Kathleen Hopewell News-Times
Originally published by the Carteret County News-Times
CARTERET COUNTY — North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls of Durham made several stops in Carteret County last weekend as part of her reelection campaign for the state’s highest court. In a conversation with the News-Times, Earls emphasized the importance of the state’s judiciary in protecting individual rights and encouraged constituents to learn more about judicial candidates in the 2026 midterm elections.
While balancing a campaign and her ongoing duties to the court, Earls is also undergoing breast cancer treatment. She announced her diagnosis on social media in December, just weeks after filing for candidacy. Her competitor for the Supreme Court seat, State Representative and former North Carolina House Speaker Pro Tempore Sarah Stevens, R-Surry, also publicly announced in January 2024 that she had been treated for breast cancer.
Going public with her diagnosis was, as Earls says, “for people to realize that it is treatable. It’s not something to be afraid of.”
In doing so, she says she’s received an outpouring of support.
“It’s opened my eyes to something I knew already: This is a state of people who care about each other,” she said.
She says the response to her announcement shows the need for elected officials to “make sure our policies reflect that fact: that here, in North Carolina, we care about each other. We want to see each other do well. We want to support each other in any way we can.”
Amid her treatment, Earls affirms that she remains able to continue fulfilling her “number one responsibility on the court.”
Earls’ campaign also garnered attention recently, having raised more than $1.3 million in the latter half of 2025, according to an end-of-year campaign finance report. More than 80% of funds came from North Carolina and 75% were donations of $100 or less, signaling substantial in-state attention on the race.
A March 16 poll by Public Policy Polling, involving 556 North Carolina voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points, has Earls at 43%, Stevens at 40% and 17% unsure.
Even with heightened attention on the race, Earls expressed concerns about those uncertain voters.
“People know what a U.S. senator does. They know what a governor does,” Earls said. “But then they get down to a Supreme Court justice and they’re not sure who to vote for.”
With decades of experience as a civil rights attorney, this concern partly propels her run for reelection. “I think part of what I’ve seen is how important our courts are. And in fact, increasingly, state courts are so important to protecting our rights,” she said.
“The reason I want to continue serving is to uphold the state constitution and to enforce all of the rights and freedoms that that document gives everyone in the state.”
North Carolina’s Supreme Court has taken on greater significance to state governance in recent years. After flipping from a 4-3 Democratic majority to a 5-2 Republican majority following 2022 elections, the seven-member court reversed decisions on partisan gerrymandering and voter ID. It was also the subject of a months-long election dispute that unsuccessfully sought to expand its Republican majority to 6-1.
The court has taken up other matters such as electricity costs and how the state should fund education per its constitutional obligations.
In fact, Earls visited Carteret County just hours after the court unanimously affirmed class certification of an ongoing dispute involving the county’s solid waste fees, Armistead v. Carteret County. This case made it to the docket after the county appealed a 2024 decision to certify three classes of plaintiffs challenging the fees.
The ruling, Earls explained, was not on the merits of the case—whether the county fees amounted to violations of law—but rather on whether the plaintiffs could maintain a class action.
In pointing to this case, Earls underlined that “certainly, all of the local government-type issues that we decide probably impact people here.”
Even with the breadth of issues the court covers, Earls narrowed in on “decisions that impact voting rights, which I think is fundamental to everything else.”
“Exercising your right to vote is then how you affect all the other things that you care about, whether it’s housing or education or health care or employment or economic development,” she said. “All those things depend on who you put in office. And that depends on having a right to vote.”
Earls sat on the Democratic-majority court that ruled in 2022 against what it deemed extreme partisan gerrymandering in congressional, state House and state Senate districts. “But then, we had an election. Voters sent different people to our Supreme Court,” Earls said.
Just months after issuing those opinions and establishing what Earls says was “neutral criteria for how you measure whether or not a map is fair,” the newly Republican-majority court overturned the earlier bench’s decision in 2023, favoring maps that afforded greater power to Republican candidates.
“As someone who litigated voting rights cases, it’s always been important to me to make sure that every vote counts and is counted equally, carries the same weight,” Earls explained, “because I just believe our democracy only works if everyone’s voice is heard.”
Earls said she would encourage people to learn more about judicial candidates in 2026. She expressed a particular interest in reaching voters who may not see them, noting “so many people in the state are registered unaffiliated.”
Though only her seat is open in the 2026 midterm elections, Earls also recommends looking into the six candidates vying for three different seats on the Court of Appeals.
As one of only two Democrats on a court that has become increasingly central to state politics, the contest between Earls and Stevens will continue to draw widespread attention in the upcoming months.
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