“Viewpoints” is a place on Chapelboro where local people are encouraged to share their unique perspectives on issues affecting our community. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work, reporting or approval of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com. If you’d like to contribute a column on an issue you’re concerned about, interesting happenings around town, reflections on local life — or anything else — send a submission to viewpoints@wchl.com.
The Reality of the North Carolina Supreme Court
A perspective from Ken Williams
Do you think you have no say over the North Carolina Supreme Court? Do you think it does not matter who sits on it, because judges just “follow the law”? Both ideas are wrong. North Carolina is one of only eight states where voters pick Supreme Court justices in party-labeled elections, and every voter in the state gets a say. This November, one of the court’s seven seats is on the ballot. That vote deserves your full attention.
Think of justices as the referees at the Super Bowl. They make both teams follow the rules and call the penalties. Now imagine a new crew showed up after the game, read the rulebook differently, and changed who won. Something like that has happened in our state’s highest court.
In 2022, in a case called Harper v. Hall, the court’s Democratic majority threw out the legislature’s voting maps. It ruled the maps were drawn to favor one party — gerrymandering — in violation of the state constitution. In 2023, after Republicans took the majority, the court reheard the same case and reversed itself. It said North Carolina courts cannot hear partisan gerrymandering cases at all. In Holmes v. Moore, the court ruled in December 2022 that the state’s voter ID law discriminated by race. Four months later, with new members, it reheard that case too and upheld the same law. The maps did not change. The law did not change. The constitution did not change. The judges did.
A third case is about schools. In 1997, the court ruled that every child in North Carolina has a constitutional right to a sound basic education. In 2022, it ordered the state to pay for a plan to fix the schools. This April, by a 4-3 vote, the court threw the whole case out for good, saying the lower court had lacked the power to hear it since 2017. The 1997 right still exists. The order to pay for it is gone.
Supporters of the 2023 reversals say court rules allow rehearing when the earlier decision got the law wrong. True. But whatever your politics, it should bother you when the law means one thing this year and the opposite next year, and all that changed is who sits on the court. I believe these cases show that how a judge reads the law is no small thing. It shapes our voting maps, our ballots, and our school budgets.
So look closely at the two candidates.
Justice Anita Earls, the incumbent, was a civil rights lawyer before she joined the court. She led the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and helped bring Covington v. North Carolina, in which a federal court found that legislative districts drawn in 2011 were illegal racial gerrymanders. On the court, she voted with the 2022 majority in Harper and wrote the December 2022 opinion in the voter ID case. She dissented from both 2023 reversals and wrote a long dissent when the school case was dismissed.
Sarah Stevens comes from the legislature, not from a judge’s bench. A family law attorney, she represented Surry County in the state House from 2009 until she resigned this June to run for this seat. From 2017 to January 2025 she was speaker pro tempore, the House’s second-ranking officer. In 2011, she voted for the House map that the Covington court later found contained illegal racial gerrymanders. In 2013, she cosponsored and voted for the House version of an election bill, House Bill 589. The Senate then expanded the bill, and she was excused from the final vote. In 2016, a federal appeals court struck down that law’s voter ID, early voting, and registration rules as intentionally discriminatory. In 2018, she voted to override the governor’s veto of the voter ID law, the same law the court found discriminatory in December 2022. And she was the main sponsor of the original version of this year’s election bill, House Bill 958. After she resigned, the legislature expanded that bill too, and Governor Stein vetoed it on August 17 as “anti-voter legislation.” The vetoed bill would cut early voting in primaries from 17 days to 10 and let early-vote ballots be challenged until 5 p.m. on the third business day after Election Day.
I spent my career in uniform defending the constitutional order. A healthy democracy needs informed citizens, so we need well-funded schools. Congress pays for our national security and checks the president, so we need maps that let voters choose their representatives. Democracy means self-rule, so the right to vote comes first.
Justices are the referees of our democracy. This November, North Carolina picks one. Read both records — the cases one brought and the votes the other cast — then decide who you trust to call the game fairly, no matter which team is winning.
Ken Williams is a retired U.S. Army colonel and chaplain, a professor of ethical leadership, and a member of National Security Leaders for America. The views expressed are his own.
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
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