[N.C. Supreme] Court: Wake should review judicial elections

The News & Observer [Raleigh, NC] ^ | 28 Aug 2009 | Sarah Ovaska

[The Pack Knight]

RALEIGH -- The N.C. Supreme Court issued a 4-3 ruling today declaring that the way some judicial seats are divided in Wake County needs to be re-evaluated.

The decision could mean a restructuring of how Superior Court judges are selected in Wake County, with the N.C. General Assembly or a judge having to weigh in. Wake County, referred to as Judicial District 10 in the state Supreme Court's ruling, has six superior court judges who are elected from four separate geographic areas but with widely differing populations. "Plaintiffs have demonstrated gross disparity in voting power between similarly situated residents of Wake County," wrote N.C. Supreme Court Justice Edward Thomas Brady in the court's majority opinion. "No other subdivided district in the State comes close to the degree of disproportionality found in District 10."

In District 10A in Eastern Raleigh and the eastern part of the county, for example, the ratio of judges to residents is one judge for every 32,199 residents, while in District 10C, which consists of precincts in the northern and eastern fringes of eastern Wake County. where there is one judge for every 158,812 residents.

Most of the controversy focuses on District 10A, which covers eastern Raleigh and eastern portions of the county, and has a much smaller population that the county's three other subdistricts. Despite the smaller population, the district chooses two judges.

The subdistrict also has 63 percent of registered voters identified as black in recent censuses, according to census data for the area. It's not clear how soon the issue will be resolved. The Supreme Court's decision today sent a lawsuit back to a trial court to determine how the matter should be dealt with.

In the ruling, Brady wrote that the state had to demonstrate what significant interests there are to keeping the lines drawn by the state legislature. In a dissenting opinion, N.C. Supreme Court Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson wrote that population is not a material consideration in judicial districts since judges, as opposed to legislators, do not serve individual constituents but rather serve the entire population through their decisions.

The elected superior court judges in Wake County are Paul Gessner, Abraham Jones, Howard Manning Jr., Michael Morgan, Paul Ridgeway and Donald Stephens. Superior courts in North Carolina preside over criminal felony cases, appeals from district courts and lawsuits seeking more than $10,000 in damages.

Jones and Morgan are elected from 10A, Ridgeway and Manning from 10B, Gessner from 10C, Stephens from 10D. The lawsuit, Blackenship et al. v. Bartlett, was filed in 2006 by three Wake County residents against the N.C. State Board of Elections, which took issue with the way the N.C. General Assembly carved up the judicial districts in Wake County. The three men, two who are lawyers, claimed that the system unfairly gave more power to voters living in the subdistricts with lower populations.

[The Pack Knight]

Here's a PDF of the opinion.

It's also interesting to note that Justice Timmons-Goodson also wrote the dissent in another case the same day which held a law banning all gun possession by ex-felons unconstitutional.