Democrat Anita Earls Keeps Seat on N.C. Supreme Court

Voters have re-elected Justice Anita Earls, one of just two Democrats on the N.C. Supreme Court. Earls defeated former state Rep. Sarah Stevens, a Republican, to win a second 8-year term on the state’s highest court.

The New York Times called the race just after 9 p.m. Tuesday. With 57% of precincts reporting, Earls had about 60% of the vote, compared to Stevens’ 40% of 9:30 pm. 

“It is the honor of my life to be elected to serve another term of the Supreme Court,” Earls wrote on X Tuesday evening. “I am so grateful to everyone who worked so hard to make this victory possible. Thank you for your trust, North Carolina!”

The statewide contest was closely watched, but not due to its expected immediate impacts.

Republicans would retain their majority no matter who won. With Earl’s victory, the high court will keep a 5-2 conservative advantage. But her victory does place Democrats in a slightly better position to try to flip the court in 2028, when three Republican seats will be on the ballot. 

“It’s keeping your ground and looking to 2028, where the Democrats might have a chance to chip away and get the majority,” said David McLennan, a retired political scientist at Meredith College in Raleigh. 

Lopsided Campaigns 

As The Assembly reported a month ago, Stevens was hardly visible on the campaign trail this year, spending time mostly at private fundraisers over public events. She aired her first campaign ad within the last two weeks.

Earls was the opposite. She held or attended some 200 public or campaign events since announcing her reelection bid in October 2024, her campaign reported.

Earls also outraised Stevens. Her campaign received $4.7 millions in contributions between July 1 and October 17, according to the latest campaign finance reports. Earls had $1.8 million cash on hand at the end of the reporting period. Stevens, on the other hand, raised $223,000 and had $41,000 cash on hand. 

N.C. Families First, a left-leaning dark-money group, spent $2 million in attack ads against Stevens, alleging that she opposed a bill that would expand the statute of limitations so that victims of child sexual abuse could sue, according to The Brennan Center for Justice. Stevens opposed earlier versions of the bill but voted for the final legislation. 

The group also attacked Stevens for representing a high-school teacher who pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct involving teenagers. Stevens said she was doing her job as a lawyer. 

Starkly Different Candidates

The Assembly reached out to Stevens’ campaign on Tuesday night but did not immediately hear back.

Earls and Stevens have starkly different judicial philosophies and backgrounds.

Earls, who was first elected in 2018, is a veteran civil-rights attorney who challenged gerrymandering and voter ID laws in state and federal courts. She founded and led the Southern Coalition for Social Equality before becoming a state Supreme Court justice. She also co-chaired a racial equity task force under former Gov. Roy Cooper, which Stevens has said she viewed as mixing the responsibilities of the executive and judicial branches. 

Earls issued increasingly scathing dissents  after Republicans took the majority, including for rulings on Voter ID, gerrymandering and the recent school-funding case, Leandro. Along with Democratic Justice Allison Riggs, Earls will likely continue being the minority voice challenging their Republican colleagues. 

In 2023, Earls filed a federal lawsuit against the N.C. Judicial Standards Commission over its investigation into statements she made to the legal publication Law360. In that interview, she decried the lack of diversity within the state judiciary, argued that Chief Justice Paul Newby hindered efforts to correct racial disparities and accused her conservative colleagues of placing politics over the law. Earls dismissed the lawsuit in January 2024 after the commission dropped the investigation. 

Stevens, a longtime Mount Airy attorney, hadn’t been in a competitive race since her first run for the state House in 2008. Since Republicans took charge of the General Assembly in 2011, voting maps kept her in safe districts. She defeated Republican challengers to remain on the ballot for re-election in 2018 and 2022. In this year’s state Supreme Court race, Stevens ran unopposed in the primary. 

During her Supreme Court campaign, Stevens said that as a legislator she saw the former Democratic majority of the state Supreme Court overturn laws she helped pass and believed were constitutional. 

“Justice Earls was their leader, and we needed to get her replaced,” she told Axios. “I was approached by a couple of justices saying, ‘You are the person to beat her.’” 

Stevens supported several changes to state election laws as a legislator, including measures requiring a photo ID to vote in this state and making statewide judicial contests partisan after more than a decade with no party labels on the ballot. Stevens also led the House Judiciary Committee and co-chaired the House Election Law Committee, which advanced a proposal last year that would have prevented state and county election board members from encouraging people to vote (a provision that was later scrapped). 

Stevens also sponsored the high-profile Iryna’s Law, named after Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was fatally stabbed last year during a commute home on a Charlotte light-rail train. Among other things, the law restricts the circumstances under which defendants can be released from jail while they await trial and seeks to resume the death penalty.

In June, Stevens resigned from the legislature to run for the state Supreme Court seat. 

If Stevens had won, she would have been tasked with assessing the constitutionality of laws that she voted on in the General Assembly. She told The Assembly that she would consider recusing herself if the court heard a challenge to one of her bills but she would have to be convinced. 

“If the law was wrong when I wrote it, and these people can convince me that it was wrong and unconstitutional, I’m not above changing my mind,” Stevens said. “I promise to just be fair and impartial on the court. If there’s even the appearance of impropriety, I would step aside.”

While still a legislator, Stevens said judges and justices contacted her after controversial court rulings, which legal experts say is a departure from norms and a sign of increasing partisanship in the judiciary. 

The 2028 Supreme Court races are already shaping up to be high-profile. Justice Phil Berger Jr., the son of former Senate Leader Phil Berger Sr., has announced he is exploring a run for the chief justice seat, now occupied by Paul Newby.  Newby would be 73 in 2028, just three years from mandatory retirement. 

The 2028 race is also important because it will establish which party holds power on the court following the release of the 2030 U.S. Census. After that, the state legislature will draw new voting maps, which the court will likely end up weighing in on.

Whatever the court decides will have a big impact on General Assembly and U.S. House elections in 2032. 

On the North Carolina Court of Appeals, three seats were on the ballot—two held by Democratic incumbents John Arrowood and Toby Hampson. A third was an open seat after Democratic Judge Allegra Collins decided not to run for re-election. 

Arrowood and Hampson easily defeated their Republican challengers, Michael Byrne and George Cooper Bell, respectively. The two judges each won with about 56% of the vote. Democrat Christine Walczyk, a Wake County district court judge, beat Craig Collins, with about 57% of the vote. Republicans still have a 12-3 majority on the court.