Democrats and advocacy groups are hoping to fend off a Republican challenger in a North Carolina Supreme Court race on the ballot this fall, as they try to keep leverage on the judicial bench in a key battleground state.
Democratic Justice Anita Earls is running to keep her seat against Sarah Stevens, who previously held elected office in the North Carolina state House as a Republican.
The current makeup of the court is 5-2 and leans conservative. Even as Earls has vastly outraised her opponent, advocacy groups are shoring up support for her because the court could soon review issues like abortion and gerrymandering.
State supreme court races have gained more attention since the U.S. Supreme Court left abortion access matters to states in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In North Carolina, the state Supreme Court’s decisions have been critical on other issues like redistricting and voter ID laws.
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“You saw groups on the left for the first time ever spending more money than groups on the right,” Douglas Keith, the deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Judiciary Program, told The Washington Sun about the post-Dobbs climate. “Now we have judicial elections that sometimes, as happened in Wisconsin in 2025, look like a top 10 U.S. Senate race.”
In Wisconsin’s 2025 race, spending from billionaires and other major donors brought fundraising totals to more than $100 million.
Keith added that donors who used to focus on the partisanship of state legislatures quickly learned that it’s the state supreme court that could have the final say.
The current political climate in North Carolina appears to be favoring Democrats — several key races are leaning far more Democratic than expected. Democratic candidate Roy Cooper appears to be easily leading Republican Michael Whatley in the Senate race, and several House districts have been moving in Democrats’ direction as well.
Earls’ clinching a win in November is crucial to Democrats’ plan of flipping the bench in 2028, when three Republican justices will be up for reelection.
“Since I’ve been on the court, my record has been one of seeking to enforce the state constitution and all of the rights that it contains that are so important for the people of the state, including things like the right to a sound basic education, the right to vote,” Earls told Spectrum News on Wednesday.
Earls has raised more than $4.4 million as of June 30, with more than $3.5 million in cash on hand as the campaign season closes. Stevens, who has spent little time on the campaign trail and lagged on investing in advertisements, raised more than $336,000 and had more than $257,000 in cash on hand as of June 30.
“I truly don’t have an agenda except to respect the integrity of the court and make sure the Constitution and law are followed,” Stevens said in a Spectrum News interview on Wednesday.
Civil rights groups are making large investments in the race to help tip the bench in favor of Democrats.
“We just need to change the direction of the courts so that we will be able to both save the rights and freedoms that people have and then also expand upon those where they have been eroded in recent years,” Liz Barber, the director of policy and advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, told The Sun.
They don’t want to take any chances, given recent history.
The other Democratic justice, Allison Riggs, spent months after the 2024 election in a legal battle against her Republican opponent, who wanted to discard more than 60,000 ballots he believed were unconstitutionally counted. Riggs won by 734 votes after two recounts.
In many states, funding toward judiciary races has ramped up over the years as both parties battle for control of state benches to make key decisions. The ACLU of North Carolina has announced a $3.5 million campaign in the state Supreme Court race on behalf of Earls, with ads featuring healthcare professionals speaking on the effect of the state’s abortion law.
These types of partisan contests for state supreme court seats are rare. At least eight states, including North Carolina, have partisan elections for state justices. Others have nonpartisan elections, gubernatorial appointments or retention elections that determine some of the most important seats for state law.
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