How do judges of the Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of North Carolina / Joined 2019 / Active

Anita Earls

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Anita Earls is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, serving since 2019. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2019 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2019	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Earls authored 13 published opinions for the court (2019–2026), plus 3 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: In re T.N.H. (254 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 20 of these were attributed to Earls by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2019	In re T.N.H.†	831 S.E.2d 54	254
2019	Sykes v. Health Network Solutions, Inc.· Concurrence†	828 S.E.2d 467	132
2019	State v. Grady†	831 S.E.2d 542	80
2019	State v. Osborne· Concurrence†	831 S.E.2d 328	21
2019	State v. Mumma· Concurrence†	827 S.E.2d 288	20
2019	State v. Tart· Concurrence†	824 S.E.2d 837	14
2019	State v. Harvey· Dissent†	828 S.E.2d 481	10
2019	State v. Terrell†	831 S.E.2d 17	8
2019	State v. Bowman†	831 S.E.2d 316	8
2019	In re T.T.E.· Dissent†	831 S.E.2d 293	8
2019	State v. McDaniel· Dissent†	831 S.E.2d 283	6
2019	State v. J.C.†	827 S.E.2d 280	3
2026	State v. Hicks†	–	0
2026	State v. Dobson†	–	0
2026	Costanzo v. Currituck County†	–	0

Showing the 15 most-cited of 20 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Anita Earls on?: Anita Earls is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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7 years on the Supreme Court of North Carolina. Data as of 2026-07-02. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).