North Carolina Democrats are raising alarms about Rep. Sarah Stevens’ campaign to join the state’s highest court, calling Stevens a “threat to democracy” with a record of enabling the partisan takeover of North Carolina’s courts.
Democrats are particularly seizing on Stevens’ close relationship with North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby, who has come under fire for his heavy hand in shaping the court’s partisan makeup. Stevens has led initiatives to help Newby retain power, and Newby’s Supreme Court has ruled on cases to help NCGA Republicans grab power from elected Democrats.
Newby is closely aligned with Stevens and has been working behind the scenes to elevate her candidacy for the NC Supreme Court. In the state General Assembly, Stevens led the charge to raise the mandatory judicial retirement age so that Newby could complete his term. Newby has since joined the slate of conservative judges to stump for her candidacy in the primary. His wife even personally gave $3,800 to Stevens’ campaign.
Newby’s support of Stevens is just his most recent effort to transform the North Carolina Supreme Court. In a recent ProPublica piece, reporter Doug Bock Clark writes, “Few beyond North Carolina’s borders grasp the outsize role Newby, 70, has played in transforming the state’s top court from a relatively harmonious judicial backwater to a front-line partisan battleground since his election in 2004.”
Newby successfully pushed to make judicial elections in North Carolina partisan and to get rid of public financing, leaving candidates more dependent on dark money. Since Newby’s allies in the legislature passed laws enacting those changes, judicial campaigns have produced an increasingly polarized court dominated by hard-right conservatives.
In turn, Newby has helped strengthen the power of Republicans in the NC General Assembly, clearing the way for partisan gerrymandering in the pivotal 2024 election.
In January 2023 — once two newly elected Republican justices were sworn in — GOP lawmakers quickly filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to rehear a recent gerrymandering case. Such do-overs are rare. Since 1993, the court had granted only two out of 214 petitions for rehearings.
Then, behind closed doors, Newby set aside decades of institutional precedent by not gathering the court’s seven justices to debate the legislature’s request in person. The court quickly ruled in the legislature’s favor, allowing the maps to be redrawn to Republicans’ benefit.
According to former justices, judges, and Republicans seeking to be judicial candidates, Newby acts more like a political operator than an independent jurist. He’s packed higher and lower courts with former clerks and mentees whom he’s cultivated at his Bible study, prayer breakfasts, and similar events. His wife is a major GOP donor, and one of his daughters, who is head of finance for the state Republican Party, has managed judicial campaigns.
Gene Nichol, a professor of constitutional law at UNC Chapel Hill, said Newby had essentially turned the court into an arm of the Republican Party. “Newby,” he said, “has become the chief justice who destroyed the North Carolina Supreme Court as an impartial institution.”
The NC GOP took offense to ProPublica’s reporting on Newby. NC Republican Party spokesperson Matt Mercer said that ProPublica was waging a “jihad” against “NC Republicans.” He even threatened ProPublica to remove the piece, saying, “I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration, and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter. “I would strongly suggest dropping this story,” Mercer said in an email.
“The distinct line between the judiciary, the legislature, and politics is blurring,” said Charles Geyh, a law professor at Indiana University Bloomington who specializes in judicial ethics.
Stevens’ aspirations of moving from the state legislature to North Carolina’s highest court could blur those lines further.
