Flipping the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2028 is one of state Democrats’ top goals. If the party can bring home a win for incumbent Associate Justice Anita Earls this November, it’ll make things just that much easier.
Democrats held four out of seven seats on the court from 2019-2022, but Republicans secured a 5-2 majority in 2023 after winning state judicial races across the board. In 2024, Gov. Roy Cooper appointed Allison Riggs following Democratic Justice Mike Morgan’s retirement. Riggs won the subsequent election over Republican Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes after months of legal battles in state and federal court.
The Supreme Court is the final arbiter on important political fights like redistricting, and the precedents established by its rulings affect future criminal and civil cases across North Carolina. State law also vests other powers in the Supreme Court, such as approving the Utilities Commission’s approval of rate increases for the likes of Duke Energy. Simply choosing what matters to hear is a crucial role for justices. This year, the court is on track to hear about 60 cases. By comparison, the Court of Appeals hears over 1,000 every year. Justices are gatekeepers — and that gate is narrow.
This year, Earls seeks to hold her seat against Republican challenger Sarah Stevens. An Earls victory wouldn’t immediately bring about Supreme Court rulings favorable to Democrats, but it would complete the second of Democrats’ three-step plan. The first step was completed with Riggs’ 2024 victory, and the third step will play out during the 2028 election. With the current makeup, if Earls wins, Democrats will need to take two of the three seats up for election, and if she loses, they’ll need all three.
State Supreme Court races have drawn more money in recent years. According to the most recent reports made public in July, Earls reported raising over $4.4 million to Stevens’ $336,000. But that fundraising gap isn’t bearing out in the polls, which indicate a potentially close race. While Earls seems to have a consistent lead over Stevens, the latest poll conducted by High Point University from Aug. 3-12 shows the incumbent with just a three-point advantage.
The candidates
Earls was a civil rights attorney before becoming an associate justice. In 2007, she founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which according to its website is committed to “fighting alongside Black, Brown and low-income people for healthy environments, a fair justice system, and the fearless defense of voting rights.” She led that organization for a decade before stepping down in 2017 to campaign for her associate justice seat. In November 2018, she bested Republican incumbent Barbara Jackson to earn her first term.
She spent her first four years on the court in a Democratic majority. After changing the balance in 2022, Republican justices set to work undoing recently established precedent. In 2022, justices ruled that partisan gerrymandering was unconstitutional and that the General Assembly had to redraw electoral maps. In 2023, the Republican justices ruled that the legislature has sole discretion over maps, that the court has no say and that the state constitution doesn’t prohibit partisan gerrymandering.
In her dissent, Earls wrote that the court’s 2022 ruling was “vacated by a Republican-controlled Court seeking to ensure that extreme partisan gerrymanders favoring Republicans are established.”
Earls has been active in investigating solutions for issues related to the administration of justice, including on the Equal Access to Justice Commission, where she led a 2020 study on the gap between people’s legal needs and resources available to meet them. Earls also co-chairs the new Commission on Practice Innovation, tasked with addressing the growing problem of legal deserts in the state.
Advocates have criticized a recent move by the Republican-dominated General Assembly they say makes that problem worse. The recently passed state budget redirects $15 million away from the interest on lawyers’ trust accounts, known as IOLTA, on claims that civil legal aid entities have a political agenda. The move reduces access to representation for people in rural areas embroiled in civil matters related to housing, employment and healthcare by curbing resources for entities like Pisgah Legal Services, which operates in Western North Carolina.
Law firms across the state wrote a letter to the justices urging them to advocate against the funding freeze. Earls was one of just two justices to respond to the letter, she said.
“We put in writing our firm support for the IOLTA program and our appreciation of the importance of those funds for ordinary North Carolinians who otherwise won’t know what their rights are and can’t access our court,” she said.
Campaigning was a full-time job for Earls in 2018. Now, her time and attention are occupied by appellate cases. Right now, the court is gearing up for two weeks of oral arguments later this month. Earls said that amounts to about 20 cases and thousands of pages of reading. This means much of her campaigning takes place during evenings and over weekends.
To make sure she had time for her job and running for office, she started hitting the campaign trail early.
“I’ve really been campaigning since January of last year … which means it’s been possible to get across the state,” she said. “I’ve been to a majority of North Carolina’s counties in person. There’s also a lot of other ways to communicate with voters, so I try to make use of Zoom meetings.”
Stevens is an attorney who specializes in family law and announced her candidacy in April of last year. She served almost nine terms in the state House before stepping down in June to run for the Supreme Court.
