NC Supreme Court, Associate Justice, Seat 1

NOTE: You may vote for one. Candidates are presented below in the order they appear on your ballot. All of my research sources and links for these candidates are presented after and below the candidate profiles.

Reason for my Endorsement:

Earls supports abortion and LGPTQ rights. Stevens opposes abortion and LGPTQ rights. Earls opposes partisan redistricting. Stevens supports partisan redistricting.  The Earls-Stevens race presents two genuinely different ideas about the judiciary. Earls believes courts have an obligation to enforce constitutional limits on government, even when doing so means overruling decisions made by elected officials. Stevens believes judges can exceed their own constitutional authority by substituting their judgment for decisions properly left to elected officials. Earls has been endorsed by the NC State AFL-CIO; Equality NC PAC; NC NOW PAC. Stevens has been endorsed by the North Carolina Fraternal Order of Police and the North Carolina Values Coalition

There are HIGH STAKES IN THIS ELECTION. With three Constitutional Amendments on the ballot this year, we’re simultaneously choosing who interprets our state Constitution and being asked to change that very Constitution itself. The North Carolina Supreme Court currently has five Republicans and two Democrats. Earls is the only Democratic seat on the ballot in 2026. If Stevens wins, our Supreme Court will be become 6-1 Republican. If Earls wins another eight-year term, the Court remains 5-2 heading toward 2028, when three Republican-held seats are up to be on the ballot.

ANITA EARLS (Democrat)

Anita Earls campaign website

Earls spent most of her legal career before becoming a judge as a civil-rights lawyer. She worked in private practice, served in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, directed a national voting-rights project, worked at the UNC Center for Civil Rights and founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. She graduated from Williams College and Yale Law School. North Carolina voters elected her to the state Supreme Court in 2018.

The more interesting question is what happened when a lawyer who had spent decades asking courts to protect people’s constitutional rights became one of the judges deciding when courts should do exactly that.

THE NORTH CAROLINA CONSTITUTION

One thing you need to understand about Earls is that she does not regard the North Carolina Constitution as simply a state version of the U.S. Constitution. North Carolina has its own Constitution, and Earls believes North Carolina courts have an independent responsibility to enforce it. She put it memorably in a 2024 Yale Law Journal essay: “The U.S. Supreme Court is not the only game in town.”

That sounds rather heady and academic until you consider what the North Carolina Supreme Court actually decides. Voting rights. Legislative districts. Public education. Criminal punishment. Police searches. Property rights. The powers of the governor and legislature. But sometimes the question isn’t what the U.S. Supreme Court says the federal Constitution means. It’s what our Constitution means.

And if our Constitution gives North Carolinians protections of its own, Earls believes North Carolina judges have a responsibility to enforce them.

“ALL ELECTIONS SHALL BE FREE”

Redistricting provides a good example. The North Carolina Constitution says that “all elections shall be free.” In the Harper redistricting case, the Court’s then Democratic majority concluded that extreme partisan gerrymandering could violate the state Constitution and that courts had the authority to review legislative maps on that basis. After Republicans won a 5-2 majority on the Court, the new majority reheard the case in 2023 and reversed that decision. The majority concluded that the Constitution gave judges no workable rule for deciding how much partisanship in drawing election districts was too much.

Earls strongly disagreed.

If the Constitution guarantees free elections, she argued, courts cannot simply refuse to enforce that guarantee because the Constitution doesn’t give judges a precise formula for deciding when a line has been crossed. But that raises a fair question: If the Constitution doesn’t tell judges exactly where the line is, how much power should judges have to draw it themselves?

Earls believes that drawing that line is sometimes unavoidable. Constitutions contain broad words such as “equal,” “unreasonable” and “cruel.” Judges have always had to decide what words like those mean in actual cases. The danger is that a judge can begin interpreting the Constitution and end up substituting her own beliefs for decisions that belong to elected officials. But Earls sees a danger on the other side too: if courts refuse to enforce a constitutional protection whenever its exact boundaries aren’t spelled out, that protection can become little more than words on paper.

BUT EARLS DOESN’T ALWAYS EXPAND THE COURT’S POWER

This is where Earls gets more interesting. If you assume a former civil-rights lawyer will always side with the person claiming government has violated a constitutional right, her record will occasionally surprise you.

