An investigation of state Supreme Court justice Anita Earls will continue after a judge declined this week to block it.
Earls, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit to block the Judicial Standards Commission from investigating critical comments she made about the court system. She says the action by the commission, which is led by Republicans, violates her First Amendment free speech rights.
Earls — the only Black woman on the state Supreme Court — had spoken out about what she sees as a poor track record on diversity and inclusion efforts in the state's courts.
She pointed out a lack of diversity among judicial clerks and criticized the Supreme Court’s recent decision to disband its Commission on Fairness and Equity.
"There have been cases where I have felt very uncomfortable on the bench because I feel like my colleagues are unfairly cutting off a female advocate,” Earls told the publication Law 360. “We have so few people of color argue, but in one case there was a Black woman who argued in front of us, and I felt like she was being attacked unfairly, not allowed to answer the question, interrupted.”
On Tuesday, federal court judge William Osteen rejected Earls' request to block the investigation while her lawsuit is pending. He says Earls couldn't prove that any disciplinary action resulting from the probe would be unconstitutional, and it might amount to no more than a confidential reprimand.
"Whatever interpretation is finally applied to plaintiff’s comments about her colleagues placing their ideology above the institution, that statement carries a reasonable interpretation that is critical of those justices, perhaps in the political sense and perhaps in an ethical sense," Osteen wrote.
Osteen's order questioned whether the Democrat's criticism of the Supreme Court's Republican majority could harm public confidence in the court system. Blocking the Earls investigation, he argued, could lead to "an impaired system which would permit a judge to say anything on any subject whatsoever without fear of disciplinary reprimand by a body designated to maintain a code of ethics for judges."
Earls' attorney says she plans to appeal the decision. Attorney Press Millen told WRAL that Osteen's argument runs "contrary to established legal precedent on the role of federal courts in guaranteeing the freedom of speech."