State Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls. (Cornell Watson for The Assembly)

State Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls filed a federal lawsuit against the Judicial Standards Commission last year, after it launched an investigation into statements she’d made to the legal publication Law360 that decried the lack of racial diversity in the judiciary and accused her conservative colleagues of elevating politics over the law. 

The commission said her statements may have violated ethics codes prohibiting judges from saying anything that could undermine public confidence in the court. She in turn alleged the commission’s investigation stifled her free speech rights.  […]

Michael Hewlett is a courts and law reporter for The Assembly. He was previously a legal affairs reporter at the Winston-Salem Journal and has won two Henry Lee Weathers Freedom of Information Awards.

Anne Blythe, a former reporter for The News & Observer, has reported on courts, criminal justice, and an array of topics in North Carolina for more than three decades.