In Anderson Creek Partners v. Harnett County, developers challenged county water and sewer fees on constitutional grounds. Earls thought the developers were trying to apply a constitutional rule meant to protect against certain government demands from  a fee imposed by county law. She thought that went too far. In Fearrington v. City of Greenville, Earls wrote an opinion rejecting a constitutional challenge involving money from the city’s red-light-camera program. Another justice thought the Constitution required the opposite result. And in cases involving termination of parental rights, Earls has rejected arguments that would have required judges to add requirements that the legislature had not put into the law. In 2026 she also wrote an opinion upholding a warrantless vehicle search after concluding that police had probable cause.

Those cases don’t fit very comfortably with a picture of Earls as a judge who simply looks for ways to expand individual rights or the power of courts. So where does she draw the line?

WHERE DOES ANITA EARLS DRAW THE LINE?

Earls looks first to the Constitution itself, but she also considers previous court decisions, history, the facts of the case and how different parts of the Constitution fit together. Sometimes those things point in different directions. And that’s where judging gets harder.

Earls does not believe a constitutional right becomes unenforceable simply because the people who wrote it didn’t leave instructions for every situation future generations might encounter. But she does believe that when the instructions run out, somebody still has to decide. And the more room a judge has to make that decision, the greater the possibility that the judge’s own values will affect where the line gets drawn.

Earls makes a similar criticism of judges who call themselves strict originalists and look heavily to the Constitution’s original meaning. History doesn’t interpret itself either. Judges still have to decide which history matters, what constitutional language meant when it was written, and how words written generations ago apply to circumstances the people who wrote them never imagined.

WHEN GOVERNMENT HAS ALREADY CROSSED THE LINE

The long-running Leandro school-funding case shows another important part of Earls’s thinking.

North Carolina’s courts have held that the state Constitution guarantees every child the opportunity for a sound basic education. The fight has continued for years over what happens when the state fails to provide it. Earls believes elected officials should initially have considerable freedom to decide how to meet that responsibility. But once a court has found that the state is violating the Constitution, she does not believe judges can simply walk away because they believe fixing the problem may interfere with decisions normally made by the legislature or governor.

Her position is essentially: Give elected officials room to govern. But once government has been found to be violating the Constitution, courts still have a responsibility to do something about it.

PRECEDENT AND A CHANGING COURT

Earls has become an increasingly sharp dissenter since Republicans took a 5–2 majority on the Supreme Court in 2023. In 2023, after Earls spoke publicly about racial diversity, implicit bias and the operation of the state judiciary, the Judicial Standards Commission opened an investigation. Earls sued in federal court, arguing that the investigation violated her right to free speech. A judge declined to stop the investigation, but the Commission later dismissed the complaint without recommending discipline, and Earls dropped her lawsuit.

This episode showed something already visible in her dissents: Earls is willing to criticize the institution she serves publicly when she believes the institution itself has gotten something wrong. She has been particularly critical when the new majority has reconsidered major decisions made shortly before control of the Court changed, including redistricting and voter ID.

In 2022, Earls wrote the majority opinion in Holmes v. Moore, which struck down the law implementing North Carolina’s voter-ID constitutional amendment. Earls and the majority concluded that the law had been enacted with discriminatory intent and violated the state Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. After control of the Court changed, the new majority reheard the case and reversed that decision.

Earls has argued that constitutional law should not change simply because a judicial election changes which party controls the Court. But Earls does not believe an earlier decision can never be overturned. So it’s important to know when an earlier decision is wrong enough it should be corrected.  And when is a court simply changing the law because the judges have changed?

Earls’ own willingness to dissent did not begin when Republicans gained control. She was a frequent dissenter while Democrats held the majority too. What changed after 2022 was not her willingness to disagree. And the stakes, and often her tone, became sharper.

KEY STANDS ON OTHER ISSUES:

Voting rights & redistricting: Earls has a long voting-rights record predating the Court and, as a justice, opposed the Court’s reversal of earlier decisions involving partisan redistricting and voter ID; she has argued that courts must enforce constitutional voting protections. Her official candidate biography also includes her earlier work directing the Lawyers’ Committee’s Voting Rights Project and founding the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

Abortion: Earls has been endorsed in 2026 by Planned Parenthood Votes! South Atlantic and Reproductive Freedom for All, organizations supporting abortion rights.

