Welcome back to The Assembly’s courts newsletter. We hope you had a relaxing, if scorching, July — and we especially wanted to thank those of you who took our survey. Your insights are shaping how we write this newsletter going forward.

Without further ado, let’s get to it.  […]

Jeffrey Billman is a politics and law reporter for The Assembly. The former editor-in-chief of INDY in Durham, he holds a master's degree in public policy analysis from the University of Central Florida.

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.