorney challenging the gerrymandering of the state, the voter ID law, and other voting restrictions. 

“I passionately believe in the importance of the right to vote, and that an independent judiciary is crucial to the balance of powers necessary to maintain democratic government of, by and for the people,” Earls said. “... In these times, I am seeing how those values are under attack, and I admire the determination of ordinary people who take great risks to stand up for their rights.” 

"...Too often this political process feels like a powerful few rigging the system against a powerless many,” Earls said. “In light of recent attacks on the independence of North Carolina’s judiciary, and on the right of all citizens to cast a ballot that is counted equally, it is clear to me that I have to not just talk the talk, but also must have the courage to walk the walk.”

Earls took 49.48% of the vote against incumbent Republican Barbara Jackson's 34.12%, with the other Republican Chris Anglin drawing 16.39% of the vote. 

The NC Supreme Court now has a 6-3 Democratic majority.

 John Arrowood won reelection to the NC Court of Appeals!

Arrowood won reelection yesterday against his Republican opponent with 50.71% of the vote. 

Arrowood is famous in our household because of the way he was appointed to the bench by Governor Roy Cooper. When Cooper was sworn into office in December of 2016, the Republicans in the General Assembly were facing an unappetizing prospect. Three judges on the Court of Appeals — two of which were Republicans — were going to be forced into mandatory retirement during Governor Cooper’s term, meaning he would get to appoint their replacements. 

The troops under GOP legislators Phil Berger and Tim Moore got busy and came up with a new law reducing the Court of Appeals from 15 to 12 seats, meaning that those mandatory retirements would not be replaced at all. Governor Cooper vetoed that bill in April and before the Republicans could override the veto, Republican Judge Doug McCullough, one of the three facing mandatory retirement, retired suddenly and early to allow Cooper to appoint his replacement before the General Assembly could override that veto. Boom! Cooper appointed John Arrowood of Charlotte to the bench. 

So, naturally, the Berger/Moore machine has put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to give themselves appointment powers over all the judiciary. That constitutional amendment was soundly defeated yesterday. 

Arrowood has more than a quarter-century of legal experience behind him as a lawyer in private practice aside from his two stints on the Court of Appeals. He graduated from the UNC law school at Chapel Hill, clerked for NC Court of Appeals Judge Gerald Arnold, and also served as a staff attorney and head of the Court’s central staff. He was vastly more experienced than his Republican opponent.

Tobias (Toby) Hampson won an open seat on the NC Court of Appeals!

Hampson took 48.71% of the vote against two Republicans who divided the rest of the vote between them. 

Hampson is a Moore County boy who was plucked out for advanced studies during high school at the North Carolina School of Science and Math in Durham in 1994. He went on to earn his law degree in 2002 from Campbell University with multiple honors including a seat on the Law Review. He began his career at the North Carolina Court of Appeals clerking for judges K. Edward Greene, Wanda Bryant, and Bob C. Hunter. He then practiced with Patterson Dilthey in Raleigh focusing on trial and appellate litigation before joining Wyrick, Robbins, Yates & Ponton in Raleigh in 2007, where he now leads the firm’s Appellate Practice group as a full partner. 

Hampson is massively qualified for a seat on the appellate bench. He was named one of the “Top 100 Super Lawyers in North Carolina” (2015, 2017, 2018) by Super Lawyers Magazine. He was a top-rated appellate attorney by North Carolina Super Lawyers — recognized in Appellate Practice (2014-2018) and as a “Rising Star” (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013). He is recognized as “Legal Elite” in the area of appellate law (2018) and “Young Guns” (2010, 2012) by Business North Carolina magazine.

Allegra Collins won an open seat on the NC Court of Appeals!

Collins took the seat with 48.50%. The rest of the vote was divided between a Republican and a Libertarian. 

Collins is both a judicial scholar and an athlete with a pedigree of high-level competition. She represented the United States at the Pan American Games in 1999 and 2003 as a member of the United States Women’s Handball Team. She was a “resident-athlete” at the United States Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, NY, in preparation for the 2003 Pan American Games. She’s played professional team handball in Italy and Germany. She received a full athletic scholarship (tennis) at both UCLA and the College of William and Mary. And she played on the professional tennis circuit, earning a world ranking in doubles. 

In addition to her education at UCLA and William and Mary, she attended Campbell Law School in Raleigh for her J.D. She was no slouch at legal research either: While still a student, she received the I. Beverly Lake Constitutional Law Award for outstanding writing in constitutional law. She served an important apprenticeship under Court of Appeals Judge Linda Stephens, 2007-2010, and she’s established her own practice specializing in appellate cases. 