Although she didn’t speak with The Smoky Mountain News, Stevens did an interview with Carolina Public Press, in which she said some of her friends, including current justices, told her she was “needed” on the court. Such was the impetus for her campaign.
Stevens gained a good deal of clout over her time in the General Assembly, spearheading some of Republicans’ biggest legislative initiatives in the criminal justice realm. She sponsored Iryna’s Law, named for Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee who was stabbed to death on a Charlotte light-rail train. Among other things, the law implemented tougher bond requirements for those charged with violent crimes.
Stevens has never served on the bench. Some have criticized that lack of judicial experience as she seeks a spot on the state’s highest court; however, Earls was in the same position when she ran in 2018. While Earls didn’t speak to Stevens’ bona fides, she did discuss why her time on the court is valuable. From cases involving utility commissions to eminent domain to criminal convictions, the experience she’s gained is not replicable, she argued. Earls also said her experience with civil rights cases prior to becoming a justice sets her apart.
“I argued appellate cases in the Court of Appeals, the North Carolina Supreme Court, the Fourth Circuit, the Eleventh Circuit, the First Circuit. I had a wide range of appellate experience, and that I think it makes a huge difference,” she said.
A politicized bench
North Carolina in 2017 became one of seven states to enact partisan judicial elections.
NCGOP Executive Director Zach Almond said having that “R” or “D” next to candidates gives people one more data point to inform their vote.
“That doesn’t mean the judge is going to say, ‘Oh, I would rule this way’ or ‘I would rule this way,’” Almond said. “But you would like to know if they fundamentally are backers traditionally of the Constitution, if they believe in the law as written.”
Republicans have long held the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as a paragon of conservative jurisprudence. Scalia interpreted the U.S. Constitution through an originalist lens, meaning he considered the meaning of the document when it was adopted instead of opening it up for modern interpretation. This limited scope justified numerous rulings favorable to Republicans.
“Folks do not like an activist judiciary on either side,” Almond said. “They want somebody to interpret the Constitution as written. They see the judiciary as sacred, in a sense.”
Earls’ 2018 campaign was the first Supreme Court race to feature candidates’ parties on the ballot. She seems to think less about whether the world in which she’s campaigning is fair and more about doing her job within that world. Regardless of how partisan affiliation affects the process, she wants to carry out her work in a “nonpartisan fashion.”
“I don’t favor businesses over individuals. I don’t favor the state over the defendant. And I don’t pay attention to political party,” she said. “What matters is what is the law and how does it apply in that particular case.”
However, Republicans have painted Earls as an “activist judge” like those Trump frequently lambasts on the national stage. Almond returned to that theme multiple times in his interview with SMN.
“I think a lot of voters, especially on the Republican side, do realize the importance of judicial races given the leftist activist judiciary they have seen nationally on you know a number of issues,” Almond said.
In a June press release supporting Stevens, an NCGOP spokesman who wasn’t quoted by name specifically mentioned Earls.
“Sarah Stevens has built a career as a common-sense conservative who will uphold the constitutional rights of North Carolinians while radical liberal activist Anita Earls is in the pocket of rich out-of-state donors,” the spokesman said.
Stevens pledged her judicial independence in her interview with Carolina Public Press.
“I’ve seen other opinions from conservative courts going, ‘We don’t like this law, but it’s not up to us to change it,’” Stevens said. “They’ll basically send a message over to the legislature. She just simply cuts that out and says ‘This is what it should be and what it will be.’”
As conversations about judicial independence have played out across the political spectrum, faith in appellate courts has been low. According to the Pew Research Center, in a survey conducted during early July, just over half of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, about 20 percentage points higher than just five years ago.
Earls argues that Democratic justices are more likely to maintain political independence than Republicans, whom she says more frequently rule as a bloc. In a peer-reviewed essay published by the Yale Law Journal in March 2024, using a review of the court’s opinions over recent years to draw her conclusion, she claimed that on the North Carolina Supreme Court, Democrats disagreed far more than the Republicans.
“Prior to January 2023, justices, I would argue, brought a measure of independent thinking to their consideration of the cases and were not simply ruling because they wanted a particular outcome,” she told SMN.
Justices should look at the facts and the law to draw conclusions, and that’s what Earls said she does.
“I believe we need to get back to a court that where each justice understands it’s their job to bring their independent thinking to the issues before the court, and not be beholden to a political ideology,” she said.
Putting in the work
Court of Appeals and Supreme Court elections have been among the top priorities for Republicans and Democrats over the last few even-year election cycles.
