NC committee should withdraw reckless request of State Bar employees’ political records | Opinion
In North Carolina, state agencies are not partisan arms of the government. They are independent bodies that must function free from political considerations. It shouldn’t matter whether their employees are Democrats, Republicans or people who have never voted at all.
Which is why it’s so troubling to see a committee requesting the personal political records of state employees in the name of oversight.
A legislative committee recently requested a list of the political affiliations of North Carolina’s State Bar employees and leaders, as well as a record of all of their political contributions over the last 13 years, The News & Observer reported.
That committee is the State Bar Grievance Committee, and it’s tasked with oversight of the State Bar, a state agency which regulates the legal profession by investigating and disciplining attorneys. In the past, the committee’s job has been to recommend changes to that disciplinary process. But lawmakers expanded that mandate earlier this year, giving it vague authority to “review any other aspect or area of the North Carolina State Bar the committee deems concerning, needing improvement, or necessary in fulfilling its duties.”
State Bar Executive Director Peter Bolac made it clear in his response: the Bar does not collect political information about its employees, because the agency’s work is apolitical.
Yet the committee’s co-chairs say that the information is needed to “discover whether or not we have a diversity of thought.”
“If the data point came back and there were 80/20, 90/10, one party or the other, without regard to the party, that would suggest something,” committee co-chair Woody White, a former GOP lawmaker and current member of the UNC System Board of Governors, said at a recent committee meeting.
But what exactly would it suggest? Diversity of thought is not necessarily measured by voter registrations or political donations. Political affiliations often tell very little about how a person thinks, how they reason or how well they do their job. It also has very little to do with how someone enforces professional ethics and the law, a task that’s meant to be apolitical.
Committee co-chair Larry Shaheen told me that, after receiving complaints, the committee is concerned that partisanship has begun affecting the Bar’s disciplinary process. He argued that the information should be public record.
“It’s not partisan. It’s not about trying to figure out whether we can get more Republicans hired over there, because I, frankly, couldn’t care less,” Shaheen said. “What I care about is holding accountable a Bar that is mandatory and that holds the lives of lawyers accused in their hands on a day-to-day basis. And if we’re going to speak truth to power, and if we’re going to hold those in power accountable, everyone and all organizations are subject to that.”
It may very well be true that something is wrong with the Bar’s grievance process. There may be genuine reason to believe that its investigations are not being handled fairly. But that doesn’t mean that the agency’s flaws are a result of partisanship, or that its decisions are tainted by partisan bias.
Of course, oversight is not inherently a bad thing, and neither is transparency. No state agency is above scrutiny. But there’s a fine line here between oversight and politicization. Demanding personal political information about civil servants — regardless of whether that information is already publicly available — should raise alarm bells. Whether intentional or not, the committee’s request carries the implication that if the Bar’s staff or council skews toward one party, the integrity of the agency and its decisions must somehow be compromised. Even if their efforts prove nothing, the initial accusations may erode faith in the institution, which would cripple an entity whose legitimacy depends on independence and the public perception of neutrality.
And if it turns out that the Bar is overrepresented by one political party, then what? Does it mean it’s no longer credible, even if none of its work is actually political? Will it be forced to hire people who belong to the other party, even though state law says political affiliation or political influence must not be considered by state agencies in the hiring process? Will its composition be amended so that members are chosen through political appointments, rather than by lawyers itself?
Perhaps the most troubling question is where it will — or won’t — end. If we give the green light to tracking the political activity of some state employees, why not others? Will this become the norm at every state agency when it’s suspected of having flaws? Will we look at every government inefficiency and systemic failure through the lens of politics?
If the committee has legitimate reason to believe that politics are poisoning the Bar’s grievance process, the committee should make that information public, too. It would go a long way to reassure people that they aren’t just administering a litmus test of partisan loyalties. If there’s an issue with an investigation or investigator, then by all means, identify and correct it. But making it about politics risks tainting everything.
This story was originally published December 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