She knows the Court of Appeals inside-out.

How Desperate Are Republicans About the NC Supreme Court

Barbara Jackson, the Republican
who wants to be the ONLY
Republican

This desperate:

After Republicans in the NC General Assembly finished seizing power from the Constitutional Amendments Publication Commission yesterday, they turned their attention to manipulating the ballot to favor the Republican incumbent running for reelection to the NC Supreme Court this year, Justice Barbara Jackson.

Not making this up: They passed a law, Senate Bill 3, decreeing that the other Republican running for Barbara Jackson's seat, Chris Anglin, would not be listed on the ballot as a Republican. Barbara Jackson will be listed as a Republican. Anita Earls will be listed as a Democrat. But Chris Anglin -- who changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican as a protest, following the law on party-changing that the same Republican General Assembly had passed -- well, Chris Anglin would have no party identification on the ballot at all, but rather a printed, scolding note saying that party affiliation is listed only for candidates who did not change registration 90 days before the end of the filing period. In other words and without naming Chris Anglin, the Republicans flush him down a whirlpool of political retribution for foiling their excellent plans for winning Barbara Jackson.

If this isn't a clear-cut case of denying Chris Anglin due process of law under the 14th Amendment, changing the rules in order to hurt him and hurt him only, then I'd hate to actually see a more clear-cut case. Senate Bill 3 is practically a bill of attainder (outlawed by the US Constitution, incidentally) in that it finds Chris Anglin guilty of the crime of impersonating a Republican and punishes him for it without a trial or any due process.

Chris Anglin, the other
Republican who's been
told he can't be a Republican

(We wrote about Chris Anglin here on July 5th -- if you want background and more primer on the law that the Republicans themselves had passed that made his candidacy not only possible but also kind of inevitable.)

Chris Anglin issued a statement last night following passage of Senate Bill 3:

This evening GOP leaders of the Legislature are once again demonstrating that they have forgotten what it is to be Constitutional Conservatives.

They are so frightened by our campaign and message, that in a stunning act of cowardice, they are taking steps to misrepresent who I am on the ballot. They made the rules, I followed them. This is another example of them changing the rules in the middle of the game. They will stop at nothing to hand pick their judge and undermine our democratic process.

This invites a debate about who decides who is a Republican and what it means to be one. I welcome that.

I chose to run as a Republican for a reason. To be a voice for Republicans who are appalled at these types of shenanigans that attack our rule of law and the checks and balances of our Republic. I’ve just begun the fight.

 I trust that last sentence is a promise that Chris Anglin will sue their pants off.

Anita Earls, the Democrat running for NC Supreme Court

NC Supreme Court Race ... SUPREMELY Important in 2018!

Anita Earls

The filing period for judicial seats in North Carolina has passed, and what some had feared did not come to pass -- a piling on of scores of candidates on the fall ballot because the Republican overlords eliminated judicial primaries. In fact, the lack of primaries for judges just may have bitten the Republican overlords in the butt.

Take the NC Supreme Court seat currently held by Republican Barbara Jackson. She's running again. But so's another last-minute Republican candidate, Christopher Anglin. The lone Democrat, Anita Earls, already seems jet-fueled for the race, and the possibility that Republicans will divide their votes between two contenders opens the path for Earls a little wider.

Anita Earls is a legal rock star. She founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and served as its executive director and became a major warrior against voter suppression and the evils of gerrymandering. She was the lead attorney challenging the gerrymandering of the state, the voter ID law, and other voting restrictions. She's been an announced candidate for the Supreme Court since way back last November.

“I passionately believe in the importance of the right to vote, and that an independent judiciary is crucial to the balance of powers necessary to maintain democratic government of, by and for the people,” Earls said. “... In these times, I am seeing how those values are under attack, and I admire the determination of ordinary people who take great risks to stand up for their rights.”

We've all watched for several years now as the overlords rigged the system, or attempted to, save for the intervention of the courts, and we've held our breath in 2018 as the Republicans threatened the entire judicial system with more gerrymandering and a plan to appoint all judges themselves -- a scheme that did not yet mature into reality. Give 'em time!

"...Too often this political process feels like a powerful few rigging the system against a powerless many,” Earls said. “In light of recent attacks on the independence of North Carolina’s judiciary, and on the right of all citizens to cast a ballot that is counted equally, it is clear to me that I have to not just talk the talk, but also must have the courage to walk the walk.”

There is no race as important as this Supreme Court seat in North Carolina -- except maybe for all the other races this year. Our democracy depends on stopping the drift and restoring the concept of checks and balances.