A case being heard by the North Carolina Supreme Court could bring an end to state retirees’ efforts to retain healthcare. The North Carolina Supreme Court is hearing arguments regarding state employees having health benefits, a case that dates back over a decade. Before 2011, state employees were told they would have health insurance once they retired and would face no premiums.
That changed in 2011, after Republicans gained control of the North Carolina General Assembly in 2010. In 2011, Republicans passed Senate Bill 265, which would allow the state to charge retirees a premium for their healthcare. After that, retirees sued, and the case has been back and forth in the courts until 2022.
In 2022, the state Supreme Court, which was comprised of a Democratic majority at the time, ruled in favor of the state retirees, insisting they had the right to the healthcare they were promised. In her opinion, Justice Anita Earls wrote that the state doesn’t get to rewrite a deal after the work is done. Since the workers were promised this as part of employment, it’s part of a contract, and should be honored.
Now, with a Republican majority on the state Supreme Court, the Republican state Treasurer Brad Briner and a team of lawyers are asking for the conservative-leaning court to reconsider the case and the state health plan. Briner and the legal team argue that the retirees who filed the case are too dissimilar to consider them a class in the lawsuit. However, a lawyer for the retirees, Mark Carpenter, a lawyer for the said the request to decertify the class is an extreme measure.
“What they are asking you to do is throw the baby out with the bath water,” Carpenter said.
Republican Justice Richard Dietz claimed it’s the court’s job to defend the classes brought before them. “Our job as courts, in class action, is to defend the rights of the absent class members. That’s the whole purpose of all the protections that we’ve built into class certification,” he said. “If we know the class definition is wrong, we need to fix it.”
The retirees who attended the hearing expressed frustration with the ongoing legal battle.
“It’s frustrating for people on both sides of the issue for it to take this long to get it resolved,” said Boyd Bennett, a retiree who served as a director of prisons for the Department of Corrections for 36 years. “And it looks like, from what I hear, we’re not even closer than we were.”
The legal battle has gone on so long that some of the defendants have died as litigation continues.
Bennett explained that he could have made more money in other fields, but chose to work in the public sector to serve the public and for the benefits.
“But I gave that up to serve the public and plus to have these benefits that we were told we would have,” he said.