In an interview ahead of the 2022 elections, then NCGOP Chair Michael Whatley — now running against Roy Cooper for a U.S. Senate seat — said he’d prioritized judicial elections since he took on that role in 2019. His first meeting upon winning the chairmanship was with Paul Newby, who in less than two years would become the chief justice of the Supreme Court. The two talked about the kinds of campaigns that can win statewide judicial races. Within three years, Republicans would gain a majority on what was then a 6-1 Democratic Supreme Court.
“What we did was two things,” Whatley then said. “First, we put all the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals candidates together as a slate. We want to build brand recognition as conservative judges because North Carolina voters overwhelmingly support conservative judges over activist judges.”
Almond said the approach now is similar. Republican judicial candidates for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals are “packaged together.” This can be seen in digital ads depicting all four side-by-side, and it also bears out on the campaign trail. When any of those four speaks to an audience, they stump for the whole slate.
“When I’m out on the road speaking to party chairs, the bulk of my message is working to help elect our conservative judges,” he said.
After Earls’ 2018 victory, state Republicans in 2019 established the Judicial Victory Fund with the goal of raising money and awareness to put conservative judges on the bench. Over the last three election cycles, GOP candidates have won a combined 18 of 19 Court of Appeals and Supreme Court races.
“North Carolina voters have the opportunity to elect a conservative, common-sense Supreme Court Justice to replace a radical left-wing activist who is currently on the court,” the JVF website reads in reference to this year’s Supreme Court race.
A key volunteer for the JVF is George Simpson, a Raleigh trial lawyer who has worked for over 25 years arguing civil cases. Although not an employee of NCGOP, he has been happy to work toward getting conservative jurists on the state’s highest courts. He began volunteering during the 2022 election that flipped the Supreme Court.
This cycle, Simpson has gone to county Republican offices and GOP events, using his own experience as an attorney to talk about the importance of judicial elections. He and Almond both said Republicans are receptive to the message and will often leave better informed, with many donating.
Democrats have a program of their own. Field Team Justice is a network of grassroots volunteers dedicated to electing Earls and the party’s Court of Appeals candidates in November. Trained volunteers use the MiniVAN app, which pulls up the 15 closest Democrats for any volunteer. The volunteer knocks on those doors and sparks up conversations with voters, and each household is also given a slate of literature with information about statewide candidates.
Somewhat like Whatley, since Anderson Clayton became chair of the N.C. Democrats in 2023, a key focus has been flipping the Supreme Court. Clayton said North Carolina is the only state where Democrats have a year-round judicial caucus director, Becca Zerkin.
Conventional political wisdom is that the person at the top of the ballot can bring victories down-ballot by driving straight party-line voters to voting booths. This year, the Senate race sits atop the ballot. Polling has consistently put Cooper well ahead of Whatley, but neither side is convinced the polling represents how close the race really is.
“We should trust the man that’s never lost an election … but this race is going to be important and close. I’ve seen polling about many races, and it’s always that we’re going to win by miles, and every time, it’s been within 10,000 votes or less,” Clayton said.
And when it comes to judicial races, driving turnout doesn’t always lead to more votes, since many people don’t even cast votes in some races. Simpson said that when he speaks to groups on behalf of the Judicial Victory Fund, he reminds everyone to finish their ballots and tell others to do the same.
“I try to emphasize the importance of finishing the ballot and the importance of donating money if they have money to spare to get conservative judges elected,” he said.
Clayton said something similar, noting that in 2024, about 165,000 Democratic voters cast ballots for presidential candidate Kamala Harris and gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein but didn’t cast votes at the bottom of the ballot.
While Clayton looks at things through a strategic lens, she said she also thinks about the tangible ways the Republican General Assembly and Supreme Court have hurt the state, such as stripping Democratic governors of certain appointment powers. Now, legislators appoint members of the UNC system board and the State Board of Elections. This has led to downstream effects she thinks disenfranchise voters and curb what she considers valuable DEI programs that brought equity to higher education.
“Republicans have controlled the courts, and they have bent the knee to the state legislature and will back up anything they do,” Clayton said. “We do not have an independent judiciary right now because of it. To me, all those issues impact everyday North Carolinians.”
While Almond said he’s focused on the upcoming races and that 2028 elections still sit in the periphery, Clayton couldn’t help but look longer-term, even with the 2026 General Election only a couple of months away. After all, that’s all part of the plan.
“We’ve got step three in 2028,” she said. “That’ll be the biggest test case of everything we’ve been planning for the last three years.”