NC Supreme Court justices plan fundraiser with lawyer who could bring cases before the high court

The two Democratic justices on the North Carolina Supreme Court plan to speak at a fundraiser Friday with Eric Holder — a lawyer and anti-gerrymandering advocate who has backed multiple high-profile lawsuits in the state, and who could find himself before the state’s high court in the future.

The fundraiser with Holder — who served as U.S. attorney general under former President Barack Obama — shows the high level of interest that national politicians continue to have in who serves on the state’s highest court. Its justices are frequently asked to settle major cases related to elections or the balance of power in this key swing state.

The fundraiser also highlights the delicate balancing act judges in North Carolina must perform in reassuring the public that their political campaigns can remain separate from their judicial rulings.

After leaving office, Holder founded the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. His group has frequently been involved in backing lawsuits against pro-Republican gerrymandering plans, including in North Carolina.

There’s no indication any of the judges involved in the Holder fundraiser — who include all of the Democratic Party’s nominees for Supreme Court and Court of Appeals — are breaking any laws or ethics rules by attending or benefiting from the fundraiser. Judges from both political parties frequently socialize with and take campaign contributions from lawyers, business members and political activists who could have business before them.

But it leaves them exposed to political attacks from opponents who say the fundraiser is improper.

“It is appalling to see a sitting justice on the NC Supreme Court campaign with Eric Holder,” North Carolina Republican Party spokesman Matt Mercer told WRAL. “Out-of-state radical Democrats want to buy North Carolina’s judiciary.”

North Carolina Democratic Party spokesman Tommy Mattocks said judges didn’t always need to conduct political fundraisers: The Democratic-led state legislature in the early 2000s passed an ethics reform that gave public funding to judicial candidates who agreed not to take other campaign donations.

But that law no longer exists. Republicans repealed it after taking control of the state legislature a decade later.

“The Republicans made it necessary to raise private funding since this repeal,” Mattocks said. “And they’re using this same system, too. Just last year, Chief Justice [Paul] Newby raffled off guns for a fundraiser. The GOP’s hypocrisy on campaign finance is galling and voters will not fall for it.”

Big money, high stakes

Holder endorsed Justice Anita Earls when she won in 2018, unseating an incumbent Republican justice. And this week, ahead of the fundraiser in Charlotte, he endorsed Justice Allison Riggs — the court’s other Democratic member. Riggs is running to keep her seat in this year’s only Supreme Court race on the ballot.

“Justice Riggs has repeatedly demonstrated that she evaluates cases before her with thoughtfulness, compassion, and commitment to legal principle,” Holder said in a statement about the endorsement. “Throughout her career as a tenacious civil rights attorney, she has been a champion of every American’s fundamental rights, including voting rights.”

Newby, the Republican chief justice, declined to comment on the fundraiser. Riggs didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, and Earls deferred any comment to the North Carolina Democratic Party.

“All of our Democratic judicial candidates value representative democracy and equal access to the ballot box,” said Mattocks, the party spokesman. “While none of our candidates can say how they will rule on future cases, they value fair maps where voters pick their politicians, not the other way around.”

A victory for Riggs would keep alive Democrats’ hopes of being able to flip back control of the state’s highest court before the next scheduled round of redistricting, in 2030. Seeking to unseat her is Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin, a former colleague on the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

Republicans won every statewide judicial race in 2020 and 2022.

“North Carolina voters have spoken over the past two election cycles: this is a state that wants conservative, consistent, and fair judges,” said Mercer, the GOP spokesman.

As of mid-February, the most recent data available, Griffin had raised $900,000 for his campaign — twice as much as Riggs. Their respective political parties and a variety of other outside groups are also likely to spend millions more on their contest this year.

In 2018 when Earls was running for a seat on the court, a political action committee affiliated with Holder’s group gave $250,000 to the N.C. Democratic Party. The PAC hadn’t made any contributions to any North Carolina groups or candidates for the 2024 elections as of mid-February.

The practice of judges benefiting from campaign contributions by those who could have business before the court is largely unavoidable, especially for candidates in high-profile statewide elections for the appellate courts. Unlike many other states, North Carolina elects its judges at every level of the court system. And it uses partisan elections with party labels to do so.

Supporters say that helps educate voters. Critics say it leads to the election of judges who are more beholden to political parties and donors — particularly after the 2013 repeal of public funding for judicial candidates that opened up political spending on judicial races.

Judicial races focused on redistricting

The theme of the fundraiser is “the importance of our courts ahead of the next scheduled round of redistricting.”

The list of co-hosts includes numerous Democratic state lawmakers who stand to gain more power at the legislature if Democrats were to regain control of the courts and crack down on maps drawn by GOP lawmakers.

Analyses of the voting maps that will be used in this year’s elections and throughout the rest of the decade show that even if most voters in North Carolina vote for Democrats to represent them, Republicans are nevertheless highly likely to keep control of the state legislature — and gain control of most of the state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

When the Supreme Court was under Democratic control, justices ruled that similarly skewed maps were unconstitutional for essentially pre-determining the outcomes and undermining popular will.

But after the court flipped to Republican control in 2022, that new majority immediately moved to undo that precedent and allow GOP lawmakers to once again skew the maps for political gain. Each ruling came down entirely along party lines.

Recent elections for the North Carolina Supreme Court have seen tens of millions of dollars pour into the races, largely from out-of-state political groups who saw that controlling the courts in swing states, like North Carolina, could also go a long way toward controlling the U.S. House of Representatives.

Republicans flipped the court in 2022 after the Republican State Leadership Committee — a Washington, D.C.-based group focused on winning control of state legislatures — funneled millions of dollars into attack ads painting Democratic incumbents on the Supreme Court as soft on crime. It worked. With Republicans now in control of the court and the no-gerrymandering precedent undone, Republicans appear likely to win at least a majority if not a veto-proof supermajority at the state legislature — and to flip multiple U.S. House seats held by Democrats..

North Carolina’s 14-member delegation to the U.S. House is expected to go from an even 7-7 split between the two parties to, after this year’s election, either a 10-4 or 11-3 GOP advantage.