Law and the Courts

The North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has been quietly facilitating the dismissals of hundreds of thousands of criminal charges and infractions across the state for the past two years as part of a data clean-up effort. Each of the cases dismissed had been pending for years – some for decades – without prosecution...

Jose Blanco dreams of being a U.S. Marine and fighting for the country he grew up in. “I just want to serve as much as a lot of people want to serve their country,” said the 17-year-old Porter Ridge High School student.

It appears that Thomas Farr is back in the game – the North Carolina redistricting game, that is. The recent Trump nominee for a federal judgeship in North Carolina's Eastern District filed paperwork last week to appear in court on behalf of the GOP legislative defendants in Common Cause v. Lewis, a challenge to the 2017 legislative map on grounds that it violates the state constitution as an extreme partisan gerrymander.

Redistricting reform is around the corner, and when it happens, it could move quickly – North Carolinians just have to think about what they want that reform to look like. “We do have a voice; we do have an opportunity,” said Bob Phillips, Executive Director of Common Cause North Carolina, a voting rights organization that has pushed for redistricting reform for over a decade.

The daughter of late GOP mapmaker Thomas Hofeller – the man is responsible for some of North Carolina’s most infamous gerrymanders – turned over four of his external hard drives and 18 thumb drives after his death to the plaintiffs suing North Carolina lawmakers. Stephanie Hofeller Lizon gave the documents to attorneys in March, a month after she was issued a subpoena...

WASHINGTON — Census data shapes almost every corner of public life — from the amount of federal money funneled to school lunch programs, new bus routes and rural health clinics to the number of congressional seats allocated to a state.

It would take eight years to undo what an unconstitutionally-elected GOP super-majority did to voting rights in North Carolina in the past several years, the Rev. William Barber II testified before a House congressional committee last week.

The ACLU of North Carolina released a report last week examining the true cost of excessive court debt to defendants. It documents hundreds of cases of people jailed over unpaid court debt...

The North Carolina General Assembly has spent the past few years making a concerted effort to impose increasing court fines and fees on poor defendants while giving judges less and less discretion to waive them in extenuating circumstances.

CONCORD – Cabarrus County Sheriff Van Shaw was elected last year on a platform that promised his constituents he would continue to work closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport unlawful immigrants accused of crimes. He is one of four sheriffs in the state who participates in 287(g)...

Emily Henderson was kicked off of Medicaid last year when she went from making $8 per hour at her job to $10 per hour. The raise put her over the income limit. Her son, who is diabetic, remains covered, but she has to choose more often than not between paying to take care of her own health without insurance coverage and paying her bills.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared willing Tuesday to rein in partisan gerrymandering — desperate even, for attorneys to give them some sort of manageable numeric standard by which they could determine how much politics is too much when it comes to redistricting.

Rep. David Lewis (R-Harnett) will secure his place in history if for no other reason than uttering that sentence. Everyone’s read it, North Carolina has been the butt of many jokes about it, and tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court could decide a case based on it.

The American Bar Association (ABA) issued a scathing report Wednesday that notes U.S. Immigration courts are “irredeemably dysfunctional and on the brink of collapse.” “The immigration courts are facing an existential crisis,” states the 72-page executive summary of the report, adding that the only way to fix the serious systemic issues...

A "detainer" from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a request for local law enforcement to hold individuals they believe are not lawful citizens in jail or prison for up to 48 hours until the federal agency can take custody and begin deportation proceedings.

President Donald Trump suffered a stinging policy setback last week when, notwithstanding the remarkable flip-flop of North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, 12 Republican senators joined with their Democratic colleagues to disapprove of Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border. The vote was just the latest in series of defeats and policy failures for Trump as he muddles his way through the second half of what is increasingly shaping up to be a notably scandal-plagued and ineffectual presidency.