North Carolina Supreme Court Associate Justice Anita Earls filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the state commission that oversees judicial ethics after she was investigated for her public comments, including those on the judiciary’s “lack of diversity.”
Earls has been subject to “a series of months-long intrusive investigations” by the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission over alleged violations of the state’s judicial conduct code, which she argues violated her First and 14th Amendment rights, according to the complaint. The Commission recently reopened an investigation into her over a June interview she gave discussing racial issues in the state judicial system.
“In that interview, Justice Earls discussed matters such as the decision by the North Carolina Supreme Court to disband the Commission on Fairness and Equity, the Court’s lack of judicial clerks from racial minority groups, the implicit bias associated with the interrupting of female advocates (and even herself as an African American female justice) during oral argument, and the discontinuance of racial equity and implicit bias training in the North Carolina courts,” the complaint explains. (RELATED: ‘Hostile Takeover’: State Supreme Court Chief Justice Accuses Liberal Majority Of Staging A ‘Coup’)
A judge’s gavel rests on top of a courtroom desk in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The article, which the complaint notes was prompted by a study on “the race and gender of advocates who argue before the Court,” prefaced Earls’ remarks by explaining that she was “a Black female Democrat on a state Supreme Court that is largely white, male and, after last year’s elections, Republican.”
The Commission claimed she undermined public confidence in the judiciary, noting her comments “appear to allege that your Supreme Court colleagues are acting out of racial, gender, and/or political bias in some of their decision-making,” according to the complaint.
Earls argues her First Amendment rights protect this “core political speech,” and notes that the threat of investigation has caused her to turn down opportunities, such as “an invitation to write an article for a national publication” and a chance to “discuss the issue of the racial and gender composition of state courts in response to a request to contribute an essay to the Yale Law Review forum about state courts.”
Earls was first investigated by the commission in March 2023 for speaking publicly on “administrative matters” of the court, according to the complaint.
Defendants named in Earls’ lawsuit include several other state judges who serve on the commission. “The North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission is a non-partisan investigative body comprised of members appointed by the Chief Justice, Governor, General Assembly, and State Bar Council,” commission spokesperson Graham Wilson told WGHP. “The Commission is statutorily obligated to investigate all instances of alleged judicial misconduct and cannot comment on pending investigations.”
Earls served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division after she was appointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1998.
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