Republicans in glass houses
Republicans who complain about weaponization of government shouldn’t throw stones in their glass house. But they shamelessly do.
Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby at Popular Information:
Three Republican state senators in North Carolina have demanded an investigation of state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. The state senators, Buck Newton (R), Amy Galey (R), and Danny Britt (R), claim that Riggs has “blatantly violated” the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct. They called for an investigation into Riggs’ conduct by the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission.
What was Riggs’ transgression? She mentioned reproductive rights in a campaign ad.
Riggs was appointed to fill a vacancy in the North Carolina Supreme Court in September 2023. It is an elected position, and now Riggs is running for a full eight-year term. She is in a closely contested race against Republican Jefferson Griffin, a current member of the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
In a television ad, Riggs says that “women should be in charge of our own reproductive health care.” She notes that the Republican nominee for Governor, Mark Robinson, has supported a total abortion ban and that Griffin, if elected to the North Carolina Supreme Court, “could decide if [Robinson’s] ban becomes law.”
How dare she!
In a letter to colleagues announcing their request for an investigation, the Republican Senators claim that the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct “prohibits any judicial candidate, regardless of the office they seek, from taking a position on any issue that may appear before the court.” The letter was posted online this week by Billy Corriher, State Courts Manager at People’s Parity Project Action.
But the Republican Senators have mischaracterized the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct. It does not say that judicial candidates cannot comment on any issue that may appear before the court. The North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct states that judges “should abstain from public comment about the merits of a pending proceeding in any state or federal court dealing with a case or controversy arising in North Carolina.” Riggs’ ad does not comment on any pending court proceeding.
To the contrary, the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct says that a judge seeking election may engage in “constitutionally protected political activity.” Stating that you believe that women should be in control of their reproductive health care is unquestionably constitutionally protected political speech.
The letter from the Republican Senators mirrors criticism of the ad from Griffin during an October 11 debate against Riggs. “We don’t need to be out there telling people how we’re going to vote on cases,” Griffin said. “We don’t need to be out there telling folks how another judge is going to vote on cases.”
But Griffin himself has made his views on abortion very clear. Last year, the North Carolina Court of Appeals heard a case that “dealt with the termination of a mother’s parental rights because she had committed a crime while she was pregnant.” Griffin signed onto an opinion that found the woman’s “parental rights could be terminated — even though the child hadn’t yet been born at the time of the mother’s crimes — because ‘life begins at conception.'”
The ruling Griffin signed enshrined the notion of “fetal personhood” into North Carolina law. There was widespread outrage about the ruling and its broader impact on the state. In response to the criticism, Griffin and the other judges who signed on took the usual step of formally withdrawing the decision. That means “the potential precedent it had established regarding personhood no longer exists.”
Now that he is seeking a promotion to the North Carolina Supreme Court, Griffin and his allies are attempting to make any discussion of reproductive rights off-limits.
But of course they are. Especially in the wake of Dobbs.
It would not be the first time Republicans in the N.C. state legislature have launched an investigations of a Democratic supreme court judge (also a woman).
In August 2023, North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls received a letter from the commission informing her that she was under investigation for suspicion of violating the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct. The investigation centered around comments that Earls, the only Black woman on the court, made about the court’s approach to racial and gender discrimination in an interview with legal publication Law360.
In the interview, Earls was asked about a study that found that attorneys who argued before the North Carolina Supreme Court were primarily white and male. Earls responded that she sees “gender and race discrepancies” in the court caused by “implicit bias.” Earls noted that she thought the court treated white male attorneys with “more respect,” and that there were certain cases where she believed “[her] colleagues [were] unfairly cutting off a female advocate.” Earls also criticized the court’s decision to shut down diversity and equity efforts.
Earls clarified that she did not believe this was “conscious, intentional, racial animus,” but rather “that our court system, like any other court system, is made up of human beings and I believe the research that shows that we all have implicit biases.” Earls did not discuss any cases that had come before the Supreme Court.
The NCGOP majority is not a clan to allow such details to get between them and a partisan inquisition. Earls countersued the Judicial Standards Commission in federal court, arguing that investigation interfered with her First Amendment rights.
Popular Information continues:
In November 2023, a federal judge rejected Earls’ request for a preliminary injunction to block the investigation. In January, the commission’s investigation was dropped without any discipline against Earls. In response, Earls dropped the lawsuit.
Addtional color commentary
There’s even more GOP monkey-wrenching afoot on the N.C. state Supreme Court (from August):
North Carolina Democrats blasted Republicans on the North Carolina Supreme Court Thursday for ruling that Justice Phil Berger Jr. should not have to remove himself from a case concerning his father, Republican Senate leader Phil Berger Sr.
The case involves the power to appoint state and local elections boards. That power is currently held by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Republican legislators passed a law to give that power to themselves instead, and Cooper is challenging that law in court.
You’d think that would be a clear-cut case for recusal and you would be wrong in a state where Republicans dominate both branches of the legislature and the Supreme Court.
Sort of like Wisconsin not so long ago. There in January 2023, Republicans filed a similar complaint against Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, Judge Janet Protasiewicz:
Randall Cook, a Barron County resident and GOP supporter, filed the complaint against Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz. The complaint seeks to have the Wisconsin Judicial Commission investigate whether Protasiewicz has declared how she’d rule in cases the high court could eventually see regarding Wisconsin’s abortion ban and the legality of its legislative maps.
Those complaints against Protasiewicz were dismissed without action in September last year.
In North Carolina, Riggs faces a Judicial Standards Commission that Republicans reconfigured in October last year after the Earls and Protasiewicz dismissals.
“Republicans took away the state bar’s appointments to the commission and took those appointments for themselves,” Slate reported. The new commission will be comprised of “only judges and laypeople—no attorneys,” all chosen by the gerrymandered Republican legislature. Slate concludes, “This gives the GOP near-total control over enforcement of judicial ethics rules.”
Nice board-stacking if you can get it.