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While its internal debates are far less public than the legislature’s and its members far less recognizable than the governor, the North Carolina Supreme Court wields immense power over nearly every facet of state policy and politics.
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In recent years, the court has blocked — then reimplemented — the state’s voter ID law, given state lawmakers free rein to engage in partisan gerrymandering and even opened the door to throwing out ballots in the 2024 election for a seat on its own bench.
And unlike many other states, in which justices are appointed by the governor, North Carolina elects its Supreme Court justices in partisan elections to eight-year terms.
This year, voters have another chance to weigh in on who represents them in the court as incumbent Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, seeks reelection against Sarah Stevens, a longtime Republican state lawmaker.
Earls is one of only two Democrats on the seven-member court, so this year’s race will not decide the body’s partisan majority. It will, however, position both sides for 2028, in which three Republican terms will end and control of the court will be decided.
The News & Observer sat down for interviews with Earls and Stevens to discuss their campaigns, judicial philosophies and more.
Prior to her election to the Supreme Court in 2018, Earls spent decades as an attorney specializing in voting rights cases. During that time, she founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a nonprofit law firm that has litigated some of North Carolina’s landmark voting cases.
She says this background, plus her own experience growing up as a child of a mixed-race couple at a time when some states still banned interracial marriage, has reinforced her belief in equal justice.
“My opponent calls herself a ‘constitutional conservative,’ and I say that I am not beholden to any political ideology,” she said, referring to Stevens. “My career and my commitment has always been about securing equal justice under the law, and for me, that has very personal and significant meaning.”
When Earls first joined the court, Democrats held the majority and issued several rulings that curbed the power of the Republican-controlled General Assembly.
One of her proudest moments, she said, was joining the majority in 2022 to rule that the legislature had unconstitutionally gerrymandered its electoral maps to give Republicans an advantage. The court then established criteria to evaluate the fairness of future maps.
“I think that that was a very democracy-affirming ruling, very nonpartisan — it would apply to all maps, no matter who drew them,” she said. “I think the highest role of our court is to enforce the state Constitution in a way that protects everyone’s votes.”
However, when Republicans won a majority on the Supreme Court in the 2022 midterms, they took the unusual step of revisiting this ruling on their own initiative. They reversed the prior court’s ruling, finding that the court had no authority over claims of partisan gerrymandering.
In the intervening years, the new majority has issued several high-profile rulings in the legislature’s favor, and while Earls has responded with fiery dissents, she and the court’s other remaining Democrat, Allison Riggs, have been unable to shift the tide on those controversial cases.
“I am currently powerless to actually protect rights,” Earls said.
Stevens, a Mount Airy attorney, has spent nearly 30 years as a member of the state House, during which time she’s held leadership roles and championed sweeping legislation on everything from foster care to bail conditions.
Her judicial philosophy, she said, is to be a constitutional conservative — one who interprets the Constitution narrowly based on its plain text.
“I think (Earls’) constitutional philosophy is that the Constitution can bend and twist based on changes in the world, perceived wrongs,” Stevens said of her opponent. “That’s not the role of the judge. The judge is to be a referee and say, ‘Look, this is the law. This is the process that was followed … we rule on what’s there, so everybody knows what they’re expecting.’”
While she has never previously served as a judge, neither had Earls before her election. In fact, five of the seven current justices became judges for the first time upon their election to the Supreme Court.
Even so, running for the high court as a legislator is an uncommon move — though not an unprecedented one. Justice Tamara Barringer, a Republican, served in the state Senate prior to her 2020 election to the Supreme Court.
Stevens, who resigned her House seat this summer to focus on campaigning, said it was Barringer that encouraged her to run for the seat.
“I sort of expected someone else to run instead of me,” Stevens said. “… It only took them four months to convince me, but then I made the decision.”
As a former lawmaker, if Stevens won, she could be called upon to rule on the constitutionality of laws she herself helped pass — or even wrote — during her time in the General Assembly.
She said that because the lawmaking process is dispersed among the 170 members of the House and Senate, she doesn’t think she would need to recuse herself in that scenario.
“Because of the way legislation is made, I don’t think it would cause me to need to recuse myself,” Stevens said. “… If I did a bill that never got passed, and somehow it came up before the court, yes, I would recuse myself. But if it’s a bill that actually became law, I would not see a need for recusal.”
In many ways, judges are expected to be above the political fray. Much of the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct revolves around expectations that judges behave impartially in public and promote the integrity of the judicial system.
But, at the end of the day, these are partisan elections — and precious few of those are won without criticizing your opponent.
Earls argues that Stevens would be a rubber stamp for the Republican-controlled legislature, refusing to check their power. She also criticized her work on passing North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban and Republican-favoring electoral maps.
“Her career, in my view, has been about taking away the rights that I have fought to protect,” Earls said.
Stevens said she believed her redistricting work complied with all necessary rules and pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade to defend her vote in favor of North Carolina’s abortion restrictions.
