If a Democrat beats Trump in 2020, could this NC judge join the Supreme Court?
Anita Earls has been on the North Carolina Supreme Court less than a year, but some political insiders are already eyeing a bigger role for her: A seat on the United States Supreme Court.
A group called Demand Justice recently published a “shortlist” of 32 progressive lawyers who it says would be good nominees for a Supreme Court seat after the 2020 elections, if a Democrat defeats Republican President Donald Trump and if a seat opens up on the nation’s highest court.
On its website, Demand Justice says Trump did a good job of rallying conservative voters in 2016 with a Supreme Court shortlist of his own. The group — which is led by 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign press secretary — said whichever Democrat wins the 2020 primary to face Trump should copy that strategy, and should consider “unabashedly progressive lawyers and legal thinkers, who have all too often been pushed aside.”
Earls, 59, won election to the state Supreme Court in 2018. Her career prior to that was as a civil rights attorney, arguing lawsuits on everything from minor disputes in small towns across North Carolina to political cases that gained national attention.
Through the Durham-based group she founded in 2007, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Earls helped get North Carolina’s 2013 voter ID law overturned as unconstitutional. A federal court found that state lawmakers wrote it with “discriminatory intent” toward African-American voters. She also was involved in recent gerrymandering challenges against North Carolina’s political districts.
In an interview, Earls said she didn’t ask to be put on the list and is focused on “doing all the things I said I would do during the year I campaigned for this office.”
“I am really honored and thrilled to have the opportunity to serve the people of North Carolina in this office that I have been elected to,” Earls said. “And that is my biggest priority right now.”
Earls is one of only a few Southerners on the list, which is dominated by lawyers from the Northeast and California. The list includes mostly academics and activists but also some judges, like Earls, and some politicians like New York gubernatorial candidate Zephyr Teachout, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of California.
Also on the list is Vanita Gupta, who was in charge of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division under former President Barack Obama when the DOJ sued North Carolina over HB2, alleging the short-lived state law violated the civil rights of transgender people.
Earls had several legal jobs before founding the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, including a stint in the DOJ’s civil rights division during President Bill Clinton’s administration. She also worked in private practice at the Charlotte law firm founded by Julius Chambers, James Ferguson and Adam Stein, the father of N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein.
Earls said she knows many other lawyers on the Supreme Court shortlist, either personally or by reputation, and thinks highly of them. That includes one of the few fellow Southerners, Carlton Reeves. Now a federal judge in Mississippi, Reeves was an intern at the Ferguson, Stein & Chambers law firm when Earls was a young lawyer there.
When Demand Justice added Earls to its Supreme Court shortlist, it took notice not just of her civil rights work but also the work she has never done — representing big corporations.
“For years, presidents of both parties, along with the senators who advise on their judicial selections, have favored a certain kind of resume, with corporate lawyers and prosecutors dominating the ranks,” the group wrote on its website. “Unfortunately, public interest lawyers, plaintiffs’ lawyers, public defenders, and progressive academics have been few and far between.”
Earls said diversity of legal backgrounds is just as important in the courts as racial and gender diversity. But she said she’s happy to be contributing to that in Raleigh.
“The state Supreme Court, there are only two of us who weren’t judges before we came to the court,” Earls said. “And I think there’s a benefit to having a mix of backgrounds. ... It makes the court stronger.”
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