2018年3月19日
安妮塔伯爵 wants to be a 北卡罗莱纳 supreme court justice. 要到达那里, the civil rights lawyer has to win an election in 北卡罗莱纳, one of eight states that select supreme court justices through elections rather than a nomination.
这位来自达勒姆的澳门赌场官网表示，她参选有两个原因. 第一个, 她说, she learned through her work on gerrymandering and voter identification laws in the state that the legislature was “determined to try to control the courts.” Being a justice will help to “uphold the importance of an impartial and independent judiciary.”
Second, she “wanted to try civic engagement from the other side, if you will.”
在这次冒险中有一些令人头晕的复杂情况. 北卡罗莱纳, with a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled legislature, is in many ways representative of the political divisions around the country. That has led to a battle over whether the state will hold a primary election for the judicial offices. Last fall, the 北卡罗莱纳 general assembly voted to cancel primaries for judicial elections. 但你.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles in January granted an injunction reinstating the primaries. 然后到了二月, a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel stayed the earlier injunction, 也就是说初选取消了, 至少现在是这样. (The Richmond-based Fourth Circuit will hear the case March 20, 但可能要到4月初才会做出决定.)
The lack of primaries would mean that candidates for the state supreme court would not have to file to run until June, 这场竞争可能包括数十名候选人, 阻止每个政党提名单一人选.
“This was one of the games they’ve been playing with the process in order to tamper with the outcome,厄尔斯说。.
Much of Earls’ motivation comes from the catalyst of her life experiences. Born in 1960, she grew up in a mixed-race family in the state of Washington. Her African American father and white mother moved west because Washington was a state that allowed interracial marriages, 而在南方的许多州却不是这样. 即便如此，吉姆·克劳法在全国仍比比皆是.
That beginning, in short, set the stage for her entry into the law. “I became a lawyer because I could use the law to break down the barriers that people of color face in this country,厄尔斯说。, 58.
After graduating from Williams College and Yale Law School, she made her way to Washington, D.C. In 1998, 在克林顿执政期间, she was appointed to serve as a deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. 律政司. She also ran the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. 她在D的岁月.C., 她说, gave her a chance to see how civil rights could be enforced at the national level, and “how at the national level you get a sense of how these issues play out in different places.”
After she moved to 北卡罗莱纳, she formed the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. 非营利组织, 不像南方贫困法律中心, is modeled on the “community lawyer model” not the “impact litigation model,厄尔斯说。. In other words, the goal is to “pursue what people in the community say is important,” 她说. 今天, more than half of the coalition’s budget is focused on criminal justice issues, 虽然投票权, 青年正义, 环境正义也是重点领域.
在联合政府, Earls became well known in the state as the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in 北卡罗莱纳 v. 这是反对种族不公正划分选区的里程碑案件. 该案最终在美国法院结案.S. 最高法院, which affirmed in June 2017 that 28 of 北卡罗莱纳’s House and Senate districts were unconstitutional racial boundaries.
Voter identification legislation was another of Earls’ focus areas. 其中一场斗争涉及该州2013年的选举法, 强制要求选民身份证吗, 减少提前投票, 取消了当天的选民登记, 这项法律在2016年被第四巡回法院推翻. (去年5月，美国政府宣布退出欧盟.S. 最高法院维持了第四巡回法院的判决, although the Republican-majority legislature is likely to continue to try to rewrite voting laws.)
Many voting rights issues are still being hammered out by the state supreme court, Earls says.
在2月份, America Votes awarded Earls the Cecile Richards Progressive Leader 奖, named for the president of Planned Parenthood and one of the founders of America Votes, 表彰她在投票权方面的工作.
在去年年底, Earls resigned from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice to run for the state supreme court seat held by Republican 酒吧bara Jackson.
共和党控制的立法机构, 她说, was trying to control the courts and saying they didn’t trust the judges by trying to eliminate judicial elections altogether. 在北卡罗来纳州, 她说, elections remove the decision-making process from a legislature trying to influence the courts.
厄尔斯希望赢得民主党的初选，如果有的话. The legislature is “hoping that multiple Democrats will file and split the ticket,” 她说. A ballot with 15 or 20 names could mean that the eventual winner could take the spot with a small percentage of the vote.
即使没有初选来筛选候选人, “I’m optimistic that voters in our state will see through these maneuvers and that people who care about having a fair democracy and having the right to vote will support me,厄尔斯说。.