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“Abortion was determined by the Supreme Court not to actually be a right and that those laws should come down to the state level,” she said. “So I didn’t take that away.”
Stevens accuses Earls of being too ideologically-driven, saying that she’s “running for racial justice, social equity, appealing to certain groups about things she’s going to do.”
In particular, Stevens attacked Earls’ work on the North Carolina Task Force on Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, which produced a report on racism in the judicial system in 2020.
She pointed to the report’s recommendations that the state eliminate cash bail for the lowest-level misdemeanors and examine the role of school resource officers, or SROs, “to minimize the use of harsh disciplinary tactics against Black and brown students.”
“I think the message that got out is we don’t do bail unless we absolutely have to, that everyone should remain free,” Stevens said. “… and it did sort of advocate for removing school resource officers.”
Earls said Stevens overstated both of the report’s recommendations.
“There is not a single recommendation that says ‘Remove SROs from schools,’” she said. “In fact, we recommended ways to make them more effective and helpful.”
As for cashless bail, Earls reiterated that the recommendation only concerned nonviolent misdemeanors.
“The recommendation was (that) we don’t need to keep someone in jail who’s charged with possession of drug paraphernalia,” she said. “But to suggest that we were in favor of ending bail for people accused of violent crimes is false.”
While Earls’ own TV ads haven’t gone negative on Stevens, she has faced attacks from an outside group that has run ads claiming Stevens protects child predators.
One of the ads criticizes her for initially voting against a bill to give victims of childhood sexual abuse an extended period to sue their abusers. The ad leaves out, however, that she voted in favor of the final version of that bill.
The group has also attacked her for representing a Mount Airy High School basketball coach and teacher in 2003 after he was accused of having a sexual relationship with three minor students. He pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to at least four years in prison.
Asked about the case, Stevens said it was her job to represent clients in court, and that she told him he would be found guilty if it went to trial.
“So we talked about it, and we worked out a plea,” she said. “I gave him his representation — that wasn’t protecting him. He actually got an active prison sentence and is registered as a sex offender.”
The ads also note Stevens’ ties to Harvey West, a convicted sex offender who held regular fundraisers for Republican candidates. Stevens attended one such fundraiser last year, but said she was not aware of West’s background.
“I didn’t check your criminal record before I came in to meet with you, so I didn’t feel a need to check his criminal record,” she said. “… There were hundreds of people there, including judicial candidates, Supreme Court justices, and I think a couple of Court of Appeals judges. That is the one and only time I met him and six months later I hear he’s a sex offender — that’s it.”
Stevens herself has not run any ads so far this cycle, the Assembly reported this week. She also faces a massive fundraising disadvantage compared to Earls.
While Earls may not be facing as many negative ads, she has come under scrutiny in the past from the Judicial Standards Commission — the body tasked with investigating ethics complaints against judges.
In 2023, the commission launched an investigation into Earls for public comments she made about diversity in the judicial system. The commission said those comments may have violated a provision in the Code of Judicial Conduct that requires judges to behave “in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
Earls sued, arguing that the investigation infringed on her First Amendment rights. She later withdrew the lawsuit after the commission dropped its investigation.
Speaking about the investigation now, Earls says she remains troubled about the composition of the commission. Twelve of the group’s 14 members are appointed by Republican politicians after the legislature stripped the State Bar of its appointees in 2023.
“Whatever language is in the Code of Judicial Conduct, it is generally subject to interpretation,” she said. “It is general language that depends on the integrity and intellectual honesty of who’s on the commission to interpret it in a way that’s fair … To me the most important thing is that we have a broad-based commission that is truly independent.”
Hanging over this year’s election is the specter of what happened last time a North Carolina Supreme Court seat was up for grabs.
When incumbent Justice Allison Riggs narrowly won her 2024 race against Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, he vigorously contested the results in court for six months in an unprecedented — and ultimately unsuccessful — legal challenge.
While a Trump-appointed federal judge ended the saga by ruling against Griffin, Republicans on the state Court of Appeals and Supreme Court had first ruled (partially) in Griffin’s favor. This leads some to worry that a new precedent has been set for candidates to challenge the results of narrow elections in court.
“I’m trying to make sure that voters are reassured that their vote is absolutely crucial, and that it will be protected,” Earls said. “But at the same time, I want to acknowledge that it is now even easier than it ever was before to challenge ballots and to have ballots thrown out.”
Asked if she thought there was potential for similar challenges once her own race was decided, Stevens said she was glad the State Board of Elections and the legislature made certain policy changes to address Griffin’s underlying claims, but she “(couldn’t) begin to guess” if there remained the potential for large-scale ballot challenges.
“The question is: Is there something there that needs to be looked at?” she said. “Hopefully, one of us wins by a large enough margin that is not worth questioning. And hopefully that’s me.”
This year’s election will be held on Nov. 3, with early voting beginning Oct. 15.
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This story was originally published October 8, 2026 at 5:00 AM.