LGBTQ rights: Equality North Carolina PAC endorsed Earls for reelection in 2026 as part of its slate of candidates it says will protect LGBTQIA+ people.

School vouchers: Earls dissented when the Court dismissed Leandro in 2026 and argued that the state Constitution’s guarantee of a sound basic public education creates judicially enforceable rights, but that does not by itself establish a position on vouchers.

SARAH STEVENS (Republican)

Sarah Stevens campaign website

 

Stevens has practiced law in North Carolina for forty years, much of it in family law. She spent another seventeen and a half years in the North Carolina House, eventually becoming Speaker Pro Tempore and holding leadership roles involving courts, criminal law and election law. She chaired House Judiciary committees for fourteen years and the North Carolina Courts Commission for six. She has never been a judge. That makes the most interesting question about Sarah Stevens fairly obvious.

What happens when somebody who spent seventeen years helping write the laws asks voters to let her become one of the people who decides what those laws mean?

“STAYING IN YOUR LANE”

Stevens says she understands that legislating and judging are different jobs. “The biggest thing is about staying in your lane,” she said after announcing her run for the Supreme Court. “It’s not a place to make law; it’s a place to enforce the law.” Stevens describes that approach in plain language. She says judges should follow the law as written, follow the Constitution strictly and apply the law neutrally. Her campaign puts it another way: judges should not create laws from the bench.

That sounds pretty straightforward. Until it isn’t.

WHEN THE LAW DOESN’T ANSWER THE QUESTION

“Apply the law as written” works beautifully when the law actually answers the question. What happens when it doesn’t?

North Carolina’s Constitution, for example, says the legislative, executive and judicial powers of state government must remain “separate and distinct.” It does not tell us exactly how much control the legislature can exercise over a board carrying out executive functions before those powers are no longer considered separate enough. It does not tell us precisely when a new government arrangement is controlled by an earlier court decision or is different enough to present a new constitutional question.

And even “follow the Constitution as written” can raise another question: Which words, and from when? North Carolina adopted its first Constitution in 1776 and another in 1868. Voters adopted the current Constitution in 1970, and it took effect in 1971. Since then, voters have amended it many times. Some language has survived from an earlier Constitution; some has been rewritten or added later. So a judge trying to follow constitutional language as it was adopted may still have to decide which moment in history matters and what the words meant at that particular time.

History does not interpret itself. Neither does precedent. Eventually a judge has to decide what the words, history and previous decisions require when they do not all point neatly in the same direction. Stevens’s stated answer is to keep the judge within the judicial lane: follow the law as written, follow the Constitution strictly, apply the law neutrally, and do not turn the courtroom into another legislature.

But it still leaves a difficult question: What happens when the Constitution and existing law still permit more than one reasonable answer?

SARAH STEVENS THE LEGISLATOR

Stevens has spent seventeen and a half years on the other side of the courthouse door. As a legislator, Stevens did not behave as though every serious constitutional question required the General Assembly to stop legislating until somebody supplied a certain answer. I think one small exchange from 2025 may say more about that than pages of campaign material.

Stevens chaired a hastily called Judiciary Committee hearing on a bill changing how vacancies for district attorneys would be filled. A Democratic legislator argued that the proposal raised a separation-of-powers problem similar to another appointment law already being challenged in court. Stevens said the comparable process had never been questioned.

“It’s currently in court,” the legislator replied. “Well, this may join it in court,” Stevens said. It might appear easy to make too much of that one sentence. But it fits a substantial part of Stevens’s legislative record.

During her years in Raleigh, North Carolina repeatedly fought over where the Constitution places power among the General Assembly, governor and courts. Stevens supported measures that restricted or rearranged executive authority, including legislation involving appointments. She also helped sponsor a proposed constitutional amendment in 2026 that would change the way vacancies in certain statewide elected offices are filled. Rather than simply giving the governor the choice, the amendment would require the governor to select from nominees supplied by the political party of the departing officeholder.

There’s an important distinction there. If legislators believe the Constitution itself stands in the way of a policy they want, one answer is not to ask judges to reinterpret the existing words but rather to change the Constitution. That is consistent with the distinction Stevens draws between legislating and judging. If the constitutional rule needs changing, let the people change the rule rather than asking judges to do the legislature’s job.

