Judges in Mecklenburg judicial districts scrambling days before election filing
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Just days before candidate filing, a panel of judges threw out Mecklenburg County court districts Wednesday, meaning candidates will run county-wide next year.
The three-judge panel of Superior Court judges threw out eight voting districts drawn by Republican lawmakers for the county’s 21 District Court judges. The ruling only affects the 2020 races, when a dozen of those seats are up.
Under terms of the consent agreement, District Court judges would run at-large for a year while the legal challenge continues.
Wednesday’s ruling comes days before the start of North Carolina’s candidate filing period, which begins Monday and runs through Dec. 20.
“We didn’t want to delay the process but we did think it was important the process was done fairly,” said Alicia Brooks, a former judge who lost her seat in 2018.
Brooks and Donald Cureton — two of the county’s Democratic judges — were among the plaintiffs in the suit that challenged the judicial districts that took effect in the county for the 2018 elections.
In 2017, the General Assembly created eight districts to elect the county’s district court judges.
Supporters said by giving voters fewer people to vet, the change would lead to easier and more careful consideration of candidates.
But critics said the law, passed after lawmakers made judicial elections partisan again, was designed to elect more Republicans.
In 2018, Brooks and Cureton — both African American — lost their seats. Their lawyer, Bob Hunter of Greensboro, called them victims of “racial sorting” in one court document. Cureton and Brooks, he wrote, were put into a district that was 82% white.
“The effect of the redistricting was to eliminate incumbent judges largely based on race,” he wrote. “This effect chills the impartiality of judges and the critical policy of judicial independence.”
Districts for judges
In an affidavit filed this month, Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop — then the main N.C. Senate sponsor of the measure — gave the rationale for districts.
He said after drawing eight new districts for the county’s eight superior court judges, it seemed “illogical” that the higher court judges would be elected by fewer people than the lower court judges, who at the time were elected at-large.
The voting districts overlapped with the superior court districts, which each elected one judge. To accommodate 21 district judges, each of the eight districts has either two or three judges.
“The effect on voters in (districts) with only two candidates versus (districts) with three candidates dilutes the voting power of residents in the two-candidate (districts),” Hunter wrote.
Critics also said judges serve the entire county, no matter their district.
“Judges in our district court serve the entire county as a matter of sound policy,” Charlotte attorney John Wester told the Observer this month. Wester, a registered Republican, is a former president of the N.C. Bar.
Making candidates run county-wide probably won’t help Republicans, said Gerry Cohen, a former longtime legislative official.
“It probably wouldn’t be helpful to Republicans running countywide in what has been a heavily Democratic county for the last 12 years or so,” Cohen said Wednesday.
This story was originally published November 27, 2019 at 6:50 PM with the headline "Judges in Mecklenburg judicial districts scrambling days before election filing."
