Shortly after the General Assembly reduced the number of early voting days from 17 to 10 as part of sweeping voting changes enacted last session, Gov. Pat McCrory took to the airwaves to defend the move. “We didn’t shorten early voting,” the governor said in a clip that went viral. “We compacted the calendar, but we’re going to have the same hours in which polls are open in early voting and we’re going to have more polls available.”
Read MoreWhat started out last week as news of the temporary closure of the Bonner Bridge on the Outer Banks for claimed emergency repairs quickly morphed into partisan sniping, with GOP officials deflecting blame for the state’s decades-long delay in addressing environmental problems there by attacking environmentalists who’d filed a lawsuit over the bridge two years ago.
Read MoreParties in the three federal lawsuits challenging voting law changes signed into law here in August will appear before U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder on December 12 to map out a schedule for proceedings moving forward. And while they’ve reached agreement on some preliminary litigation matters, the parties are not budging on one critical date: when the case should be tried.
Read MoreIt’s a storyline straight out of a John Grisham novel. For 15 years and running, two Pittsburgh lawyers fight to bring justice to a small coal mine owner driven into bankruptcy by Don Blankenship, the most powerful coal baron in American history. The courtroom battle starts in a small courtroom in West Virginia, reaches the U.S. Supreme Court and then lands in neighboring Virginia courts, where it continues today.
Read MoreIt’s a troubling story line: A well-heeled and powerful group with a vested interest in the outcome of a lawsuit contributes millions to land a favored justice on a supreme court where its case will likely land. John Grisham used it in his bestseller The Appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court considered the true-to-life version arising out the battle between coal-mining executives in West Virginia in Caperton v. Massey Coal.
Read MoreThe North Carolina Department of Public Safety has adopted a new, single-drug protocol for executions, putting off tomorrow’s scheduled oral argument in the case challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection procedures used by the state to carry out the death penalty.
Read MoreFor more than ten years, the state of North Carolina acknowledged that poor and disadvantaged children had a constitutional right to a sound basic education, beginning with pre-kindergarten. And for nearly as many years the state worked to provide these at-risk children opportunities for a jump start on that education, crafting a pre-K program that became the envy of other states.
Read MoreIf there’s one message to be gleaned from the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bumpers v. Community Bank of Northern Virginia, it’s this: When it comes to mortgage lending, consumers better shop around. And not just for the best interest rates and payment terms. Now the onus is on you, borrower, to find the best deal for all those ancillary charges that show up on that mysterious closing form – fees for the title company for example, or a loan settlement provider or even an appraiser.
Read MoreState GOP lawmakers wasted no time ramping up their efforts to drastically change voting in North Carolina after the U.S. Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, gutted the requirement that certain jurisdictions get proposed voting changes pre-approved. “Now we can go with the full bill,” Senator Tom Apodaca told WRAL that same day, referring to an omnibus voting bill that
Read MoreWith a rising number of divisive laws being challenged in courts across the country — including those addressing same-sex marriage, immigration and voting rights – some attorneys general are refusing to defend their states, agreeing that such laws are unconstitutional. Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced in July that she wouldn’t defend that state’s same sex marriage ban in a pending federal lawsuit.
Read MoreIt started out as a simple bill allowing parties in family court to appeal rulings before their cases were finally resolved. By the time it landed on the House floor for a final vote, one of the last bills on the last day of the long session, it had a new name, a new number and a new purpose: to give the justices of the state Supreme Court the sole authority to discipline judges — including themselves –and allow them to decide if, when and who to discipline in secret.
Read MoreHere’s one word you don’t often hear being bandied about in the General Assembly while debates continue over charter schools, vouchers and funding: Segregation. To many, it’s a term for the archives, the stuff of black-and-white highlight reels. But this Monday, in federal court in Greenville, segregation will be front-and-center as Senior U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard opens hearings in a case involving an order that dates back to 1965.
Read MoreIt didn’t take long for Gov. Pat McCrory to put pen to paper and sign off on the repeal of the state’s landmark Racial Justice Act, making good on his campaign promise to rid North Carolina of legislation he once called a joke.
Read MoreIn an off year, Monday’s decision upholding the state’s 2011 redistricting plan would have run as the headline story for most dailies in North Carolina. It was still page one, certainly, but the latest chapter of our decennial redistricting litigation couldn’t compete with a legislature mired in controversy and scrambling to meet deadlines before adjourning for the summer. Instead, more Moral Monday arrests and continuing fallout from the anti-Sharia anti-abortion sneak attack led the news of the day. Not surprisingly, the legislators who won felt vindicated and proclaimed victory.
Read MoreElection Day 2016: Voter photo ID. No Sunday voting. Fewer, if any, early voting days. And no same-day registration. Sound like we’re expanding access to the polls? Not in North Carolina, now that legislators have been sprung from the restraints of Voting Rights Act preclearance. Just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder gutted the requirement that certain states and local governments get Justice Department approval of proposed voting changes, Republican lawmakers here promised quick passage of a voting bill that would set the state back decades. “Now we can go with the full bill,” Senator Tom Apodaca told WRAL, referring to an omnibus voting bill that would do more than just require voter ID; it would reduce early voting, eliminate Sunday voting and ban same-day registration.
Read MoreKevin Tully has seen plenty in his 25 years as a public defender, both from clients and from the young attorneys he manages as head of the Mecklenburg County office. But nothing quite matches the time recently when three of his junior public defenders—fresh out of a training session at the Southern Public Defender Training Center—told him that the office wasn’t doing its job.
Read More“Gideon’s Army,” a film by Dawn Porter which portrays the lives of three young public defenders working in the south, opens this year’s Full Frame Documentary Festival in Durham on April 4, 2013, at 7:30 p.m.
Read MoreAfter Paul Dacier became EMC Corporation’s first in-house attorney in 1990, he soon realized that the data storage company would need more than patents and lawyers to protect its intellectual property. It would have to become an aggressive litigant. Dacier was promoted to general counsel in 1993, the same year that Storage Technology Corporation sued Hopkinton, Massachusetts–based EMC.
Read MoreHere’s one thing we can all agree on: Election 2012 revealed plenty in need of fixing at the polls in North Carolina. Long lines in places ill-equipped to handle the volume, voter frustration and unbridled electioneering were captured in unflattering media reports about pushing and shouting, interrogations by poll observers, and this: “A guy driving a tractor-trailer bed filled with effigies of Democratic officials, including President Barack Obama, with nooses around their neck.”
Read MoreIt’s been nearly a decade since the New York Times profiled the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond—the court of last resort for the vast majority of cases filed in federal courts in North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia —as “the most aggressively conservative federal appeals court in the nation.”
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