BUT WHO ENFORCES THE BOUNDARY?

North Carolina courts have repeatedly been asked to decide whether the General Assembly has crossed constitutional boundaries separating legislative and executive power. Sometimes the answer has been yes. Sometimes judges have disagreed about whether an earlier constitutional rule controls. Yes. It gets complicated sometimes.

Stevens’s legislative record shows considerable comfort operating in that disputed territory. That does not mean she believes the General Assembly has unlimited power. And it does not mean she would automatically uphold legislation she once supported. Asked what would happen if legislation she helped write came before her as a justice, she said she could be convinced that the law she wrote was unconstitutional. She has also said she would likely recuse herself from a case involving legislation she personally drafted but distinguished that from legislation on which she merely voted.

But if a legislature believes it has constitutional authority to act, and a judge believes courts should be reluctant to substitute their judgment for choices she believes belong to elected officials, who actually enforces the boundary when it is unclear whether the legislature has crossed it?

Somebody still has to decide when government has gone too far. It’s not clear when or how Stevens would ever make that finding.

THE OTHER SARAH STEVENS

There is another side of Stevens’s record that matters She has not always tried to maximize the power of the legislature in which she served. While Republicans controlled the General Assembly, Stevens repeatedly supported proposals for nonpartisan redistricting. In 2017 she was a primary sponsor of legislation that would have prohibited drawing districts to favor a political party or incumbent and would have prohibited using partisan registration and previous election results except where required by law. In 2019, she joined Republican and Democratic legislators in another redistricting reform proposal.

Stevens also spent decades practicing family law, an area where broad political ideology can quickly give way to very particular people with very particular problems. Her legislative work repeatedly returned to children, foster care, custody and family courts.

And when political advertising attacked her for once representing a high-school teacher who later pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct involving teenagers, Stevens’s answer was not political at all. “Everyone who is charged with a crime is entitled to representation,” she said. She described the lawyer’s job in much simpler terms: Did the person get a fair hearing? Were fair procedures followed? Were the requirements of the statute met?

WHICH SARAH STEVENS WILL WE GET AT THE SUPREME COURT?

Stevens does not ask voters to forget her legislative career when considering her for the Supreme Court. Quite the opposite. She argues that it is part of what qualifies her. She says years spent reviewing legislation have taught her how laws are written, where to look for legislative intent, and what questions to ask. Her experience with redistricting, for example, could give her knowledge most judges do not have when disputes over legislative maps reach the Court.

But that experience can cut more than one way. A former legislator may understand better than most judges how government actually works—and recognize more quickly when lawmakers have crossed a line. Or that same experience could make a judge more willing to give lawmakers room to operate before concluding that they have crossed it.

Stevens has never been a judge, so there are no judicial opinions that tell voters which way she would go. What we have instead are those two Sarah Stevens sentences. From Stevens the legislator, confronted with a constitutional objection: “Well, this may join it in court.” From the Stevens candidate for justice: “The biggest thing is about staying in your lane.”

For seventeen and a half years, Stevens helped decide how far government could go. Now she is asking voters to let her help decide when it has gone too far. 

KEY STANDS ON OTHER ISSUES

Abortion: Stevens was a House conferee—and chair of the House conferees—on 2023’s SB 20, and voted to override Cooper’s veto of the law restricting most abortions after 12 weeks.

LGBTQ: Stevens voted for HB2 in 2016. More recently she voted for 2023 legislation restricting transgender girls’ participation on female sports teams and for the Parents’ Bill of Rights restricting instruction/discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in younger grades.

Vouchers: Stevens legislative record supports expansion of school choice.She opposed reducing vouchers funding and supported legislation expanding eligibility.

Redistricting: Stevens voted for the General Assembly’s 2023 House redistricting plan. More importantly for this particular race, she explicitly criticizes Earls in the State Board voter guide for her redistricting and voter-ID rulings.

Voting rights: Stevens disagrees with Earls’s rulings on voter ID and redistricting, saying Earls ruled contrary to the state Constitution.

SOURCES/LINKS: Anita Earls

SOURCES/LINKS: Sarah Stevens