N.C Supreme Court sends a message: Ethics rules don’t apply to Republican judges

The author says North Carolina Chief Justice Paul Newby is enforcing a partisan double-standard when it comes to judicial ethics. (Photo: NC Supreme Court livestream)

The North Carolina Supreme Court refused to sanction two Republican judges, even though those judges admitted that they had violated ethics rules, according to an explosive new report from ProPublica. This sends a clear message that there’s a double standard for judicial ethics in North Carolina. Republican judges can do whatever they want, while Democrats have to worry about trumped-up ethics charges for conduct that’s totally innocent.

Though the process was entirely behind closed doors, ProPublica confirmed that the Judicial Standards Commission (JSC), which investigated ethics complaints against judges, had recommended sanctions against two Republican judges. One of the judges had jailed a witness for days to ensure they would be in court. The other judge got into a shouting match with a defendant, who was shot dead by a police officer after things escalated. 

Both of these judges conceded that they violated ethics rules, and the JSC recommended sanctions. But the state Supreme Court has the final say. And the Republican justices let these Republican judges off the hook. It was the first time in more than 15 years that the court disagreed with the JSC’s suggestions.

The court did, however, sanction a Black Democratic judge a few months later. There have been reports that Chief Justice Paul Newby was behind the JSC’s investigation into comments by Justice Anita Earls, the only Black person on the court, about bias and discrimination in the judiciary. Earls had faced potential sanctions for a media interview in which she discussed problems with the treatment of attorneys of color and women at the high court.

Democratic judges like Earls must worry that they could be sanctioned for completely ethical conduct. Though the complaint against Earls was dismissed, she is now asking JSC to approve all of her public statements.

Earls is right to be worried. Republican lawmakers packed the JSC in last year’s state budget, transferring the state bar’s appointments to House Speaker Tim Moore, who appointed his former law partner, and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, whose son sits on the high court. The GOP is weaponizing the judicial ethics enforcement process to go after Democrats, while letting Republicans get away with anything. 

It’s not surprising that the high court refuses to hold Republican judges accountable, because the corruption starts at the top. Chief Justice Paul Newby has repeatedly ruled in favor of Duke Energy, a company that he partly owns. He has also donated to non-judicial campaigns and voted to allow Justice Phil Berger, Jr. to hear lawsuits against his father. This is all conduct that the ethics rules prohibit or discourage, but Newby doesn’t care. 

Without the ProPublica report, we wouldn’t have even known that Newby and his colleagues dismissed the JSC’s recommended punishments. That’s because, as NC Newsline reported in 2013, state legislators changed the law to give the state Supreme Court the final word on sanctioning judges and to keep the process secret, unless the court imposes sanctions.

This means that the high court could keep dismissing ethics complaints against Republican judges, and the public could never find out. 

The Newby court’s agenda (flouting ethics rules, legalized gerrymandering, and putting corporations over workers) is not popular with voters. Maybe that’s why conservatives want to ensure voters can’t elect a different majority in a few years. A proposed amendment would lengthen judges’ terms to 12 years, and a Republican consultant bragged that this would cement the GOP’s control of the high court for nearly a decade. If lawmakers put this amendment on the ballot, it would just be the latest in a series of power grabs targeting the courts over the past decade. 

Republicans in Raleigh, both the legislative and judicial branches, are abusing their power. The GOP doesn’t want our high court justices to be accountable to the voters. But the stench of corruption is coming from the top of North Carolina’s judiciary, and the voters are the only check on these power-hungry judges. 

Note: This commentary has been updated to reflect that the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Judicial Standards Commission’s recommendation was not unprecedented but was instead the first such event in more than 15 years.

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